The Bar Council wants the BN government, especially Home Minister Hishammuddin Hussein, to drop his “siege mentality” about allegations of police brutality during last Saturday’s Bersih 2.0 rally.

NONEIts president, Lim Lim Chee Wee (left), said Hishammuddin should free himself from the mindset of ‘We can do no wrong, we have done no wrong’ over the allegations of police brutality and threaten to come down hard on the media that reported the allegations.

“Instead of saying that, the correct mindset and attitude should be ‘We know your concerns, some of the allegations that have been made, we’ll conduct internal if not independent investigation into all that has happened and we want to see how to improve ourselves’.

“That should be the attitude that the home minister should adopt,” he said during a press conference at the Bar Council office in Kuala Lumpur today.

Yesterday, Hishammuddin had warned that action would be taken against those whose reports on police brutality and misconduct during the rally were found to be untrue, and that this includes the media.

Lim commented that the “us versus them” mindset of police during the rally also needs to be changed.

“The police are there to protect us, to enable us to exercise our freedom of assembly. They are not there to oppress our exercise of freedom of assembly.”

The press conference was called to present the findings of the observation report compiled by some 100 Bar Council observers deployed to monitor Saturday’s rally.

The report made three recommendations to the government:

  • Uphold the constitutional right of Malaysians to assemble without a need for police permits, by amending the Police Act consistent with the recommendations of the Human Rights Commission of Malaysia (Suhakam) report on Freedom of Assembly issued in 2002.
  • The police and FRU to implement international standards as guidelines for their personnel on the use of force and firearms in relation to assembly, consistent with the recommendations of the Report of the Suhakam Public Inquiry into the incident at KLCC on May 28, 2006.
  • A thorough internal investigation by the police into allegations of aggression and undue force, as well as a comprehensive and independent investigation by Suhakam, by way of an inquiry of its own motion.

The report concluded that the rally had demonstrated that the people of Malaysia are mature and peace-loving when championing a cause they believe in.

“Most importantly, we witnessed that people from a wide variety of backgrounds across Malaysia participated in this rally, without any conflict.

“This is contrary to the fear of possible racial disharmony or riots expressed by certain irresponsible public figures,” the report says.

Lim then added that the rally also had buried the ‘bogeyman’ of the May 13 racial clash.

“Malaysians have moved far away from 1969. The bogeyman of 1969 has been buried a long time ago.”

Lim revealed that he will submit the report to the inspector-general of police Ismail Omar, who had agreed to meet the Bar Council’s office-bearers.

The Bar Council is also willing to assist in the police internal investigations, added Lim.

The Bar Council’s full observation report on the Bersih 2.0 rally can be accessed here.