Media Statement by Lim Kit Siang in Parliament
on Tuesday, 19th August 2008:
Anwar Sodomy II - internationalising
Malaysia’s Misrule of Law?
I had wanted to ask the Foreign Minister,
Datuk Dr. Rais Yatim the following supplementary question in Parliament
this morning:
“Are you aware that by taking Anwar’s
Sodomy II selective prosecution to the United Nations by way of a
letter of protest to the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon at
American interference in Malaysian domestic affairs as well as
organising a series of ‘information sessions’ overseas, you are only
internationalising Malaysia’s ‘misrule of law’ which you had so
eloquently and devastatingly criticised in your book ‘Freedom under
Executive Power’, exposing the nation to greater mockery in the
global arena as we will only be able to depend on rogue states like
Myanmar, Zimbabwe and Sudan for sympathy and support for the
following reasons:
(i) deterioration of the rule of law in
the past decade since the publication of the book, as evident
from disturbing developments in the system of justice in the
country, such as
(a) the selective prosecution of Anwar on Sodomy II under
Section 377B of the Penal Code on consensual sodomy when the
complainant Mohd Saiful Bukhari Azlan had alleged that he had
been raped, which should have come under Section 377C on sodomy
rape;
(b) why Saiful was not similarly charged under Section 377B on
consensual sodomy; and
(c) the insistence by the Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Abdullah
Ahmad Badawi that Anwar should also swear on the Quran like
Saiful, making Malaysia an international laughing stock as to
whether we have a Prime Minister who understands and upholds the
system of justice in the country;
(ii) grave loss of national and international confidence in the
independence, impartiality, integrity and quality of the system
of justice when material witnesses like private investigator
Bala Subramaniam on the Mongolian Altantunya Shaariibuu murder
trial and the Pusrawi Hospital doctor Dr. Mohamed Osman Abdul
Hamid had “disappeared” together with family members after
making two contradictory statutory declarations within 24 hours
in the former and after penning medical notes on his first
examination of Saiful in the latter;
(iii) grave international concerns of a conspiracy against Anwar
Ibrahim in the Sodomy II charge, which has been expressed not
only by Western leaders but also by Islamic leaders like former
Indonesian President and head of the largest Indonesian Islamic
organisation Nahdlatul Ulama with 40 million members, Gus Dur,
yesterday.”
Unfortunately this multi-barrelled
supplementary question to Rais was not asked as I did not get the chance
to pose it during the exchange on the first question this morning on the
measures the government was taking to tackle “foreign meddling in the
sovereignty of laws of the country”.
However, as these questions continue to be uppermost in the minds of
right-thinking, justice-loving and patriotic Malaysians, is the Abdullah
government capable of answering them?
If so, I call on the Prime Minister or even Rais to make a Ministerial
statement to answer all these questions before next Tuesday – the
polling day for Permatang Pauh by-election.
*
Lim
Kit Siang, DAP
Parliamentary leader & MP for Ipoh Timor
http://dapmalaysia.org