An Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) mission will be arriving in Malaysian on May 18 to investigate a spate of arrests and charges under the Sedition Act involving opposition parliamentarians.

“We hope the government will give full cooperation to the IPU to enable a professional investigation, so that they can find out what is happening.

“To me, these (arrests) are a clear infringement that cannot be accepted by the international community, and have already been condemned by the IPU,” said Tanjung MP Ng Wei Aik ( right ).

He said this at a press conference today after meeting IPU secretary-general Martin Chungong at the office of the Opposition Leader in the parliament building today.

He added that Chungong had already met the Dewan Rakyat speaker and the Senate president this morning, before meeting a group of Pakatan Rakyat MPs including Ng.

The meeting followed an IPU resolution in Hanoi last week to send a delegation to investigate the cases of eight Pakatan MPs.

These are: Padang Serai MP N Surendran (charged under the Sedition Act), Seputeh MP Teresa Kok (charged under the Sedition Act), Shah Alam MP Khalid Samad (charged under the Sedition Act), Pandan MP Mohd Rafizi Ramli (investigated under the Sedition Act), Batu MP Chua Tian Chang ( left ) (charged under the Sedition Act), Lembah Pantai MP Nurul Izzah Anwar (charged under the Sedition Act), Rasah MP Teo Kok Siong (investigated under the Peaceful Assembly Act), and Ng himself, who is being investigated under the Sedition Act.

The delegation comprising of members of IPU’s Committee on the Human Rights of Parliamentarians (CHRP) will is expected to spend a week in Malaysia, and would be meeting MPs from both sides of the political divide.

 

The delegation will also be on a fact-finding mission on the upcoming amendments to the Sedition Act announced by Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak last year.

 

Meanwhile, Surendran ( right ) told the same press conference that it is an embarrassment that Malaysia has appeared in IPU’s list of countries of concern, whereas Malaysia was not present in the list before.

 

“This is a situation that has been brought by the abuse of the Sedition Act.

"Here we now if you look at the list, we are in the same category as some of those countries in Africa, Maldives, Israel, and other countries like that…

 

“This is an international embarrassment. It shouldn’t have happened. The Sedition Act cannot be used like this in order to silence members of parliament.

"The government must back off from the usage of the Sedition Act and repeal the Sedition Act immediately,” he said.