(Parliament, Thursday): I welcome the statement made by the Royal Commission head, Mohamed Dzaiddin Abdullah, that the Commission has recommended that nude squats be done away with and the Standard Operating Procedure of the PDRM be amended through legislation.

In the UK and many other countries that respect human rights where body searches are routinely conducted as a matter of course, they are carried out in strict adherence to procedures that are already entrenched and incorporated in the respective statutory legislations, and example being the Police & Criminal Evidence Act in the UK.

In the meantime Malaysia continues to carry out body searches arbitrarily and without legal sanction.

I call upon the Prime Minister to make public the Squatgate report without delay and follow up with implementing the Commission’s recommendations.

While the Squatgate scandal has captured the headlines, the issue concerning the four Chinese nationals who were unlawfully detained and abused in November last year must not be forgotten.

The Attorney-General should take their complaint and police reports seriously and press charges against those who have overstepped their power and those who have been involved in corruption.

Teresa Kok backs ‘stop nude squats’ proposal

The politician responsible for making ‘nude squats’ a household term in Malaysia today welcomed the suggestion by an independent commission, tasked to investigate a controversial video-clip, to do away with the practice.

DAP parliamentarian Teresa Kok, who exposed the clip, also agreed with the commission’s proposal that the police’s Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) be amended through legislation.

“In the United Kingdom and many other countries that respect human rights where body searches are routinely conducted as a matter of course, they are carried out in strict adherence to procedures,” she said in a statement.

“In the meantime, Malaysia continues to carry out body searches arbitrarily and without legal sanction,” she added.

The five-member commission yesterday handed a 345-page report on its findings to the King and Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi.

School punishment

Among others, the commission condemned the ear squats, known here commonly as ketuk-ketampi, as a form of punishment that dated back to schooldays.

“Here with lock-up detainees, how can you punish somebody when you have not proved anything yet. You haven’t proved that the person has done wrong,” its head Mohamed Dzaiddin Abdullah was quoted as saying by the News Straits Times.

The commission also wanted police personnel to be enlightened about human rights principles.

Yesterday, Dzaiddin, a former chief justice, told reporters that the prime minister will decide on whether to make the findings of the commission public.

Responding to this, Kok said she will urge Abdullah to release the report without further delay and to follow-up with the implementation of the commission’s recommendations.

The video-clip in question showed a woman police detainee being forced to do nude squats at the Petaling Jaya police headquarters. The clip was recorded using a mobile phone.

It was initially speculated that the victim was a Chinese national but the commission later discovered that she was a Malay Malaysian arrested during a drug raid.

The police had argued that the squats were performed to ensure that detainees do not conceal any foreign objects in their body orifices.

Meanwhile, Kok also reminded that the plight of four Chinese nationals who had also complained of police abuse should not be ignored.

Previously, it was speculated that the woman in the clip could be one of the four.

“The attorney-general should take their complaint and police reports seriously and press charges against those who have overstepped their powers,” said the parliamentarian.

One of the women had claimed that she was asked for bribe money, stripped and had her breasts fondled at the police station.