Public assembly: Laws have progressed but police SOP still trailing
Malaysia have come a long way in terms of public assembly and laws pertaining to it. But sadly it seems the police are not keeping up with the changes and putting unnecessary burden on themselves by recording statements of those participating in peaceful gatherings.
Yesterday alone, police have recorded statements from 20 activists including two Parti Sosialis Malaysia (PSM) leaders. They were apparently being investigated for participating in two assemblies which ended with no untoward incident at Dataran Merdeka on Feb 28 and another in Sogo, on March 1.
Malaysian laws have come a long way to recognise peaceful assembly. The current Peaceful Assembly Act 2012 is definitely much less restrictive than the Section 27 of the Police Act where permits were compulsory and the Act strictly regulates assemblies, meetings and processions.
When this Act was replaced by the Peaceful Assemble Act (PAA) 2012, the government said that this was done to complement Article 10 of the Federal Constitution, which guarantees freedom of assembly and keep up with international standards.
The right to assemble is clearly defined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights 1948 (UDHR) and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights 1976 (ICCPR) where it states everyone has the right to assemble peacefully and form associations.
Suhakam also released two important reports on Peaceful Assembly Act on Oct 8, 2001 as well as one on the KESAS Highway incident on Nov 5, 2002.
In Aug 2019, PAA was further amended where the notice period to be given to the police was reduced from 10 days to five days.
So while progress has been made, the police had yet to revise their problematic SOP. Now let us look at the amount of work the police have to do to investigate public assemblies.
When there is an assembly, the police Special Branch Department will monitor the situation as well as the Internal Security and Public Order Department (ISPOD), which coordinates the entire event. If the assembly ends peacefully in accordance with the guarantee given by the Constitution, the police should put a closure to this.
But that does not happen, What happens currently is that the police will lodge their own report on the assembly and list the names of prominent people who have spoken in the rally.
Then these people will be issued with Notice 111 which needs to be served personally to each of them. After that, they will have to arrange officers from the rank of Inspectors and above to record statements. Then the investigation papers will be sent to the deputy public prosecutor to see if they have violated any laws and charge them for it.
Since the PAA has been introduced and especially, since the change of government in May 2018, hardly anyone has been charged under this law. Therefore the whole exercise of recording 112 statements is a sheer waste of police time, especially when there were no untoward incidents.
Most police officers recording the statements themselves lamented that the whole process was a burden and a sheer waste of time as they have pressing issues at hand, like fighting crime. Many policemen have also told me that the SOP is the reason why they have to record statements.
In the recent incident, it was notified by the police that the activists are being probed under the PAA for failing to produce a notice to hold an assembly. Here again the police can use their discretion if there is a violation.
Last year, the government also organised a rally on the shooting in New Zealand and it was done three days after the incident. Therefore on urgent matters, even the five days notice is ridiculous.
Another ridiculous clause is seeking permission from the owners of the premise. For example, if students want to protest against their University, they need to get permission from the University administration.
And if one group wants to protest against the Employees Provident Fund (EPF), they need to get EPF’s permission. In both cases, they will not be able to get permissions for obvious reasons. Also public places like Dataran Merdeka and Padang Merbok, there should be no condition such as to to get permission from the Kuala Lumpur City Hall (DBKL).
PSM hopes with the progress made with our laws, the police would also make the necessary amendments to their SOP in order to save themselves from doing unnecessary bureaucratic work, which is redundant when everything ends well.
S.Arutchelvan is the deputy chairperson of Parti Sosialis Malaysia.
