A MISUNDERSTANDING over whether he had joined an illegal assembly caused a human rights commissioner from the Philippines to be detained for six hours at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport yesterday.

“It’s all good and I don’t want to make a mountain out of a molehill. But maybe the authorities should review at the processes on how an individual is put on a list,” the Philippines Commission of Human Rights chairman Chito Gascon told The Malaysian Insight today.

Gascon was temporarily denied entry into Malaysia yesterday after arriving from Manila at 5.30pm. He was only allowed to leave the airport at midnight.

He is here to attend the regional conference on Democracy in Southeast Asia organised by Suhakam and the Kofi Annan Foundation that started today and ends tomorrow.

Gascon said he was stopped by immigration at KLIA and was subsequently told by a special branch officer at the airport that he was denied entry due to his participation in an illegal assembly.

“But I could not recall participating in any assembly. I was asked if I know Bersih and I said yes because I have friends in the organisation.

“And I did attend a ceremony here last year where Bersih was honoured with the Gwangju Prize for Human Rights by the Korean May 18 Foundation. The Bersih chairman Maria Chin Abdullah could not travel to South Korea so they had the ceremony in Kuala Lumpur. Many human rights commissioners were invited.

“But the ceremony was not an illegal assembly,” said Gascon.

He also related an incident where an individual from Bangladesh who attended the same ceremony for Bersih was turned away at the airport recently.

Odhikar rights group secretary Adilur Rahmah Khan was deported upon arrival at KLIA on July 20.

Adilur was in Malaysia to speak at a two-day conference organised by the Anti-Death Penalty Asia Network.

“I had a pleasant experience. I was not detained and was free to walk around the airport while waiting for the matter to be sorted out by Suhakam,” said Gascon who has travelled many times to Malaysia without any incidents.

The leader of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy Umbrella Movement and one of Time magazine’s most influential teenagers of 2014, Joshua Wong, was also denied entry into Malaysia in 2015.

He was detained briefly in Penang before being sent back to Hong Kong. No reasons were given for his deportation.

Australian senator Nick Xenophon was also deported in February 2013 after landing at KLIA. After a 16-hour detention, the politician was put on the first plane back to Australia.

The official reason Xenophon was denied entry was due to his participation in the 2012 Bersih rally. Xenophon said that he was merely an observer in the Bersih rally. – September 2, 2017.