Media Statement
Where to Lodge a Police Report? In Cyber Space?
Aliran is deeply disturbed to learn that someone masquerading as Dr Patricia Martinez, a well known Universiti Malaya specialist in Arabic and Islamic studies, had circulated via the Internet an inflammatory article entitled "Why Malaysia is already a Christian State".
Dr Martinez, who has just chaired a public forum on the issue of an 'Islamic state' in Malaysia, believes that the preposterous attribution of that fake article to her authorship was not a prank. She considers it to be the highly mischievous act of an utterly irresponsible impostor which could jeopardise the state of ethnic relations and inter-religious understanding in our country.
On her part, Dr Martinez acted responsibly by attempting to alert the police to the potentially dangerous article that was posted in her name. In accordance with law and acting out of a sense of civic responsibility, Dr Martinez went to a police station to lodge a report.
However, we are given to understand, the police refused to take her report - which resulted in Dr Martinez's wasting a day. Finally, she was instructed to file a report in Port Dickson because that was where she had first read the Internet attack on her reputation.
We believe that Dr Martinez's predicament deserved an immediate response from the police so as to defuse any tension or misunderstanding that might arise from that fabrication. Hence we find it incredulous that the police officers Dr Martinez first met should have given her the run around instead of treating the matter with a sense of urgency.
In this day and age when the government ceaselessly urges citizens to become computer-literate and Internet-savvy, are we to understand that a citizen responding to a piece of potentially dangerous cyber-fabrication cannot be permitted to lodge a report at any police station?
Does it make any sense in this day and age of borderless cybercommunication that Dr Martinez's report could not be accepted by a police station in Kuala Lumpur? On what basis in law or understanding of the state of communications technology today did police officers in Kuala Lumpur insist that Dr Martinez had to travel all the way to PD to make her report?
In the public interest, and so as not to discourage public-spirited citizens from alerting the police when they are aware of something that is wrong and threatening the peace of this country, Aliran calls on the Inspector General of Police (IGP), Tan Sri Norian Mai, to clarify the following:
Aliran Executive Committee
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