She describing the act of detaining minors under the RRA as “an outright abuse of power”.“This is an outright abuse of power by the deputy home minister who has been blindly signing the detention orders.
“Worse still, these detainees (minors) will most likely face traumatic experiences and difficulties in their new restricted areas as their rights to move freely, to education and more importantly, their rights to live a better life with their families have been deprived,” she said.Jiegandran, who turned 18 four days ago, was detained under the EO on Dec 21, 2009, along with three others for allegedly being in possession of a stolen vehicle as well as for being a public nuisance.The detention order expired on March 9, but the Home Ministry then slapped a restricted residence order on them on March 11 and they have since been moved to Linggi in Negri Sembilan from their hometown in Semenyih, Selangor.
Jiegandran is now seeking, among other things, for the order to be stripped off due to lack of evidence.
It is common knowledge that the EO is used arbitrarily to detain or restrict the movement of suspected gang members and criminals who the police find difficult to bring to justice due to lack of evidence.Like the Internal Security Act (ISA), the EO also allows the detaining of people without a trial.According to an NGO activist, the only difference between the two is that the ISA is top down - a minister orders detention of someone seen as a threat to the government - whereas the EO is bottom up, and left to police discretion.
Suaram's statement added that the EO can be deemed “ to be ten times worse than the infamous ISA which allows for arbitrary detention.”
Source : http://www.freemalaysiatoday.com/
No comments:
Post a Comment