Amnesty International today hit back at the police for misreading an annual report on death sentences and executions.

The organisation said it never accused the country of carrying out secret extra-judicial executions as mentioned by the Deputy Inspector General Of Police Ismail Omar.

k shan Instead the report merely stated that death penalties carried out in this country were not done in a transparent manner, said the organisation’s Malaysian coordinator K Shan.

He said that the report - Death Sentences and Executions in 2007 which was released April 15 - said that it was concerned that “executions (death penalties) may have taken place in Mongolia and Malaysia and that due to the secretive nature in which these penalties were carried out, were unable to obtain reliable information (numbers of death penalties carried out).”

“(We) merely assert the fact that information on executions and death penalty in Malaysia, a country that retains and practices death penalty as a form of punishment for a various

offences, is shrouded in secrecy,” he said further.

For Shan and Amnesty International, it was important to stress that the AI report did not “in any way directly or indirectly imply that the police had carried out arbitrary executions or extra judicial killings.

Ismail was quoted in today’s dailies as interpreting the report as AI accusing the Malaysian police of carrying out illegal secret killings. Shan said Ismail had got it all wrong.

“Police carry out their investigations openly and all procedures carried out by the force is based on the laws of the country,” said the deputy IGM in the Star today.

He also said it was up to Home Minister Syed Hamid Albar to decide whether the police should contact Amnesty International for a clarification.

Be more transparent

edmund bon 00 The chairperson of the Bar Council’s Human Rights Committee Edmund Bon also agreed with Shan and said that Ismail had misinterpreted the report.

“The report is merely saying that the death penalties carried out by the Malaysian government are done in a manner seen as none-transparent by international standards.

“There are no accessible public information pertaining to death penalties. Relevant NGOs like Amnesty or even the Parliament are not informed of the statistical facts with regards to the carried out death penalties,” said Bon.

Bon then said that these are the concerns of AI and human rights activists and again stressed out that no one is accusing the Malaysian police or government of such atrocities.

“AI Malaysia therefore calls on the government of Malaysia to make an official release on all statistics on executions and death sentences in Malaysia to date,” demanded Shan.