Dzaiddin Commission of Inquiry should reconvene public hearings on who took the videoclip and why police withheld info about nationality of victim for 20 days from PM, DPM, Parliament and Chinese government.

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Media Statement

by Lim Kit Siang  
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(Petaling Jaya, Sunday): DAP MP for Seputeh Teresa Kok is the co-ordinator of the Parliamentary Roundtable on Squatgate Scandal on police human rights violations of detainees in custody to be held  in Parliament House, Committee Room One,  on Tuesday at 10.30 am.

I will propose that the Parliamentary Roundtable call on the Dzaiddin Commission of Inquiry to re-open its public hearings as it seems to have ended its public proceedings in a rather slipshod manner, without giving proper and adequate consideration to its fourth term of reference, viz to scrutinize the police’s standard operating procedure or rules pertaining to body searches in the arrest and detention of a person, and to make its recommendations.

I agree with the Bar Council President Yeo Yang Poh that the Commission of Inquiry should have heard more witnesses as its task is not only to investigate the video clip but also listen to more evidence in order to investigate the strip-search procedure in the past years.

There are other aspects which the Commission of Inquiry should reconvene publicly to adduce more testimony, particularly:

• The identity of the person who filmed the Malay woman doing squats in the nude in the Petaling Jaya police lock-up; and

• The identity and motive of the policeman who gave a memory card to a mobile phone technician last October and asked him to transfer it to a laptop.

Police have said that they had conducted intensive investigations and the Police investigating officer should be subpoenaed by the Commission of Inquiry to testify  on the outcome of police investigations into these two matters.

Another aspect the Commission of Inquiry should probe is why the police and the Deputy Internal Security Minister, Datuk Noh Omar had withheld  from the Prime Minister, Deputy Prime Minister, Parliament, the Chinese Government and the Malaysian public for 20 days  from Nov. 24 to December 13 the vital information that the woman victim of the naked earsquat videoclip was a local Malay woman and not a Chinese national, and what punitive action should be taken against the officers and Noh Omar for such gross misconduct.

(18/12/2005)