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Second midnight raid on student council office and women hostel: Is UPM authorities acting on behalf of UMNO elements in varsities? Statement by Loke Siew Fook (Petaling Jaya, Tuesday): It was reported in Malaysiakini yesterday that Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM) authorities carried out another midnight raid at the student representative council office and the room of women undergraduates last Saturday.  According to the report, three UPM officials from its undergraduate affairs department raided the council’s office at about 11 pm when several council leaders were preparing the official bulletin for distribution. It was alleged that 2,000 copies of the bulletin were confiscated.   The report further revealed that three hours after the raid in the student council’s office, a raiding team went to the room of Farrah Fuaddah Puteh at the Kolej Tun Perak hostel of UPM.   The latest raid on Saturday was second in a row as Malaysiakini reported a similar incident last week when four women undergraduates were interrogated by UPM student affairs department deputy vice-chancellor Prof Dr Abdullah Al-Hadi Mohamed after their rooms were raided.   I strongly believe that the raids on those students whom some of them are UPM student council members in the run-up to the annual campus election scheduled on September 4 are not by co-incidence. The UPM student council is currently controlled by the group labeled as “anti-establishment”. It was believed that the bulletins were seized because the memorandum to UPM vice-chancellor Prof Mohd Zohadie Bardaie crying foul over the university’s denial on the council’s right to organise campus activities was published in the edition. The memorandum said several new policies imposed since March had usurped the council’s power, including prohibiting the council from meeting with campus associations and clubs. The council was also prevented from being involved in the orientation programmes with new undergraduates in early May. As a former student activist in Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM) during my student days, I believe that there are strong basis in those allegations stated in the memorandum.   Campus election in local universities have all the while strongly influenced by political parties outside the campus in the last three decades but since the sacking of former Deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim in 1998, the attention given by the youth wing of the two rival Malay parties UMNO and PAS to campus election have grown even stronger.   It is a fact that both UMNO Youth and PAS Youth have a special unit overseeing local university’s affairs and their main objective is to build bridges between them and the students in campus. Off course, they also play an important role to ensure students groups aligned to them to control student council in the respective local universities.     This is a reality in local campuses and it is part and parcel of campus politics. It is often said that campus election in Malaysia is microcosm of the bigger fight between UMNO and PAS outside. While I agree that student activism should not be influenced by political parties outside, but it seems that local university authority is targeting only students sympathetic towards the opposition.   If the UPM authority is serious to wipe out political influences in its student council, are they prepared to take similar actions against students who are labeled as “pro-establishment” too?   But this is not the point here. The UPM authority should not have acted in such a way against student activists. Raiding women students’ rooms in the middle of the night for whatever reasons is just not only improper but tantamount to violating their rights to privacy.   It is in this backdrop that I have called on the Education Minister, Tan Sri Musa Mohamad last Saturday to immediately make an investigation and give a public clarification on the matter within a week. Until today, there is no public response from the Minister yet and the issue was totally blackout by mainstream media except from extensive coverage on online media, Malaysiakini.   I reiterate here that if Musa did not give a public clarification on the matter by end of this week, I will lead a DAPSY delegation to lodge a report to Human Right Commission of Malaysia (Suhakam) after the Merdeka holiday on next Tuesday, 2nd September on the basis that the UPM authority have violated the rights of privacy of the students.   (26/8/2003) * Loke Siew Fook, DAPSY National Secretary