police let the mob rule

this is in continuation to my post below. i was quite surprised (but pleasantly) that our opposition leader, lim kit siang, in his blog, had put forward the exact question that was in my mind, when he asked:

why did the police fail to uphold the human rights and constitutional freedoms of malaysians in allowing a mob to disrupt the penang forum yesterday?

exactly! why should the police give in to the mob and stop the forum? their excuse was that the mob might turn voilent and barge in the conference room where the forum was going on, and that might be nasty incidents happening. oh, excuse me… but what are the police there for? to control the mob, right? to make sure that the mob does not turn voilent, right? so if they just do their duty, then the forum should be allowed to go on.

kit (as he is fondly known in the blogosphere) also asked a very important, thought-provoking question:

will the police in future refuse to issue police permits for such forums to reaffirm the secular basis and supremacy of the federal constitution on the ground that it would attract mob responses – allowing mob rule to prevail over the rule of law in malaysia?

indeed. that is quite a scary thought.

kit, then ended his post by calling on the police to apologise to the organisers of the forum and all malaysians. go and read his post in full and see for yourself.

in the meantime, you might be interested to read the blog of fathi aris omar, who dropped a comment in my previous post. it is in bahasa malaysia though, but there are lots of other links fathi provided in that post that might be interesting.

speaking of links, howsy of the sensintrovert too had a good post on this issue, with lots of links and good information, e.g. showing us what is the article 11 about. he especially touched on an ‘imbecile media’ that highlight the forum as a ‘religious forum’.

UPDATED:
minister in the PM dept., nazri cries “stupid!”
write-up from anil netto, in IPS news
syed nazri’s of NST ‘deal with debate in a civil manner‘