(Petaling Jaya, Thursday): Yesterday,
Deputy Home Minister Datuk Chor Chee Heung told Parliament that the police shot
dead 579 suspected criminals in the last 20 years between 1981 and January 2001
and that 19 policemen were killed in the line of duty.
Chor’s
answer is completely different from that given by the former Deputy Home
Minister, Datuk Abdul Kadir Sheikh Fadzir who told Parliament in April 1999 that
in the previous 10 years, 635 people had been shot dead by the police.
Who
is right - Chor’s statement that 579 were shot dead by the police in the
past 20 years or Abdul Kadir who said in April 1999 that in the previous ten
years 635 people had been shot dead? Can
Chor give a satisfactory account of such a great discrepancy in the statistics
of the number of people killed by police shootings?
Chor’s
figures cannot be right, as in a meeting between Opposition leaders and top
police officers led by the Inspector-General of Police, Tan Sri Norian Mai at
Bukit Aman on June 19, 1999, I had raised the issue of the professionalism of
the police with particular reference to the statistics given by Abdul Kadir in
connection with the 635 people shot dead by the police in the previous ten
years, asking whether the police could satisfy the Malaysian public that no
innocent people had been killed in all the 635 cases.
At
the meeting, I had suggested the
establishment of an Independent Police Ombudsman with powers to receive and
investigate public complaints about police misconduct and abuses of power.
Norian
Mai’s response was that it was up to Parliament to decide whether to establish
an Independent Police Ombudsman to provide a mechanism for public oversight of
police accountability but he did not dispute the figures given by Abdul Kadir
with regard to 635 people shot dead by the police in the previous ten years.
If
the figures given by Abdul Kadir to Parliament in April 1999
were right, that 635 people had been shot dead by the police in the
previous ten years, then there is something terribly wrong with the figures
given by Chor in Parliament yesterday, as the number of people shot dead by the
police in the past 20 years could be in four figures and not just 579!
The
Deputy Prime Minister who is also the Home Minister, Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Abdullah should make
a ministerial statement in Parliament to explain the great discrepancy in the number of people killed by
police shootings given by Chor
yesterday, and explain what measures had been taken to ensure that no innocent
people had been killed in the police shootings.
Abdullah
should agree to the establishment of a Royal Commission of Inquiry to
investigate into all the cases of killings by police shootings in the past two
decades and Parliament, before adjourning its present meeting, should be allowed
to debate and decide whether an Independent
Police Ombudsman to oversee police misconduct and abuses of power should be set
up to demonstrate both the government and the police commitment to
professionalism and accountability to the public to zero trigger-happy shooting
by the police.
(4/4/2002)