TR EMERITUS

By Mimi Lau from South China Morning Post Guangzhou will follow Beijing's lead by establishing a protest zone during next year's Asian Games, though there are fears of a repeat of the fiasco at last year's Olympics when nobody was permitted to use it.An Yaozhen, deputy chief of the Guangzhou Public Security Bureau's operation centre, said the city would designate an area for demonstrators to air their grievances, the Nanfang Daily reported yesterday. "Whoever wants to go, can go," An, who is also deputy security chief for the Games, told representatives of the Guangzhou People's Congress during a meeting on Games security. Three parks in Beijing were designated protest zones last August, but police later revealed that all 77 applications to use them were denied. Authorities were embarrassed when two elderly women went ahead with a protest over land rights. The women - Wu Dianyuan, 79, and Wang Xiuying, 77 - were given suspended one-year sentences of re-education through labour, prompting an international outcry. They won a reprieve less than two weeks after the decision was delivered. The pair had applied for permits to demonstrate in officially designated protests zones during the Games. Another activist, Ji Sizun, who was in his late 50s, travelled to Beijing from Fuijan to seek permission to protest, and made his application on August 8, the day of the opening ceremony. When he returned to check on the progress of his application, he was detained. It was later reported that he had been jailed for three years by a court in Fuzhou for "forging official documents and seals". These cases were among examples cited by human rights groups of the mainland's crackdown on dissent as it hosted the Olympics. Authorities agreed to the protest zones under foreign pressure to allow greater freedom of expression, but police finally decided not to allow any protests during the Olympics. Hu Xingdou, a Beijing-based commentator and professor of economics at the Beijing Institute of Technology, said protests would be allowed at the Asian Games as Guangzhou was more open-minded than Beijing. "This shows the government is willing to protect certain civil rights by letting the public express different opinions. This is a way to measure how rational and mature the government is," he said. "I believe Guangzhou will allow authorised protests". But Tang Jingling, a Guangzhou-based human rights lawyer, was unimpressed. "I just think the whole idea of zoning protests is a downright joke. What kind of protest would that be if demonstrators were confined to a designated area? Even if people are authorised to demonstrate, they won't be real protests," he said. "I've seen many previous requests for demonstrations fall on deaf ears . I can't think of any genuine protestors who would step up." A delegate at the security meeting raised concerns over the targeting of petitioners in anti-terrorism drills. "Why do Guangzhou's anti-terrorism drills always target petitioners claiming their unpaid wages?" Liu Xiaogang, a member of the city's People's Congress and a labour unionist, asked. An said police would be deployed only as a last resort to maintain order during the Games. - SCMP Republished from South China Morning Post on 10 December 2009  Read More →

(Article sent by posted by request of Ms Rachel Zeng) We are very encouraged by the Court of Appeal's grant of hearing and second stay of execution to Yong Vui Kong that was made on 8 Dec 2009. It is a heartening turn of events for us at the SADPC. We congratulate Yong and our co-campaigner M Ravi on their success. Throughout our campaign for Yong, various groups of people came forward to lend their time and expertise. We are grateful to everyone now in close collaboration in our campaigning efforts, as well as those assisting Ravi in his legal work. We wish to thank once again everyone who attended our event at Speakers' Corner last Sunday, 6 December. We were greatly encouraged by the number of people who turned up in support of Yong at such short notice. (Read one report of the event by The Online Citizen here) Your generous donations have gone a long way to provide financial assistance to Yong's family and to help defray campaign costs. Without your contributions, Yong's family could not have afforded filing fees (S$550 for an originating summons) and their stay in Singapore. But our work is far from finished. Yong's life still hangs in the balance and we seek your continued support to save his life. We continue to appeal to the legal community to come forward and work with us. We also extend our call to lawyers dealing with capital offences to approach us so that we may render them any support that they need. Singapore Anti Death Penalty Campaign (SADPC) Our current working email address is [email protected] The group members of the SADPC  includes M Ravi, Seelan Palay, Rachel Zeng, Shafiie, Khalis, Kaixiong and Jarrod Lou and many others.  Read More →

According to Malaysia's leading internet newspaper Malaysiakini, prominent Singaporean law lecturer Kevin Tan Y L was barred by the Malaysian police from speaking at a forum in Petaling Jaya in a public forum organized by Malaysian Chinese online daily Merdeka Review. The other speakers are law professor Shad Saleem Faruqi and disposed Perak menteri besar Mohd Nizar Jamaluddin. Mr Tan graduated with LLB (Hons) from the Faculty of Law of the National University of Singapore in 1986 and subsequently obtained his LLM (Masters of Law) and JSD (Doctor in the Science of Law) at Yale Law School. From 1986 to 2000, he taught at the NUS Law Faculty, specializing in Constitutional and Administrative Law, Law and Government, Law and Society and International Human Rights after which he left to set up his own consultancy. He was supposed to be one of three speakers at the forum titled 'Wither the Constitution: Lessons to be learnt from the Perak crisis'. Merdeka Review said on its website that they were told to apply for clearance from the Malaysian Professional Centre (Ikhtisa) before their foreign guest is allowed to speak at the event. However, when one of its staff went to the Immigration Department headquarters yesterday, they were informed that it would take seven days to process the permit. When interviewed by Merdeka Review, the law lecturer is visibly upset that he was forbidden to speak on technical grounds. He said he had delivered talks in Malaysia several times before without any problems. "If this is the situation, who would want to come and lecture in Malaysia in the future? Maybe they are afraid that my speech would put Malaysia in bad light," he added. The northern Malaysian state of Perak was won by the opposition Pakatan Rakyat coalition in the 2008 elections with a slim majority of only three seats in the state assembly. The Perak's constitutional crisis was triggered in March this year when three Pakatan lawmakers left the coalition and became "Barisan-friendly" independent MPs. As a result, Barisan seized control of the state with the approval of the Sultan of Perak and installed its own candidate Mohamad Zambry as the Mentri Besar. The tactic employed by the Malaysian police is not new. The Singapore government frequently used the police to stop foreigners from speaking on political issues in Singapore on the grounds that they have no right to "interfere" in Singapore politics. Yet, foreigners such as PRs are allowed to write in to the Straits Times Forum to express their support and gratitude to the Singapore government. It is strange that Mr Tan would travel so frequently to speak in Malaysia on constitutional matters and politics when he is virtually unheard of in Singapore. With due respect to Perak, Singapore has a worse "constitutional crisis" at hand if that is the correct term to use. Since independence, the ruling PAP had amended the Singapore constitution countless of times to suit its own partisan interests and to entrench itself in power. The Singapore Law Society is muzzled by an archaic law which prevents them from speaking up on constitutional and legislative matters unless their opinion is specifically sought after by the government. Mr Kevin Tan should devote his time and energy to educate the legal fraternity and ordinary citizens in Singapore on the "constitutional crisis" we are facing instead of poking his nose into the affairs of a neighboring country. After all, as a Singaporean, he should serve his nation first rather than Malaysia. What does he hope to achieve anyway by offering his expert opinion on the Perak's constitutional crisis? Furthermore, the Malaysian Bar Association has a fierce independent streak and dares to challenge the government on constitutional and legislative matters. The Malaysians do not need a Singapore lawyer to speak up for them. Mr Kevin Tan is better off lecturing in Singapore to increase the political awareness of its apathetic citizenry.  Read More →