Police raid on Malaysiakini's office high-handed and reveal its double
standards
Press Statement
by Raymond Chong
(Petaling Jaya,
Tuesday):
DAPSY condemns the high-handed police raid on the online news provider
Malaysiakini's office yesterday during which 15 of their central processing
units (CPUs) and 4 servers were seized, resulting in the temporary stoppage
of operations.
While the police are empowered by the law to seize any evidence of offence
of thing to facilitate investigations, it should not be to the extent of
seriously disrupting the operations of Malaysiakini. The seizure by the
police seems to give the impression that the police was intent on shutting
down Malaysiakini rather than to properly investigate the matter.
The raid on Malaysiakini also revealed the double-standards of the police.
Prior to this, both DAP and DAPSY had lodged police reports against two
allegedly seditious articles appearing on the UMNO and UMNO Youth websites
respectively which had seriously undermined the dignity of Chinese
mother-tongue education. However, no action was taken by the police on the
complaints although the offending articles were later removed from the
websites.
Yet, the police had last year acted on a complaint by a Perak UMNO leader on
the 'No to 929' leaflets distributed by the DAP whereby a raid was conducted
on the Perak DAP office resulting in the seizure of thousands of the
leaflets despite the fact that they were not seditious at all.
The police is clearly guilty of taking selective action; action when it
concerns the ruling party and inaction when it concerns the Opposition. Such
discriminate action must stop if the police are not to be seen as being
subservient to the ruling party.
DAPSY therefore calls on the police to stop practicing such
double standards and to investigate all complaints whether by the ruling
party or the Opposition without fear and favour.
(21/1/2003)
*
Raymond Chong, DAPSY Vice-Chairman
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http://dapmalaysia.org