Wednesday November 23, 2005
Cop's legal action against student will create fear
BY LEONG SHEN-LI AND CECIL FUNG
KUALA LUMPUR: The Human Rights Caucus, a parliamentarian group, has criticised the move by a policeman to sue a student for defamation over a report she lodged with the Anti-Corruption Agency.
“This is totally against public policy,” Caucus chairman and Minister in the Prime Minister's Department Datuk Seri Nazri Aziz told a press conference at the Parliament lobby yesterday.
The caucus is a loose group formed in May last year from among Barisan Nasional and Opposition parliamentarians to take up human rights issues.
Its deputy chairman is Lim Kit Siang, the Opposition Leader.
Nazri said the move by the policeman to sue would create fear in people who decide to complain against the police.
The student Foo Sze Kuan, 18, turned up in Parliament yesterday to explain her predicament to the Caucus.
Foo was stopped at a police roadblock for driving a car with an expired road tax and without a “P” plate on June 13 last year.
Facing five policemen, she claimed she felt intimidated and paid up when asked for a bribe.
The next day, upon her parents’ advice, Foo lodged a complaint with the ACA.
The ACA subsequently took up a case against one of the policemen. On Oct 11 this year, the court acquitted him on technical grounds.
The policeman, in the meantime, filed a suit against the student in March this year.
Nazri said the fact that the case was filed before the corruption case was completed suggested that the policeman was “threatening the complainant to withdraw her case”.
Furthermore, he said, as the ACA had brought the case against the policeman, he should have sued the agency and not the student.
Both the Bar Council and Transparency International said the move by the policeman would deter those with genuine allegations from coming forward.
While acknowledging that not every report would end up with enough evidence to establish a case, Bar Council president Yeo Yang Poh stressed that it did not mean there was no basis for the allegations.
“Those who come forward to report an offence for reasons of public policy should be protected from such civil suits,” he said.
Transparency International Malaysia president Datuk Param Cumaraswamy said just because the policeman was acquitted, it did not mean the person who lodged a report against him could be sued for defamation.
“Police officers should be careful not to file suits of this kind unless the report against them was made in mala fide (bad faith). If there was mala fide in this case, the ACA investigations would have uncovered it,” he added.
Param said that it was because of cases like this that a Whistleblowers’ Act was needed.
“We have been asking for a Whistleblowers’ Act for a long time because very often, we find the whistleblowers themselves being prosecuted.”
http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp...nation&focus=1
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Originally Posted by Jaytea
not in this life time...
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