Malaysian police chief slammed over scare tactics

KUALA LUMPUR — Police chief Khalid Abu Bakar has been criticised after a spate of arrests of opposition politicians and activists before and after the #KitaLawan anti-government rally on Saturday.

Opposition bloc member Lim Guan Eng, who is Democratic Action Party (DAP) secretary-general and Penang Chief Minister, yesterday accused Mr Khalid of giving Malaysia an “international black eye” in terms of human rights, reported the Associated Press.

Mr Lim labelled Mr Khalid the most political police chief since Abdul Rahim Mohd Noor, who punched opposition politician Anwar Ibrahim when he was in police custody in 1998, giving him a bruised eye.

Mr Lim said double standards were at work, especially since no pro-government demonstrators had been arrested in the dead of the night after illegal rallies in Penang government offices in Komtar or at the DAP headquarters in Kuala Lumpur.

Resorting to scare tactics when detaining opposition leaders will only backfire on the ruling Barisan Nasional (BN) government, analysts warned, saying this showed the police had sunk to a new low despite severe public criticism. They were referring to the arrests of opposition leaders and activists in the hours before and after the #KitaLawan rally in Kuala Lumpur.

Among the agenda items for the rally was to call for the release of Anwar, who was jailed for five years after a sodomy conviction last month, and the government’s 6 per cent Goods and Services Tax, which will be introduced on Wednesday. Unlike the previous rally on March 7, which drew thousands of people, Saturday’s event was attended by about 300 people.

Early yesterday, Shah Alam Member of Parliament Khalid Samad was arrested in what is believed to have become a pattern of detaining opposition leaders and activists after #KitaLawan. The Parti Islam Se-Malaysia (PAS) politician was picked up at his home at 3.20am, fellow party leader Dzulkefly Ahmad said.

Hours after the rally ended on Saturday, #KitaLawan secretariat member and Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR) organising secretary Fariz Musa was arrested under the Sedition Act. The Shah Alam MP was released in the afternoon after the court had denied the police’s request to hold him under remand for investigations, but Mr Fariz is under a two-day remand order.

On Friday night, activist Hishamuddin Rais was allegedly abducted by men in plainclothes on foot to the rally. At 12.20am on Saturday, PAS deputy president Mohamad Sabu was detained by about 10 “armed and masked” policemen as the popular politician arrived at the Seven Star restaurant in Penang. Later in the day, PKR vice-president Chua Tian Chang tweeted that 20 police officers had come to arrest him at the Kampung Batu Muda community hall, where he had just finished a public dialogue.

A total of 14 people have been arrested since Thursday night, when the police declared Saturday’s rally illegal and warned that they would arrest protesters. “I’m not sure why the police put on such costumes when they were arresting figures, such as Mat Sabu or Hishammudin Rais,” said pollster Merdeka Center’s director Ibrahim Suffian. “Perhaps, it is to display to their superiors the seriousness of fulfilling their duties or to intimidate those arrested.”

The police chief is no stranger to controversy. He has earned a reputation for constantly using social media to announce arrests and ask his subordinates to launch investigations into individuals, including opposition politicians and critics of the federal government, over what they said on social media sites or in public.

However, his superiors in Putrajaya have come to his defence, with Deputy Home Minister Wan Junaidi Tuanku Jaafar saying the police chief was merely doing his job. “He is not one-sided ... he is only on the side of the law and is investigating cases and passing them to the Attorney-General,” said the minister. AGENCIES