MOHE pulls plug on campus gigs, strikes sour note with UM student union

 

The Higher Education Ministry (MOHE) has directed all public universities to ban on-campus concerts that have not gone through risk evaluations.

In a circular to the public universities yesterday, the ministry’s director-general Azlinda Azman said this was in view of several "unexpected incidents" that occurred during activities on campuses.

"However, concert organisers who have already passed contingency risk assessment by the university authorities will still need to notify the ministry," said Azlinda.

Recently, the Terengganu government said it was investigating a video clip that allegedly depicted a concert at a public university in Kuala Terengganu that was suspected to be in violation of "guidelines".

Terengganu executive councillor in charge of syariah implementation and education, Satiful Bahri Mamat, told the press two days ago that the concert must comply with syariah requirements.

In reaction to this, the Universiti Malaya Students' Union (Umsu) today "strongly opposed" the ministry’s directive as it involved more red tape.

"We believe this excessive level of filtering is unnecessary and slows down the process of organisation of these events. We strongly reject unnecessary bureaucracy in the local university’s administration.

"Due to the abruptness of the directive, the consequences of concert-related programmes which have been planned to be held in the nearest future are uncertain and may be halted.

"We also ask the ministry to tell us who should be held responsible for the loss of time and costs spent on these events if this instruction is followed," said Umsu.

It added that the incident in Terengganu does not reflect the policies of other public universities and, therefore, a nationwide blanket ban was unfair.

The union also argued that the blanket ban deprived students of their rights to freedom of expression under Article 10 of the Federal Constitution.

"As Malaysia is moving towards the formation of student unions across all public universities, students should be given the autonomy to organise events within the university without government’s interference.

"We would also like to highlight that the government clearly did not keep its promise of allowing more freedom and privileges to university students, which is regrettable and strongly condemned," said Umsu. - Mkini