Hishammuddin rails against police-bashing

ARCHIVES 2010

By admin-s On May 9, 2010

(TMI) LONDON, May 9 — Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein last night urged Malaysians to defend and not demonise the police force, now under increasing public pressure to reform after the two recent shootings of teenagers.

The Home Minister also said that instead of constantly attacking the police, the public must support the force as it was one of the institutional pillars that formed the spine of the country.

“I want to assure everybody, that the morale of the police also has to be safeguarded and balanced. Clear demonisation does not help anybody,” Hishammuddin told some 100 students at the Malaysian Students Department here.

“Malaysia is in transition. In times of change, there is always a tendency to demonise these institutions without basis, without study, discussion and understanding,” he said of institutions such as law enforcement and the judiciary.

The recent death of 14-year-old Aminulrasyid Amzah and yesterday’s shooting of 17-year-old Mohd Azizi Aziz at the hands of the police has led to public anger with the police who are already having to deal with negative perception over crime levels, custodial deaths and corruption.

“It was a tragic shooting incident,” Hishammuddin said of Aminulrasyid’s death and insisted that there would be no cover-up and that the panel established to investigate is credible.

He pointed out that policemen who have been shot did not get public sympathy.

“At the same time, the aide-de-camp of the Tengku Mahkota of Kelantan was shot in cold blood in the middle of the road. But he does not get the same treatment from the public who only want to know if it is linked to the current controversy in the Kelantan royal family,” he said, referring to Kelantan palace guard Ramli Mohamad who was shot recently.

“Just because he is a policeman does this mean he does not deserve sympathy? So let’s not get emotional,” said Hishammuddin, who was made home minister in the Najib administration.

Admitting that “the system needs to be sorted out” and that he did not “condone something that works above the law” especially by law enforcers themselves, the minister said that institutions needed to be built and there were no immediate solutions.

“We need people who are given trust to be responsible for it but not be dictated by the politics of the day or the flavour of the month. These institutions are going to be here longer than the politicians,” said Hishammuddin, whose father Tun Hussein Onn was the country’s third prime minister.

He also declared that the police had performed a perfect 10 in areas that “you will never see, you will never hear, you will never know” such as counter-terrorism.