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A senior lecturer with Universiti Malaya is the latest to be hauled up by police over an article criticising them over a series of arrests following the #KitaLawan rally recently.
Dr Khoo Ying Hooi, a columnist with The Malaysian Insider, is being investigated under Section 500 of the Penal Code for defamation over the article, "Who owns the police?", which appeared in the news portal on March 16.
In the article, Khoo had said that the police have come under criticism for continuing to use Section 9(5) of the Peaceful Assembly Act (PAA), a law that the Court of Appeal have deemed unconstitutional to arrest participants of #KitaLawan rallies.
She had also questioned the selectivity of police intervention and had also used examples of police reaction in protests in the United States in the commentary.
Khoo told The Malaysian Insider that she was questioned for 1½ hours by two police officers at her office yesterday. She was accompanied by her lawyer Puspawati Rosman.
This came about after Inspector-General of Police Tan Sri Khalid Abu Bakar tweeted (pic) about her commentary on the same day it appeared, saying: "KYH's article in MI is misleading the readers, When did @PDRMsia allow the 7th street protest?"
"They (the police) claimed that they had not allowed the protest," she said, referring to the #KitaLawan rally, which took place on March 7 in Kuala Lumpur.
Khoo was referring to the fact that although police had not disrupted the rally, they, however, began hauling up the organisers, who included PKR leaders as well as activists, from the next day onwards.
To date, 11 people have been arrested over the March 7 rally.
Commenting on her statement she gave police, Khoo said the main thing they wanted to know was the source of her story.
"What I told them was that part of my job as an academic is to research and continue writing.
"They also wanted to know if I was referring to the Malaysian police in my article," she said, adding that her core area of research was on human rights, including on demonstrations and protests.
"But I am more concerned about the academic freedom that is being curtailed in this instance. It is difficult for us academics to do our jobs when we have to be so careful about each word we write," she said.
As protests and demonstrations have somewhat become regular in Malaysia, Khoo said she even decided to base her PhD research on it as well, basing it on what she found in journals, books and academic materials.
"It is an interesting area. It will eventually benefit nation-building to find out why these protests happen and so on. This is part of my academic side."
Khoo also noted that in her five years of being a columnist for The Malaysian Insider, she had never been censured by the UM administration, although she has often been critical of the government.
"UM is a research university. They understand the need for research and writing… that I have to keep on writing, so they have never said anything about my writings.”
Khoo said the job of educators was now being curtailed with the persistent crackdown on academic freedom.
"The police pinpointed my language in the article. They have to understand that we can't be writing everything that is positive.
"We have to question. If we academics are not allowed to question at all, how do we carry on our research?"
Khoo is the second academic from Malaysia's oldest university to have been investigated by police after Dr Azmi Sharom, a UM law lecturer, who was charged with sedition last year over his comments in a news article titled “Take Perak crisis route for speedy end to Selangor impasse, Pakatan told”.
For his comments to a news portal on the Perak crisis, the 45-year-old academic faces a principle charge of uttering a seditious statement, an offence under Section 4(1)(b) of the Sedition Act 1948.
He was also slapped with an alternative charge of publishing the seditious statement, an offence under Section 4(1)(c) of the same law.
Azmi filed the application, saying that Section 4 was unconstitutional and violated Article 10 of the Federal Constitution, which guarantees freedom of speech. – March 27, 2015.
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