Silencing dissidents with Emergency Ordinance

 

Late Friday night, I received information that a Twitter user “@ChairmanGLC” was detained by the police and will be taken to the Dang Wangi police headquarters for the night.

@ChairmanGLC was detained under the Emergency (Essential Powers)(No 2) Ordinance 2021 (EO) for a tweet last month about the RM70 million funding relating to the development and management of the system for the National Covid-19 Immunisation Programme (NIP).

@ChairmanGLC spent the night in police lockup, but as a result of the good work of lawyers Rajsurian Pillai and Adly Zulfadhly, the following day, the magistrate only granted the police a one day remand, which would mean that the netizen would not need to spend another night in police custody.

It was later revealed that the police acted on a police report lodged by the Covid-19 Immunisation Task Force (CITF), led by the coordinating minister for the NIP.

Full disclosure; I know @ChairmanGLC. I consider him a friend, and I have also helped him in some legal matters before. But for his arrest under the EO and the subsequent remand application, I was not his lawyer.

@ChairmanGLC is not an activist. He is not a politician. He is a normal Malaysian, who is vocal on social media. Some may find his tweets rude or not classy, but that should not matter.

What should matters are this; vocal Malaysians are being arrested for criticising or asking questions on the government’s handling of the coronavirus.

What is more worrying is that the government is now using the EO under the pretext of combating ‘fake news’ to silence dissidents. This is exactly what many were worried about when the said EO was promulgated by the Yang di-Pertuan Agong in March.

In March, I wrote in this column about how the mischief of the EO is in the criminalisation of any attempt to question the Proclamation of Emergency.

I wrote:

“The government will likely try to sell this ordinance by saying there is a need to stop people from spreading false information about the Covid-19 vaccine. But the offences cast a much wider net, and more importantly, the real mischief is the criminalisation of any attempts to question the Proclamation of Emergency.”

But what happened with @ChairmanGLC shows that the government is willing to use the EO to take action against those who criticise or question the government’s handling of the pandemic.

Remember, many have raised questions about the RM70 million allocation. Especially after the last AstraZeneca opt-in registration, where the government’s official website could not handle the influx of registrations at the time.

The minister in charge has said that the said RM70 million is not just to develop the website, but also for Covid-19 vaccine data, integration and appointment system. He also said that the RM70 million is the ‘ceiling’ set aside by the government for these purposes.

Kampung Tunku assemblyperson Lim Yi Wei

But just as what Kampung Tunku assemblyperson Lim Yi Wei has said in her statement, this explanation does not reveal the full details of the allocation, such as the vendor, project manager, lead tech and others, as well as details as to how much of the RM70 million has been spent so far.

In the absence of such details, it is no wonder that netizens would speculate. Especially so when Parliament, the forum where these questions can be posed and have to be answered, is barred from sitting.

Will there be more netizens who would be hauled up under the EO for questioning the government?

But times have changed. The government can no longer govern as it did before.

I doubt the people would be cowed to fall in line. People will keep questioning the government as they are no longer afraid. They may arrest some, but many more will stand in solidarity.

As Covid-19 cases rise and more and more deaths are reported, even the most draconian laws cannot contain the people’s voices.  - Mkini

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SYAHREDZAN JOHAN is a civil liberties lawyer and political secretary to Iskandar Puteri MP Lim Kit Siang.

The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of MMKtT.