TWO Sarawak rights groups have condemned the police over the April 7 “interview” of pro-independence politician Voon Lee Shan as a continual “police harassment of local political and nationalist activists”.

The presidents of the Sarawak Association for Peoples’ Aspiration (Sapa) Dominique Ng and Sabah Sarawak Rights Australia & New Zealand Robert Pei, said the police investigation was a serious breach of the United Nations guidelines on police standard operating procedure in democratic countries.

They also said the police investigation was in contempt of the Court of Appeal’s 2019 affirmation that citizens have the right to free speech and may express opinions on political grievances without official reprisals.

This right was decided by the Borneo High Court in the Sapa de-registration case.

Parti Bumi Kenyalang president Voon’s latest brush with the police was the fourth since December last year. 

Voon later said he was being investigated on an alleged breach of public order over a statement he made on March 18 on citizens’ right to sue the signatories of the Malaysia Agreement 1963 (MA63) on issues and disputes that may arise over the agreement. 

Ng, a senior Kuching lawyer and Pei, who practises law in Australia, said their reading of Voon’s statement “does not reveal that it contained any threat to public order or caused any breach of peace”. 

“In fact, the reason cited for the interview is unrelated to Voon’s legal opinion that people can sue on MA63 issues, which is a civil matter,” they added.

Ng and Pei said in a statement that police “have no evidence of any breach of public order, peace or security and they were only fishing for evidence”.

On the UN guidelines on human rights standards and practice for the police, Ng and Pei said the guidelines had been violated “by politically motivated police reports being made against opposition politicians”.

They said members of the UN, including Malaysia, are bound by its laws and rules. 

“The guidelines have been badly abused in Malaysia by politically motivated people against political and social activists in the Sarawak rights and nationalist movements breaching both constitutional and UN democratic principles of freedom of speech. 

They said while the authorities should be concerned that public activities are conducted in a peaceful and lawful manner, it has become an accepted practice to make the proverbial “police report”, often lodged by members of some political parties and even by the police themselves, against political activists. – April 17, 2022.