RESOLUTION OF THE MALAYSIAN BAR FOR THE ABOLITION OF THE DEATH PENALTY
(which was adopted at the 60th AGM of the Malaysian Bar on 18/3/2006)
WHEREAS every human being has the inherent right to life;
WHEREAS Malaysia has hanged at least 358 persons between 1981 and 2005;
WHEREAS about 173 persons are on death row as at December 2005;
WHEREAS :
a) studies conducted throughout the world over the past seventy years have failed to find convincing evidence that capital punishment is a more effective deterrent of crime than long-term imprisonment;
b) studies conducted in Australia show that abolition of the death penalty had no effect on the homicide rate and in Canada there in fact was a sharp decline in the homicide rate after abolition;
c) in the United States over the past twenty years, states with the death penalty in general have had a higher homicide rate than states without the death penalty;
WHEREAS on the other hand the execution of human beings by the State gives an ‘example of barbarity’ to society and legitimizes the taking of human life;
WHEREAS Malaysia lacks safeguards that would ensure a fair trial such as the right to immediate access to a lawyer upon arrest, right to full disclosure of evidence in the possession of the police and prosecution, and has to the extreme prejudice of accused persons loaded a capital crime statute such as the Dangerous Drugs Act 1952 ( which generates the largest number of death sentences annually ) with presumptions of trafficking that compromise the presumption of innocence which is integral to any fair and just criminal justice system;
WHEREAS:
a) it is not possible in any system of human justice to prevent the horrifying possibility of the execution of innocent persons; and
b) the infliction of the death penalty makes wrongful convictions irreversible;
WHEREAS :
a) 122 countries have abolished the death penalty in law or practice as opposed to 74 countries which retain the death penalty;
b) An average of three countries have abolished the death penalty each year over the last decade;
c) the trend worldwide has been for the abolition of the death penalty;
WHEREAS the UN Commission on Human Rights Resolution 2005/59 passed in 2005 calls upon all states to abolish the death penalty and states that the abolition of the death penalty is essential for the protection of the right to life of every human being;
WHEREAS Article 1 of the Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) provides that ‘ No one within the jurisdiction of a State party to the present Optional Protocol shall be executed ’.
WHEREAS the death penalty has no place in any society which values human rights, justice and mercy;
NOW IT IS HEREBY RESOLVED that the Malaysian Bar calls for the:
1) Abolition of the death penalty in Malaysia;
2) An immediate moratorium on all executions pending abolition;
3) Commutation of the sentences of all persons currently on death row;
4) Ratification by Malaysia of the Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR).
Proposers: N.Surendran , Charles Hector, Amer Hamzah Arshad, Sreekant Pillai
* the facts and statistics relied on here are from Professor Roger Hood’s The Death Penalty( A Worldwide Perspective) OUP 2002, Amnesty International and statistics released by the Government of
“Despite the police attempts to torture us, we still manage to gather peacefully as united Indians. We have succeeded, the police have failed,” he told a crowd of nearly 2,000 supporters who clap and cheered whenever he finished a sentence.
Crowds comprising of Indians from all over the country have gathered today in support of 
Like Gandhi, the Hindraf supporters were out to show mass civil disobedience and it was prominently shown by a crowd of almost 5,000 near the Hotel Maya at Jalan Ampang.
“We felt very hurt after watching VCDs about how the government would destroy our temples. We are Malaysians but our government treats us like foreigners,” she said.
At about 8am today, police issued repeated warnings to a group of roughly 2,000 Hindraf supporters who had gathered near Plaza Ampang along Jalan Tun Razak, a stone’s throw away from the British High Commission.
There were several reports of police personnel beating Hindraf supporters.
Unlike previous demonstrations, media personnel also expressed appreciation over the police’s directive specifically for the media to get out of harm’s way when they take action.
Hindraf leader A Sivanesan condemned the police for turning Kuala Lumpur into a war zone.
Lawyer Haris Ibrahim, who led a 10-member Bar Council monitoring team, was stunned by the heavy-handed police action against the protesters.
“The Asean charter is not an instrument to achieve justice and equality for migrant workers,” said Migrant Care coordinator (Malaysia) Alex Ong in a statement jointly signed by Jakarta-based executive director Anis Hidayah and policy analyst Wahyu Susilo.
Kuala Lumpur-based Caram Asia noted that Asean is a mix of sending and receiving countries for about 5 million migrant workers - most of whom are from Asean countries - who have contributed to the region’s economic progress and prosperity.
“Often treated as secondary citizens in foreign countries, migrant workers are most vulnerable to human rights abuses. Major receiving countries like Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand have countless reported cases of abuse of migrant workers,” said Caram Asia.
• 
The Home Ministry's parliamentary secretary, Abdul Rahman Ibrahim, said 14,316 Chinese (87%) have surrendered their citizenship, compared to 1,098 Malays (6.6%), 822 Indians (5%) and 238 (1.4%) others from 2000 to 2006.
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