THE Human Rights Commission of Malaysia (Suhakam) has instructed lawyers and police observers to seek a declassification of documents under the Official Secrets Act (OSA) on pastor Raymond Koh to determine if he was ever blacklisted by the Immigration Department prior to his disappearance.

Suhakam commissioner Mah Weng Kwai made the request when Immigration Department assistant deputy director Hamid Momong said that he could not reveal the blacklist.

“The objective is to get the list declassified. All parties should check on the law and see if it can be done,” Mah said at the inquiry today.

When asked to produce Koh’s travel movements and documents to see if the pastor was on the Immigration Department blacklist, Hamid said the documents were classified under the Section 16 A of the Official Secrets Act.

“It’s under the OSA, so I can’t comment on it.

“Even if I knew, I cannot expose it (who is on the list),” he told the inquiry today.

The act is defined as “any document specified in the Schedule and any information and material relating thereto and includes any other official document, information and material as may be classified as ‘top secret’, ‘secret’, ‘confidential’ or ‘restricted’, as the case may be, by a minister, the menteri besar or chief minister of a state or such public officer appointed under section 2B”.

Hamid said that when he attempted to access Koh’s files, the system showed that they were classified.

“I couldn’t get access because it’s classified.

“I also don’t know who classified the list under OSA.”

Mah said if police were going to use the excuse that such material was classified every time the panel asked for evidence, the inquiry “might as well pack up and leave”.

Koh’s wife, Susanna Liew, who was present at the inquiry, appealed to the Pakatan Harapan government to relook investigations into her husband’s disappearance.

Liew, who has been seeking answers since February last year when her husband disappeared, made the request after a police informer allegedly revealed that the authorities were involved in the abductions of Koh and Perlis activist Amri Che Mat.

The pastor was abducted in Petaling Jaya on February 13 last year by some 15 men in three black SUVs.

The abduction was caught on closed-circuit television cameras and described as a well-coordinated operation.

Suhakam aims to determine whether Koh, Amri, who went missing near his home in Padang Behor, as well as pastor Joshua Hilmy and his wife, Ruth Sitepu, are cases of enforced disappearance sanctioned by the state. – September 3, 2018.