Press Statement
by DAP MP for Kota Melaka, Kerk Kim Hock
in Petaling Jaya
on Thursday, June 06, 2002
DAP hereby register our strongest protest against the wrongful arrest of DAP National Chairman, Sdr Lim Kit Siang, by the Police yesterday.
The DAP's " No to 929" people awareness campaign was first launched in Penang a month ago and no untoward incident has occurred. Except when there was Police interference to disallow the using of public hailer to address the people and the giving of public speeches at the various launching ceremonies, DAP received no advice or warning from the Police on the questions of distribution of pamphlets or the contents of the pamphlets.
The DAP team led by our Acting Secretary General, Sdri Chong Eng and Deputy Secretary General, Sdr Kula continued the Perak campaign this morning at the Ipoh Buntung market. There was no interference from the Police though Police personnel were present.This has certainly shown that the Police had committed wrongful arrest when they arrested Kit Siang yesterday for distributing the campaign pamphlets.
The wrongful arrest of Kit Siang is not only an abuse of the Police power which the Inspector General of Police must explain and rectify, the Police's action also tantamount to further restricting the already limited democratic space available to the opposition to spread our political messages to the masses.
Since DAP was founded in 1966, our nationwide political dinners and ceramahs have never posed any security problem at all. As such, the Police's decisions in recent months not to grant permits for some DAP dinners or ceramahs are without any reasonable ground and are totally unacceptable. If the Police are now going to interfere in our distribution of pamphlets, this can only be seen to be a further and undemocratic step to frustrate our efforts to disseminate political messages to the masses.
If Umno President, Datuk Seri Mahathir Mohammad could be allowed to make political speech at the recent Umno Anniversary gathering, the Police must explain on what ground that DAP leaders could not be allowed to make political speeches at some of our Party Anniversary Dinners?