The excuse that publicising police standard operating procedures will aid criminals does not hold water as such information is made public around the world, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said.

 

"Other countries don't maintain the same level of secrecy for standard operating procedures," HRW deputy director for Asia Phil Robertson ( left ) said in Kuala Lumpur today.

 

Launching the HRW's report on police abuse in Malaysia, he said that if indeed the police wants to give that excuse, there are still things they can do.

 

"They should work with an external oversight body to ensure compliance with human rights standards. That would be a step in the right direction," he said.

Robertson, however, conceded that other countries in the region including India and Singapore do not make public their police standard operating procedures.

“But what we are asking is not for them to disclose it to you (the media) to publish on the front page - although we are not opposed to it.

“What we are asking is for them to reveal it to the oversight bodies set up by government,” he said.

The IGSO is classified under the Official Secrets Act. However, broad descriptions of the IGSO are given by officials in the 102-page report HRW’s ‘No Answers, No Apology: Police Abuses and Accountability in Malaysia’.

Among them is now-inspector general of police Khalid Abu Bakar who said police can shoot if they feel their live is in danger, but not if the alleged assailant  is armed with only a blunt object.

Robertson said that although the IGSO is  secret, the fact that cops are allowed to shoot if an assailant is armed with a sharp object calls into question the appearance of parangs at scenes of extra-judicial killings.

Suspicion of possible collusion

He also raised suspicion of possible collusion between pathologists and police as many post-mortem reports are used to justify closing investigations.

For example, he said, in the case of C Sugumaran, the post-mortem report showed he died of a heart attack but made no reference to the fact that he was assaulted prior to the heart attack.

“When you read the pathologists’ reports, it seems they all die of bad health as only two (of more than 231 cases from January 2000-May 2013) were from police abuse,” he said.

He added that there is also the issue of medical checks to determine one’s health condition before one is sent to a lock-up, and regular checks on inmates.

He said that there is provision for a medical officer to be stationed at lock-ups, but this is not the practice in reality.

Meanwhile, the Bar Council Human Rights Committee’s Andrew Khoo ( left ), in response to the report, said that the government has promised to set up a coroner’s court and centralised lock-ups last year, but this amounted to nothing.

Speaking to reporters after the press conference, he said that a casual Google search would also return standard operating procedures for police in many parts of the world.

Malaysiakini’s checks found standard operating procedures for several cities in the United States, United Kingdom and Australia.

Khoo said this shows the police purposely continue to operate under a cloak of secrecy despite international best case practices.