Media Statement by Lim Kit Siang in Petaling
Jaya on Monday, 22nd September 2008:
Is the MCA Operative who lodged the
report triggering Teresa Kok's ISA arrest a MCA member?
At the SSS (Support, Sympathy and Solidarity)
Candlelight Vigil for DAP MP for Seputeh Teresa Kok demanding her
immediate release from Internal Security Act held at Ipoh Timor Garden
East, Ipoh on Thursday, 18th September 2008 - the eve of Teresa's
seven-day incarceration – I said that a key MCA operative in Puchong had
lodged a police report making false allegations against Teresa over the
azan controversy on Thursday, 11th September 2008, which triggered her
ISA detention the next day on Sept. 12 at 11.18 pm.
I repeated this the next day at Teresa's media conference on her ISA
release at DAP PJ hqrs the next day at 3.30 pm.
Is or was the "key MCA operative in Puchong" a MCA member? Let MCA
leaders tell Malaysians.
Suddenly, MCA leaders like its vice president Datuk Ong Tee Keat have
become very bold and courageous in throwing challenges wanting me to
prove that "police reports lodged by members of an MCA division in
Selangor had led to the detention of DAP's Seputeh MP Teresa Kok under
the Internal Security Act (ISA)". (New Straits Times online)
But not a bleat from them when Home Minister, Datuk Seri Syed Hamid
Albar virtually told them to shut up and declared that there is not
going to be any repeal or review of the ISA.
The MCA Central Committee met on Tuesday, 16th September 2008 and called
for "a comprehensive review of the ISA so that it will apply strictly to
cases relating to terrorism and subversive elements".
Why didn't the four MCA Ministers formally table this proposal at the
Cabinet meeting the next day on Wednesday, 17th September 2008?
Are the MCA leaders just playing to the gallery in making public calls
for the "comprehensive review" of the ISA, just for newspaper publicity
but which MCA Ministers have neither intention nor political courage to
pursue in Cabinet as a fundamental matter of principle?
MCA leaders are trying to raise a hue-and-cry over the identity over the
"MCA operative in Puchong" whose police report one day earlier had
triggered off Teresa Kok's ISA detention.
Teresa had already revealed the identity of the "MCA operative in
Puchong" concerned at the KL-Selangor Chinese Assembly Hall on the
occasionn of the "head-shaving protest" by 18 justice-and-freedom-loving
Malaysians expressing their outrage at the unjust, undemocratic and
unlawful detention of Malaysia's most famous blogger Raja Petra
Kamaruddin, the Hindraf 5 and other detainees under the Internal
Security Act.
The event, organised by DAP Selangor, is also to protest the arbitrary
detention of the Hindraf 5 and all other ISA detainees currently
languishing in the Kamunting Detention Centre.
The ball is now in the court of the "bold and courageous" MCA leaders.
*
Lim
Kit Siang, DAP
Parliamentary leader & MP for Ipoh Timor
http://dapmalaysia.org