DAP chairperson Lim Kit Siang today called on the government to issue a clear policy directive to stop any house-to-house search of pirated or pornographic VCDs without search warrant issued by a magistrate.

This is to respect the higher interests of the right to privacy of citizens pending amendments to the Film Censorship Act to incorporate such safeguards, he said in a statement.

Lim said he was surprised that the advice of Deputy Prime Minister and Home Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi last Tuesday that efforts to combat pornographic VCDs should focus on the manufacturers, distributors and dealers and not residential premises has been countered or ignored with statements by both the Deputy Home Minister Chor Chee Heung and the Inspector-General of Police Norian Mai who insisted that the police have the legal powers to enter private homes to raid for pornographic and pirated VCDs.

Atrocious legislation

"Legalistically, Chor and Norian are right as under Section 33 of the Film Censorship Act 2002, powers are granted for such raids on residential premises for pornographic or illegal VCDs if the police has "reasonable grounds to believe" that any VCD involving an offence under the Act is to be found in the premises.

"This is, however, an atrocious piece of parliamentary legislation, as it gives dangerously excessive powers to the police to raid private homes if the police has "reasonable grounds to believe" that there is at least one pornorgraphic or illegal VCD, and makes nonsense of Section 32 on "Search and seizure with warrant", which spelt out the safeguards to protect civil rights before any such police raid or search is conducted.

The DAP leader said that Parliament should not have enacted Section 33 of the Copyright Act which is now interpreted by Chor and Norian to justify house-to-house raids for pornographic and pirated VCDs which totally nullified the purpose of Section 32 to provide safeguards for citizenship and privacy rights from abuses of police powers.

Parliament at its meeting starting next Monday should provide instant remedy for such a bad law, he urged.

Frequent abuse of power

Lim said the claim by Chor and Norian that the police have powers to raid residential homes for pirated VCDs cannot stand legal scrutiny, as pirated VCDs do not come under the Film Censorship Act 2002 but under the Copyright Act 1987, which provides under Section 41(1)(d) that no offence of copyright is committed for possessing a pirated VCD which is for "private and domestic use".

"The most immediate issue at present is not the arguments about the legal powers of the police to conduct house-to-house raids for pornographic and pirated VCDs, but the citizenship and privacy rights of Malaysians from police intrusion and abuses of powers," he pointed out.

"In recent times, police abuses of power at the expense of the citizenship rights of ordinary Malaysians have become so frequent and prevalent, with no satisfactory mechanism to remedy or to check them, that the civil society must speak up loud and clear to oppose any further extension of such dangerous police powers to conduct house-to-house search without magistrate warrant purportedly for pornographic and pirated VCDs," the DAP chief added.