Day: December 14, 2017

Locked out of people’s housing

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Source: The Star

CHA N BOON KAI/The Star

No place to go: Affected tenants showing their eviction notices and appeal letters to Ooi (second left). — CHA N BOON KAI/The Star

GEORGE TOWN: Scores of residents are now staring at a bleak future after being locked out from their homes at the People’s Housing Projects (PPR) in Rifle Range.

Although they have been given a lifeline until today, many of them fear they have no other places to go after being served with an eviction notice.

Indian national Jamrahth Nisha Hajah Mydeen, 28, said she had been staying at the unit with her mother and three siblings for more than 16 years.

“Where should we go now? We don’t have relatives and only one of my three siblings is working now.

“We cannot afford to rent another place,” she said during a press conference organised by Gerakan Kebun Bunga coordinator Ooi Zhi Yi at the block yesterday. Read more →

End harassment against Lena Hendry, rights group urges

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Source: Free Malaysia Today

PETALING JAYA: A human rights group today voiced hope that the public prosecutor’s agreement to withdraw its appeal to the conviction of Lena Hendry would signal an end to the “harassment and intimidation” against the activist.

Insisting that Lena should never have been charged in the first place, Pusat Komas said she had been subjected to a long process of being arrested, detained, charged and convicted under Section 6 (1)(b) of the Film Censorship Act.

This was after the activist aired an uncensored documentary on the Sri Lankan civil war at the Kuala Lumpur and Selangor Chinese Chamber of Commerce Hall in 2013.

She was fined RM10,000 on March 22 after the Magistrate’s Court found her guilty of the offence.

She paid the fine and was initially freed from the film censorship charge at the end of the prosecution’s case last March.

However, the High Court overturned the acquittal and ordered Lena to enter defence for her charge. Read more →

Ambiga questions EC’s haste on local enquiries, says GE not valid reason

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Source: The Malay Mail Online

Datuk Ambiga Sreenevasan, who is representing the Selangor government, says the EC has not given ‘concrete reasons’ for the apparent urgency. ― Picture by Choo Choy May

PUTRAJAYA, Dec 14 — Lawyer Datuk Ambiga Sreenevasan today asked why the Election Commission (EC) must rush for local enquiries in Selangor when it still has months to do so, arguing it need not complete its redelineation before the general election.

The EC must then show the need for an urgent court hearing for its bid for permission to carry out local enquiries in the state amid an ongoing lawsuit against its redelineation exercise, Ambiga added.

“What is the urgency, because they have until September 2018 to complete the redelineation exercise.

“What is the reason for this haste that they cannot wait until January? It’s December now, what local enquiries are held when others are on holiday? They can wait until January,” she told the Court of Appeal today.

Ambiga, who was representing the Selangor government, said the EC has not given “concrete reasons” for the apparent urgency. Read more →

Selangor loses bid to remove judge in EC challenge, but wins more time

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Source: The Malay Mail Online

Palace of Justice — File picture by Yusof Mat Isa

PUTRAJAYA, Dec 14 — The Selangor government failed to get a judge to recuse himself from its lawsuit against the Election Commission (EC) today, but obtained an adjournment of the hearing on the agency’s bid to proceed with local enquiries in the state.

Tan Sri Idrus Harun, who chaired the Court of Appeal panel hearing the matter this morning, dismissed the Selangor government’s application today for his recusal over an alleged “real danger of bias”.

“After considering the application, I find no merits to this application,” he said today without elaborating.

Idrus then allowed the state government’s application to postpone the hearing initially fixed for today, to give it time to respond to an EC notice that was only served to the state government two days ago.

“So as regards the second application, we allow an adjournment to enable the respondent to file an affidavit in reply. The case is therefore adjourned to December 18,” he said. Read more →

Malaysians step up to end deaths behind bars

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Source: The Malay Mail Online

EDICT spokesman M. Visvanathan says it’s not true that only guilty people die in custody. — Picture by Choo Choy May

KUALA LUMPUR, Dec 14 ― Lawyers and activists have banded together to form EDICT, Malaysia’s first-ever group that is solely focused on stopping abuse and deaths in custody.

EDICT spokesman M. Visvanathan said there is currently no specific NGO set up to seek a holistic solution to deaths in custody.

“It’s a very big problem actually. I think nobody should die in custody, we are a country that prides itself in building KLCC, MRT.

“We have developed so far, we have grown as a nation and we have accomplished many things but why is it that we cannot keep people alive in prisons, in detention camps, or in lockups? Why do they die? If they can walk in, surely they can walk out, why do they need to come out on a stretcher dead?” he told Malay Mail in a recent interview. Read more →