Lawyers group: Stop lodging police reports against Dr M critics
Lawyers for Liberty executive director Eric Paulsen says new government must be allowed to focus on its work instead of wasting resources investigating police reports against critics.
(FMT) – Lawyers for Liberty today urged supporters of Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad against rushing to make police reports over offensive statements against him on social media.
Describing such reports as “frivolous”, its executive director Eric Paulsen said they were a throwback to similar practices employed by the previous Barisan Nasional government and its supporters to protect the image of their leaders and silence criticism against them.
“In line with the change of government, ushering in a new era of democracy and reform, there must also be a change in the political atmosphere, and people from all political divides must be more accepting of differing and even controversial views.”
He said it was important for supporters of the new government and politicians to exercise restraint and “not trivialise the act of lodging police reports against those exercising their right to criticise or even insult government and political leaders”.
He added: “Unless these social media comments threaten violence or incite public disorder, they are protected under freedom of speech, no matter how uncivil or crude they may be.”
Paulsen said the new government, which was “in the midst of recalibrating a new democratic Malaysia”, and state institutions, must be allowed to focus on their work instead of wasting resources investigating such reports.
“We fully expect PDRM (the police) and MCMC (Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission) to summarily dismiss such frivolous reports and to begin advising the public to be more objective when lodging reports of such nature.”
He also said people expected the new government to be more open and amenable to public criticism, including perceived insults, as this was the norm in genuine democracies. He added that this was to be expected because of the office they held.
