All for freedom
Salbiah Ahmad
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June 8 is Hari Hak Asasi Mahasiswa (Undergraduates’ Rights Day).
I had nearly forgotten about June 8 until I went to the magistrates’ courts in Jalan Raja to have the bail sum released for one of the ‘ISA 7’.
The date stamped on the savings account for the bail sum of RM2,500 (per accused) was July 19, 2001. This was the date when the seven students were charged under the Police Act for illegal assembly. Under this law, the state may deem a group of three as an illegal assembly.
Magistrate Mohd Khairi Haron acquitted the students of the charge on April 22 this year. While they were charged in 2001, the hearings only began from 2003.
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On June 7, 2005 the interest for RM2,500 stood at RM140.99. I returned the principle sum plus interest to the law firm from which I had borrowed the money.
I remembered the frenzied moment in court when the bail was set and the telephone calls went out to friends and well-wishers to secure the total amount for seven people.
Hari Hak Asasi Mahasiswa (HAM) was born to commemorate this day in 2001 when some 500 university students mostly from the Klang valley staged a peaceful assembly near the National Mosque in Kuala Lumpur to protest the Internal Security Act (ISA).
Some of those charged were marshals at the peaceful protest against an unpopular law next to the Mahathir-amended University and University Colleges Act (UUCA), were arrested. According to eyewitnesses, the students were arrested at the point of dispersal.
They subsequently spent the night of June 8 tortured by police in the lock-up at Jalan Tun HS Lee police station. The students lodged a complaint and submitted a memorandum to Suhakam on June 23 that year. Their complaints of torture went dead.
In July 2000, two student leaders, Fuad Mohd of Universiti Malaya (UM) and Khairul Anwar (Institut Kemahiran Mara) were arrested “for questioning”, after a fire gutted UM’s Dewan Tunku Cancelor. The fire was subsequently found to be due to faulty wiring.
Fuad has refused to share his experiences while in detention. Khairul was tortured in police detention with electrocution. After his release, he was constantly monitored by police through telephone calls.
‘Immediate’ resumption
I do not recall the students being invited by the Royal police commission to give evidence of police brutality and intimidation since the 1998 reformasi street protests which erupted after the sacking of the deputy prime minister Anwar Ibrahim.
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All seven were suspended from their studies. Their further memoranda to Suhakam on the same and appeals to the education ministryfell on deaf ears.
The executive arm presiding over local universities, posited in the person of the education minister who was then Musa Mohamad, assured reinstatement if they apologised.
He gave a further assurance that if the court found the students innocent, then they would be allowed to resume their studies “immediately”. Musa’s take on his near-absolute powers, despite the tedious UUCA provisions on student discipline and appeals procedure (which is even not often understood by university disciplinary authorities), shows the vast discretionary powers of the minister and his minions.
No decision of the minister or his officers or a university disciplinary authority has been challenged under the high court’s powers of judicial review.
Malaysiakini reported on June 7 that Helman Sanuddin’s application to resume his studies in Universiti Teknologi Mara (UiTM), was rejected last week. UiTM deputy vice-chancellor Prof Dr Nasuddin Othman in his letter to Helman stated inter alia that as Helman’s application “has been delayed for almost four years”, it is now “not approved”. Surely this 28-year-old has a legitimate expectation under principles of administrative law, to be reinstated?
For most of the ISA 7, a reinstatement would mean that their family would finally have a first child to graduate from university. Rafzan Ramli, one of the seven acquitted, tells me that his mother shed quiet tears thinking that she will not be able to see her son graduate from UiTM.
The ISA 7 is a section of young Malays, like the average Joe and Jane, with no family political connections. They are not well-heeled and you might not probably find them amassing the fashionable up-market coffee bars, or hosting private birthday bashes at Zouk.
Rights across the board
Political patronage is occasionally useful, but we need more rights across the board for every Helman, Rafzan, Muthu, Meena, Ah Chai and the crowd - which the UUCA does not do, that is, provide a minimum standard of protection of the rights of students especially to speech, association and assembly.
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Abdullah Ahmad Badawi’s son-in-law, Khairy Jamaluddin (photo), never had much to do through the UUCA as he was one of NEP’s blue-eyed sons and had the fortune to be trained away from home. In the style of Musa Mohamad, he had opined that students should be allowed to join some Umno-in-campus set up with permission of university authorities. Period.
Everything is about Umno. Why have an Umno university when every campus has been encouraged to be Umno-oriented anyway? What this means in essence is the castration of university autonomy and independence since the draconian amendments were made by Mahathir as education minister to the UUCA after the 1974 student uprising.
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The recent Universiti Malaya tunjuk pantat (expression by courtesy of an aunt, meaning ‘turning one’s back’) incident where it refused leave to Dr Edmund Terrence Gomez (photo) is yet another blow to academic freedom. We had already “lost” KS Jomo the year before to the National University of Singapore, before he was offered his current United Nations posting.
Umno should be happy to know that beleaguered students during reformasi could not even enlist the help of their in-campus law lecturers in preparing the defences to their disciplinary actions and appeals. Neutered and castrated for unity and harmony.
Piagam Mahasiswa?
Once upon a time when hope was still in the air, lecturers campaigned for a University Charter in response to the amended UUCA. That was in 1978.
That is now history but that history is not written for our students to remember the past struggles against campus and national authoritarianism. Some of the active campaigners have retired, some others I suppose have just grown tired. They must be in the mid-50s.
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Anwar, of course, missed his chance in reforming the UUCA in 1990 when he was made education minister. This was despite a memorandum, I suspect from his former student colleagues from the 1974 student uprising.
It would be refreshing if the Umno types would move from getting student votes for Umno to reforming the UUCA. But this may not happen in a long while or never because there has been no indication of a change in mindset at all.
I would still bank my hopes on the warga kampus, mainly students as the primary stakeholders and the beneficiaries of our higher education to take the lead where the 1978 and 1980 academia-led campaigns to reform UUCA have failed or suspended.
Perhaps we might hear of a Piagam Mahasiswa (Students’ Charter) in due course?
