Mustapha should direct full investigation into Monday’s UPM incident of assault and unruly conduct involving  UPM student council leaders against five “anti-establishment” students

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Media Statement
by Lim Kit Siang  
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(Parliament, Thursday) What is happening to Universiti Putra Malaysia?   

Is it  on the runway towards academic excellence and world-class status, to be included in the list of world’s best 200 or 500 universities in the very near future?

Recent media reports about UPM are not very encouraging, not only about the Ethnic Relations guidebook debacle but the spate of unruly conduct of UPM student council leaders, including assault, against five “anti-establishment” students on Monday which had been caught on a videoclip and are being circulated on the web.

Students Progressive Front (SPF) member Wong Chai Yi  has claimed she was shoved so hard by members of the university student council, that she fell.
 

This is an account in the Malaysiakini report yesterday:

She said the incident occurred on Monday when five members of her group set up a ‘help counter’ at 6.30pm at a hostel to provide information on their activities to new undergraduates and offer advice to those with problems.

Wong told malaysiakini that about 40 students - led by the council president - surrounded her group members and scolded them harshly for setting up the counter when the SPF is not a registered group.

“He told us to leave within 10 minutes, saying he did not want any trouble, but we refused to go. They surrounded us and removed our brochures, tables and chairs, and our belongings, to force us to leave,” she said.

“While doing so, they shouted at us and pushed us out of the way. A security guard witnessed this - instead of stopping them, he joined them in pushing us.”
 

This had been the second such incident in the campus involving SPF and UPM.

The Higher Education Minister, Datuk Mustapha Mohamad should give his personal attention to such disgraceful episodes in the UPM involving the student council president and other exco members. 

He should not only cause a full investigation to be conducted, but make it clear that there is academic freedom for students to disagree with the “establishment” students’ union and that any differences should be thrashed out rationally through discussion and debate and not through any mob conduct.

Mustapha should realize that these disgraceful episodes cannot be “covered up” or ignored, as more and more people who come to see the video clip of the shocking conduct of the UPM student council exco members would demand to know what the Higher Education Ministry is doing about them.

(20/07/2006)