Explain violent campus arrests, PKR, DAP tell Hishammuddin, IGP

By Lisa J. Ariffin

January 01, 2012

KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 1 — Home Minister Datuk Seri Hishammudin Hussein and the Inspector-General of Police (IGP) Tan Sri Ismail Omar must justify the violent police action in arresting student activists in Perak, PKR and DAP demanded today.

The two opposition parties condemned the police for their heavy-handed action in dispersing some 60 undergraduates who held a peaceful sit-down demonstration in support of a fellow student activist and demanded academic freedom at the Sultan Idris University of Education (UPSI) in Tanjung Malim shortly after midnight.

“The police action today is in drastic contrast to their respectful actions during the student march to PWTC that resulted in the unfurling of the academic freedom banner,” PKR communications chief Nik Nazmi Nik Ahmad said in a statement.

“This violence makes a mockery of the Prime Minister’s Malaysia Day speech and so-called Transformation Agenda,” he added.

The opposition party claimed the police, including two Special Branch (SB) officers were heavily present in campus and took violent actions against what they said were 100 students instead of the 60 estimated by lawyer Fadiah Najwa Fikri, when the undergraduates refused to disperse as ordered.

Up to 17 students were arrested in the 2,30am incident and taken to the Tanjung Malim police station.

One student, Muhammad Safwan Anang, was allegedly beaten up, punched and kicked until he lost consciousness.

The president of student reform movement Gerakan Menuntut Kebebasan Akademik (Bebas) is warded at the Slim River Hospital with a broken cheekbone, PKR said in its statement.

The party claimed he had been assaulted by eight policemen and SB officers.

Tanjung Malim police confirmed with The Malaysian Insider they arrested 17 students in the incident but declined to furnish further details as they are still investigating the case.

DAP Youth secretary, Ng Wei Aik, slammed the police for their “extreme strength” to disperse the undergraduates whom he said had merely gathered in solidarity with Adam Adli Abdul Halim, a 21-year UPSI student who has come under attack for purportedly lowering a banner bearing the likeness of Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak outside Umno’s headquarters in the national capital last month.

Ng noted the undergraduates from various other public universities were pushing for UPSI to drop its case against Adam Adli. “The undergraduates’ demand for academic freedom through a peaceful assembly is something pure and genuine. The violence police action last night appears to b a form of interference in the autonomy of the campus and has polluted UPSI’s sanctity as an academic institution,” he said in a media statement.

Ng, who is also Komtar assemblyman said, “DAPSY demands the police take full responsibility for their extreme violence towards the undergraduates involved and that legal action be taken against those who acted in breach of the law face.”