Declared unlawful for wanting review of M'sia Agreement, Sapa gets nod to challenge Zahid's ban

The Sarawak Association for People's Aspiration (Sapa) that was declared unlawful last year can now challenge the Home Minister's order to ban it.

The Kuching High Court granted the Sarawak non-governmental organisation its application for leave to file a judicial review against the order by Datuk Seri Ahmad Zahid Hamidi on the grounds that it was a threat to national security.

Counsel for Sapa, Dominique Ng, said the application for the judicial review was filed yesterday, after judge Datuk Rhodzariah Bujang granted the leave on Wednesday.

No date for the hearing has been set.

“We will be checking with the court on the hearing date,” Ng said today.

Sapa, described by its founder Lina Soo as a group of “housewives and retired civil servants”, filed the application for leave to hear the review on February 9.

Soo, Hugh Lawrence Zehnder and Tibram Pilang named the Home Minister, the director of the Registrar of Societies and the Malaysian government as respondents in their leave application.

Soo said the ban was against the democratic freedom of speech and the right to association. The ban also denied them natural justice of the right to be heard, was irrational, an abuse and an unreasonable exercise of discretionary power and was unconstitutional and procedurally improper.

Zahid, in declaring Sapa an unlawful society under Section 5 of the Societies Act 1966 on November 14 last year, said the NGO was being used for purposes prejudicial to the interests of the security of Malaysia and public order.

Sarawak Association for People's Aspiration founding member Lina Soo wants the court to rule that any ban on the organisation is against the rights enshrined in the Federal Constitution.

The NGO at the time was on a campaign to collect information to prove the invalidity of the Malaysia Agreement of 1963 on the formation of Malaysia.

They said that the facts collected, if proven legally correct in an international court of law, could lead to the separation of Sarawak and Sabah from Peninsular Malaysia.

Sapa had in August written to the United Nations to seek assistance “to review the arbitrary and indecorous surrender” of Sarawak's sovereignty by the United Kingdom to the Federation of Malaysia”.

It said the “surrender”, which was sanctioned by the United Nations, was done “without (the) exercise of the right to self-determination in contravention of the spirit and letter of the United Nations and Decolonization Declaration adopted by the General Assembly Resolution 1514 (XV) of December 14, 1960”.

The letter, addressed to the UN secretary-general Ban Ki-Moon and the United Nations Human Rights Committee, was handed over to the UN office in Kuala Lumpur. – TMI