‘Some laws have become a laughing-stock’

The Indonesian confrontation emergency declaration has not been revoked. Technically it means we are at ‘war with Indonesia’ despite the fact that thousands of Indonesians are here.

GEORGE TOWN: The country’s first emergency proclamation was invoked against the communist insurgency from 1948 to 1960. Since then there has been four others but sadly only the first one has been revoked.

Penang Gerakan’s legal and human rights bureau head Baljit Singh said Malaysians could not understand why the government still maintains the four proclamations of emergency.

“The crises justifying the proclamations have all passed. Putrajaya’s reasons to validate them are misplaced,” said Baljit .

The country’s has experienced five emergency proclamations by the King under Article 150 of the Federal Constitution.

The first emergency (1948-60) was against the communist insurgency and the second on Sept 3, 1964 was due to the Indonesian Confrontation.

Baljit, said the second proclamation had actually declared the country as ‘technically at war’ with neighbouring Indonesia.

This, he said, was amusing to Malaysians given the presence of the large number of Indonesians, both legal and illegal, in the country.

“We are now even giving bio-metric preferential treatment to Indonesians. Are we really at war with the Indonesians?”

The third was limited to Sarawak in Sept 14, 1966 following the dismissal of then Chief Minister Stephen Kalong Ningkan.

The fourth emergency was declared nationwide on May 15, 1969 in response to the May 13 civil unrest.

The final proclaimation on Nov 8, 1977 was limited to Kelantan to deal with the state’s political crisis.

Except for the first one, all other proclamations of emergency have not been revoked.

This in a way has resulted in the continued enforcement of the draconian Emergency Ordinance (Public Order and Prevention of Crime) 1969 (EO, he said.

Short period of peace

Baljit said it was amazing that in the 54 years of independence, only a short spell of four years, between Aug 15, 1960 and Sept 2, 1964, a largely peaceful country like Malaysia was not subjected to emergency.

He called on the government to also repeal or review all draconian or draconian-type laws in line with universal concept of human rights and civil liberties.

The laws are EO, Internal Security Act 1960, Police Act 1967, Public Order (Preservation) Act 1958, Prevention of Crime Act 1959 and Essential (Security Cases) Regulations 1975.

Other laws are Official Secret Act 1972, Sedition Act 1948, Printing Presses and Publications Act 1984, Trade Union Act 1959, Immigration Act 1959, Societies Act 1966 and Universities and University Colleges Act 1971.

Crime prevention laws such as Firearms (Increased Penalties) Act 1971, Arms Act 1960 and Dangerous Drugs (Special Preventive Measures) Act, 1975 are also said to have violated fundamental civil liberties.

“These laws were considered to have caused severe inroads and abrogated constitutionally protected fundamental human rights. It’s time for the government to either repeal or review all these legislations,” said Baljit.