Category: Freedom of Assembly

The DAP Organising Secretary, Mr. Lim Kit Siang, today issued the following statement (28.3.1969):

The DAP welcomes police assurance that there will be no restriction on the number of speakers at election rallies.
But the Federal Police statement today (Malay Mail, 28.3) cannot go unchallenged.

The statement said DAP allegations that the police had placed restriction on the number of speakers for DAP rallies was ‘unfounded’ and suggested that it was the DAP which misunderstood the police requirements.

The statement added that although the permit had space for only five names, political parties could list the extra names on a separate or continuation shoot as an annex to the permit.

But this was what the DAP had been doing all along, right from 1966, through the Serdang by-election campaign, until March 14- when we were told that we could only have five speakers for every rally. Continue reading Call for an inquiry into police misrepresentation and distortion

Press statement by DAP Organsing Secretary, Lim Kit Siang, on 25 March 1969:

The denial by the Permanent Secretary to the Ministry of Home Affairs, Sheikh Abdullah bin Sheikh Abu Bakar, that the police had not imposed any restriction on the number of speakers who could address a rally is a good case of the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing in the police department.

We could furnish Sheik Ahmad seven police permits for DAP rallies which restricted to approve more than five speakers and one announcer for one rally.

The police authorities concerned with the granting of public rally permits refused to approve more than five speakers and one announcer for one rally.

In fact, on 17th March, at a DAP public rally at Suleiman Court, off Jalan Tuanku Abdul Rahman, Kuala Lumpur, the DAP had only three speakers and one announcer, although the rally went on for three and half hours from 7.30p.m. to 11p.m. this was because two speakers approved for the rally, namely Goh Hock Guan, Party Secretary- General, and myself, could not make it for the rally as we went up to Ipoh for Mr. D. R. Seenivasagam’s funeral. Other DAP leaders present at the rally were not allowed to address the rally. Continue reading The left hand does not know what the right hand is doing in the Police Department