Lawyers for Liberty (LFL) has called on the police to arrest the youths who spat on PAS' Shah Alam MP Khalid Samad at the Kuala Lumpur Court Complex at Jalan Duta yesterday.

The mob surrounded Khalid after he was charged under the Sedition Act in relation to a statement he made earlier this year calling for the powers of the Selangor Islamic Affairs Council (Mais) to be curtailed.

LFL executive director Eric Paulsen ( right ) told Malaysiakini that it "obviously is criminal violence".

"Failure to do so means that the police condone such thuggish behaviour. This is extremely shocking," Paulsen said.

He pointed that that pictures of the alleged perpetrators have already been circulated online.

He also said that the Sedition Act was now being used at a “mind boggling” level.

"Anything the government disagrees with is being considered seditious. As far as we are concerned, the Sedition Act is the new Internal Security Act (ISA).

"We are currently in the midst of another Operasi Lalang," Paulsen said, referring to the infamous 1987 ISA crackdown under the watch of then prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad.

Electoral watchdog Bersih and the Institute for Democracy and Economic Affairs (IDEAS) also condemned the act, calling on politicians and civil society to discourage such behaviour, instead of remaining silent on the matter.

Bersih chairperson Maria Chin Abdullah ( right ) said such "thuggish" behaviour has been happening more often to activists and opposition politicians of late.

"These thuggish behaviour is becoming a pattern to drown out differing views," Maria told Malaysiakini .

She said anybody who does not agree with the politician should have talked to him, instead of taking such an approach.

"If the police were there, they should have stopped that," she said.

Meanwhile, IDEAS chief executive Wan Saiful Wan Jan said that the group of youths who spat on Khalid had betrayed their own "Malay-ness" with their attitude, and attributed the behaviour to an increasingly polarised state of the society.

"Quite a segment of the society is rather radicalised now, and people get overboard when championing race and religion," Wan Saiful ( left ) said.

He said that there seemed to be an "implicit submission" from politicians that was worsening the situation, since politicians were not forthcoming to condemn such attitude.

However, Wan Saiful said, there was no need to take any criminal action against the youths, saying that such behaviour was not new and has happened to several opposition politicians in the past.

"We need political leaders clearly and openly disassociating themselves from such stupid behaviour."