NGO lodged police report against â€˜low-qualityâ€™ NGOs

ARCHIVES 2009

By admin-s On Apr 25, 2009

PUTRAKAYA – A police report has been lodged at the police station here by an NGO called Coalition Against Low-quality NGOs (CALN). Its president, Mr. Naji Abdull bin Mahat, alleged in the report that the NGOs concerned have been lodging unnecessary and potentially false police reports, at the expense of the nation’s interests.

Top on the list of the NGOs complained by Naji is Gagasan Melayu Perak (GMP), which lodged a police report by mistake when it alleged that Malaysiakini had published a report that was insulting the Perak Sultan. It turned out that the said article never appeared on Malaysiakini but on two other sites, Malaysian Insider and Malaysia Today. Naji told reporters at the police station that such grave mistake by GMP indicated a very malicious hidden agenda on the part of GMP to lodge the report. Naji said, “If you can’t even tell Malaysiakini from Malaysia Today, it means you probably have not even run a browser in your whole life. So what have you to complain about?”

The second party being complained against is IRIMM secretary-general M Thajudeen, who today lodged a police report against commentators on Malaysia Today. Thajudeen has described the commentators as “uneducated beasts” and commented that “The blog owner’s licence should be revoked, while the commentators should be exiled from the country. They are not Malaysians”.

Blog owners do not need a license to operate in Malaysia. “The fact that Thajudeen talked about revoking license for the blog means he is the one who is uneducated. Could they be the ones who actually planted the comments to facilitate their lodging the police reports?” said an angry Naji. “He is not fit to make such comment against the commentators. Perhaps he should be the one to be exiled. But no, we treat all Malaysians as brothers and sisters, and no one should be exiled.”

In a slight twist to the police report, CALN alleged that by lodging such reports, those NGOs are potentially abusing public resources (the police) for selfish and potentially malicious political purposes. “We want the police to investigate them. If handling and investigating their silly complaints means loss of police productivity, isn’t it robbing the people of resources to fight crime on the street? Isn’t this abuse of public resources?”