In 'New Malaysia', Suhakam hopes report will finally be debated in Parliament

Suhakam has strongly urged the Pakatan Harapan government to ensure that its 2018 annual report is debated in the Dewan Rakyat.

Since its establishment in 2000, the commission’s annual reports have only been tabled but never debated in the august house.

At a press conference unveiling the report today, Suhakam commissioner Jerald Joseph said he had expected the document to be debated at the recently-concluded Dewan Rakyat sitting.

However, these hopes were dashed when de facto Law Minister Liew Vui Keong tabled it on the last day of the session with no time allocated for discussion of its contents.

“(For the debate) to happen, Minister Liew must table it again in Parliament as an agenda.

“We are hoping that at the next Parliament sitting (in July), for the first time, we will hear our annual report being debated by MPs,” Jerald (below) said during a question-and-answer session.

Dewan Rakyat speaker Mohamad Ariff Mohd Yusof, the Rights and Gender Equality Parliamentary Select Committee and Parliament’s Caucus on Reform and Governance have all pledged their support for Suhakam’s report to be debated, he said.

Should Liew need Suhakam’s help for the debate, Jerald said that the commission was at the minister’s disposal.

“We are prepared to standby (to help with) whatever questions,” he said.

Statelessness tops list

Suhakam’s report recorded that the commission received a spike in complaints in 2018 totalling 1,180 complaints, a 46.9 percent increase from 803 the year before.

The highest amount of complaints were about the lack of identification documentation or statelessness from its Sabah office.

Admitting the complexity of the issue, it noted that statelessness affected as many as 2,599 children who were denied education due to their status.

The commission recommended that Putrajaya develop a mechanism to address the problem of statelessness within national borders and to ensure children were given documentation and nationality at birth.

The report also highlighted the high number of marriages involving children, calling such unions a “grave human rights violation” as they disrupted the child’s right to education, health, equality and non-discrimination.

“Suhakam is of the view that laws that allow child marriages may be regarded as legalising paedophilia,” the report read.

Last year, the marriage between a 41-year-old man to an 11-year-old girl in Kelantan drew widespread condemnation.

Suhakam thus urged Putrajaya to amend all civil and syariah laws to make 18 years old the minimum marriage age for both females and males.

Other issues included in the report were the overpopulation of Malaysian prisons, the exploitation of migrant workers, the high number of people trafficked into Malaysia and the pervasive discrimination against transgender people. - Mkini