Video on lawyers arrested December 9, 2007
Posted by elizabethwong in Current Affairs, Democracy, Human Rights, Malaysia, Politics.Tags: , Amer Hamzah Arshad, Arif, Bar Council, Edmund Bon, Eric Paulsen, Latheefa Koya, Lawyers for Freedom of Assembly, N. Surendran, Nooraza Othman, R Sivarasa, World Human Rights Day
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An independent account of the events that happened at the ‘Lawyers For Freedom Of Assembly Bersama Rakyat‘ march from Jalan Tunku Abdul Rahman to Bar Council building on December 09 2007 from 0745 hours to 0900 hours
elizabeth wong 
They said the lawyers were arrested by the Royal Malaysian Police. what I have seen was that they were arrested by the Gestapo. Got an optical problem at my young age, maybe I am losing my sex appeal these days…
Democracy and human rights cleansing?
Don’t the police have better things to do like preventing crime and make our country safe for citizens and visitors? Is it true that making arrest ensures promotions???? The video clip clearly shows that the Police are confused – can walk, cannot walk. What lah bro? Be civilised lah!, bro. Don’t give the world a wrong impression of your uniform. Shameful lah! bro.
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Inorder to find out what the government is made of –
do what they are afraid of
and
whatever you do should be enshrined within the constitutions.
Little by little they will be exposed, cloaking in the mask of hunky dory hookwinking the public to protract their greed in the name of racial and religious supremacist.
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what a shameful act on the part of the police. i wonder if they sleep well nights. and how to do explain to their family why they do what they did. and what if a precocious child asked ‘ tapi papa, tu hari dulu khairy yang tinggi orang nya dan berlagak garang dan kasar bengis, mereka boleh kan. pak? kenapa pak? sebab dia anak menantu ka? sebab tu condleeza rice.ka?
kalau gitu bila adik masuknak masuk polik. den nak kahwim anak perdana menteri . tentu manyak yamg boleh kita buat kan. bila2 boleh march. dan dengar khabar nak mengurat pun boleh dengan umnoputera, yah, bolehkah maya karin tu khairy punya kawan karib. sebab tu dpata jadi brand ambsadresses untuk monsoon cup.
I salute lawyers who walked the talk for human rights on Dec 9th despite call for cancellation of such event by the Bar’s President, a wishy-washy lawyer. She first cancelled the walk and then moved venue from the Central Market to the Bar building. For whatever her reason may be, it was utterly nonsense.
I equally salute and praise participants who joined their call for human rights walk.
By all mean, polices were out there to do arrest. The video clearly indicates their intention. Heard of Chinese’s idiom – “SHA YI JING BAI” (Execute one as a warning to a hundred). This scare tactic was meant to discourage future rally. By now, we all know polices had arrested 12 other individual who were not participated in the walk. The government is testing the reaction from people. Will Malaysian people back down from these arrests? If so, the government succeeds.
I am waiting to see reactions from the Bar especially it’s President, lawyers, opposition leaders and NGO. What will they do?
My thoughts go to the lawyers who have been arrested. Your courage will be a beacon of strength for all Malaysian and hopefully, Singaporean lawyers in their quest for more human rights in our two countries.
I’m encouraged to see more and more people having their eyes pried open these days. No more of days when people lived in total oblivion to what’s happening around the globe. “Globalisation and camera phones” is a curse for governments that practice dictatorship. It has begun and it will continue – people standing up for HUMAN RIGHTS. Political parties have to wake up and realise they serve the people and not the other way round. PEOPLE SHOULD NOT AND MUST NOT ALLOW GOVERNMENTS TO IGNORE HUMAN RIGHTS. The poor and powerless need the conscientious lawyers for voice. Thank you brave protestors.
I can’t say that my heart doesn’t go for the plight of the lawyers who wished for a better human rights practice in Malaysia. However, I also do believe in our own brand of human rights and not the neo-colonial uber-liberal Western doctrine of absolute inalienable human rights.
God Almighty made us all different for a reason. We ought to EMBRACE our differences and strive for a common goal – a better freedom but never one that is absolute in nature (like HRH Sultan Azlan Shah once said in his ruling, “absolute freedom corrupts absolutely”). We should EMBRACE our differences and not compound it to fit one moulding (of Western origin) that not necessarily fit our culture and many centuries of history. We should EMBRACE the fact that there is a difference in the way things are in Malaysia. We function collectively as a society and that the interests of the majority (a favourite terminology in democracy as strived by those lawyers) must triumph over individualistic (or perhaps minority) ideology that not necessarily shared, again, by the majority.
One of the lawyer arrested, Amer Hamzah Arshad, in his interview in the Bar Council’s website mentioned albeit being subtle about it that what SUHAKAM’s effort so far has been insufficient and downright inefficient. My question now is, how efficient is the current Bar Council? They couldn’t even control a group of lawyers from that walk when the president herself, Mdm Ambiga had cancelled the official walk in light of current affairs. But it is rather convenient that once those lawyers were arrested, the Bar Council leaps itself as “defender of the innocent”. Ironic won’t you say that one moment the council foregoes the walk and the next, they’re in support for those whom had done the walk despite the council’s cancellation of the official walk. The council is, to me at least, a coward for cancelling the official walk but only to support the illegal walk later on OR inefficient and incoherrent in making decisions.
And on to those lawyers, I’m sure they’re well-educated and able to make solid judgments beyond their own self-interest. Some may argue that it’s not “self-interest” if they’re “fighting” for the greater good. It is “SELF-interest” if what they do will harm the general population either directly or indirectly. Surely they are aware of this thing called chain-reaction (perhaps that is what they’re hoping for – a chain reaction that will lead to the fall of the current government so that the opposition like Keadilan [whom the vice-president is Sivarasa, one of the lawyers arrested] could come to power). These walks and peaceful demonstration will only tarnish Malaysia’s standing internationally, affect the economy as foreign investors are too afraid to invest here, create division among the people and the list goes on and on.
That is the bigger picture, whether one likes it or not. There are other smaller pictures but I don’t have the time to go into details. Suffice to say that, family and friends of the arrested lawyers became casualties of the whole media coverage. The agony of parents and family members having to respond for their arrest. I can only imagine the agony of their family seeing their sons, daughters, fathers or mothers in handcuffs being ushered into the court. Some may say that family should support what they’re doing, but conversely, can’t they support what the family feels about it? Again, self-interest…