The right of Falun Gong practitioners to freedom of association has been violated for apparently 'no good reason' through the refusal of the Registrar of Societies (ROS) to approve their application, said the Human Rights Commission of Malaysia (Suhakam) today.

Suhakam commissioner N Siva Subramaniam assured the group that the commission would take up the matter with ROS to determine the exact reasons for its rejection.

"There are always two sides to a story, so we have meet up with ROS and find out why they have been rejected," he told reporters after receiving a memorandum from the group at the commission's headquarters in Kuala Lumpur.

Banned since July 1999 by the Chinese government, the regime has dismissed the Falun Gong as a 'cult' and persecuted its 60 million members in China for alleged 'anti-China political activities'.

With about 400 practitioners in Malaysia, the group's attempts to register with the ROS have been turned down at least three times over the past six years in three different states.

The Home Ministry has defended the rejection as resulting from the expressed opposition of the Chinese embassy in Kuala Lumpur.

The ministry also attributed the rejection to the group's distribution of pamphlets that criticise the persecution of Falun Gong members in China, as such public criticism amount to 'interfering in the politics of another country.'

Comparison with Iraq occupation

Commenting on the ministry's position, Siva questioned why the distribution of information on the persecution of Falun Gong members in China was viewed negatively while similar efforts to highlight abuses in other countries were tolerated.

However, he said the materials distributed by the group "needed to be studied" before comparisons could be made between the situation in China and developments in, for example, US-occupied Iraq.

He was commenting on the statement of human rights lawyer Edmund Bon, who compared the "genocide of Falun Gong practitioners in China" to human rights violations in Iraq.

Bon had also spoken against the suppression in Malaysia of the group's right to disseminate information and raise public awareness of the genocide.

Earlier, Falun Gong chairperson Yong Sang urged Suhakam to impress upon the authorities that its members' adherence to the laws of the country left no room to proscribe the group.

"Falun Gong practioners in Malaysia have made every effort to practice our beliefs in accordance with the rule of law and have made the necessary applications to legalise our actions consistent with the laws of the country," he said.

"The rejections of our applications to establish a society has violated our human rights. Article 10 of the Federal Constitution, Article 22 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, Article 20 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and Article 13 of the Malaysian Human Rights Charter have all guaranteed us the freedom and right to association," he added.