Source: The Malay Mail Online

President of the Malaysian Bar Steven Thiru – Picture by MMO/Saw Siow Feng
Also calling for an IPCMC to be set up is Malaysian Bar president Steven Thiru, who in his proposed motion noted that questionable deaths in police custody, unlawful fatal police shooting and police brutality on detainees continue to occur.
KUALA LUMPUR, March 17 — Police officers who dishonestly seek to hide their colleagues’ torture and murder of detainees should be prosecuted instead of being protected or disciplined internally, lawyers have proposed.
In a proposed motion for the Malaysian Bar’s 71st annual general meeting (AGM) to be held tomorrow, the lawyers said prosecuting these alleged “bad” officers was necessary to both protect the police’s integrity and to serve as deterrent to other police officers, enforcement officers and prosecutors.
They noted that those involved in the country’s administration of justice — such as the police, enforcement officers, prosecutors, judges — are expected to have “honesty and integrity”.
“As such, when the police has been found to be wrongly and dishonestly tampering with evidence and records, and/or involved in actions of ‘cover-ups’, these actions cannot be tolerated.
“The failure of police officers to report wrongdoings and/or crimes of their fellow police officers also cannot be tolerated,” the March 10 motion proposed jointly by Malaysian Bar members Charles Hector Fernandez, Francis Pereira, Shanmugam Ramasamy.
“There is a need to weed out such ‘bad’ and/or dishonest police officers, and it is also important that such police officers not be ‘protected’, but be charged and tried in a court of law,” they added. Read more →