(Bentong,
Sunday):
I commend the Bentong police for not harassing the
DAP’s “No to 911, No to 929, Yes to 1957” People’s Awareness
Campaign at the Bentong wet market this morning, after last Sunday’s abuses of
police powers and wrongful arrests of DAP leaders and activists, including the
DAP MP for Batu Gajah Fong Po Kuan.
The DAP’s “No to 929” campaign is neither seditious
nor subversive, but fully patriotic and nationalistic as it is to uphold and
defend the 1957 Merdeka Constitution, the “social contract” and 1963
Malaysian Agreement that Malaysia is a democratic, secular and multi-religious
nation with Islam as the official religion but Malaysia is not an Islamic state
– whether UMNO Islamic State or PAS Islamic State.
If the DAP’s “No to 929” campaign is seditious, then
Malaysia has a seditious Constitution for the past 45 years.
We also had three Prime
Ministers, Tunku Abdul Rahman, Tun Razak and Tun Hussein Onn who were seditious
premiers as they had publicly
enunciated this fundamental constitutional principle when they were in office.
Furthermore, Malaysia would have a seditious judiciary as the highest court of
the land had adjudged that Malaysia is a secular nation and not an Islamic state
when Tun Salleh Abas was the Lord President in 1988.
In the DAP’s 36 years of political struggle, we had
always extended our hand of co-operation to the police in the maintenance of law
and order as the party is fully committed to a democratic and constitutional
form of political change. However, DAP leaders had and would
never flinch from standing up on our principles and rights when the
police had encroached on the fundamental democratic rights of Malaysians whether
through gross abuses of powers or wrongful and unlawful arrests.
Since the DAP’s launch of the “No to 911, No to 929, Yes to 1957” People’s Awareness Campaign in Penang in early May, the DAP had been the victims of three sets of wrongful and unlawful arrests – in Ipoh on June 5, Port Dickson on July 21 and Bentong on August 4.
I call on the Inspector-General of Police, Tan Sri
Norian Mai to send out a clear directive to all police units in the
country to stop harassing the DAP’s “No to 929” campaign and to apologise
for the three sets of wrongful police arrests of DAP leaders and activists in
the past two months.
The Attorney-General Datuk Gani Patail should also stop dilly-dallying and make a clear ruling that the police had been guilty of gross abuses of power and wrongful arrests of DAP leaders, and that the DAP’s “No to 929” campaign is in full conformity with the 1957 Merdeka Constitution, the “social contract” and the 1963 Malaysia Agreement that Islam is the official religion but Malaysia is not an Islamic State.
(11/8/2002)