Top 10 Reasons to Oppose the Peaceful Assembly Act

Recently BN (real hypocrites) legislated a new bill in parliament called the Peaceful Assembly Bill 2011 (don't let the name fool you) in the most hastily way possible. What can I say about this bill ? Well it's STUPID, UNDEMOCRATIC, REPRESSIVE, & most importantly...UNCONSTITUTIONAL !

What kind of government ceates a law which goes against the Federal Constitution by restricting the rights of the people (their Constitutional right need I remind you) to public demonstration & banning street protests ? It's as good as telling the people to shut up.

How is it allowed ?!...I'll tell you, only with a power-crazy & desperate party like BN can nonsense like this go down.

Even with so much negative criticism of this bill from the Bar Council, the public, foreign press and even the United Nations, BN still chose to turn a deaf ear & ran with it. Shameless bastards. Once again, people first ? 

Below are 10 solid reasons to oppose this bullshit.

1. The right for people to assemble is the right to freedom of speech and expression. If you limit and restrict that right, then you are denying democracy.

2. Myanmar just passed a law to allow public protests. I repeat — Myanmar just passed a law to allow public protests.

3. Prime Minister Najib Razak says this new law will be “revolutionary.” Sure ! It’s as revolutionary as Iran’s Revolutionary Guards !

4. MITI Deputy Minister Mukhriz Mahathir says that street protests portray the country as having bad governance. Great ! Bar the protests instead of addressing the bad governance !

5. Aside from the rules that are obviously stated in the Act, everything else falls under the “discretion” of the police or the home minister. How conveniently ambiguous.

6. The peaceful assembly law is unconstitutional since protests are a form of expression.

7. The Act disallows anyone under 21 years of age from participating in assemblies. I didn’t know young people had less human rights.

8. The Peaceful Assembly Act is actually even more restrictive than the current law, which goes against what was promised by the prime minister in September during his Malaysia Day speech.

9. One of the reasons of protests and demonstrations is to create disruption (but peaceful disruption because BN is selectively deaf) in order to bring attention to issues. Disallowing this disruption goes against the principle of protests and demonstrations.

10. As a member of the Malaysian rakyat, I was not asked my opinion about the Bill. Were you ?

Source: Lim Kit Siang