No More Bureaucratic Excuses; Table SOSMA Amendments by July Sitting

Suara Rakyat Malaysia (SUARAM) acknowledges Home Minister Saifuddin Nasution’s reasserted commitment to tabling amendments to the Security Offences (Special Measures) Act 2012 (SOSMA) in the upcoming July/August parliamentary sitting.

The current pace of reform is, however, concerningly protracted. ‘Policy approval’ to begin the amendment process was close to six months behind schedule, with Saifuddin making the commitment in July last year. Moreover, with the delayed submission of the policy paper to Cabinet, it is concerning that Saifuddin did not engage with the SOSMA recommendations by the Parliamentary Special Select Committee on Human Rights, Election and Institutional Reform that were already available in November last year. By bypassing a report that also accounted the perspectives of the National Human Rights Commission of Malaysia and civil society, Saifuddin has ensured that the Cabinet’s 'policy approval' was based on an incomplete, security-biased narrative.

Saifuddin’s justifications for the nine-day detention of the 16-year-old girl under SOSMA, on the other hand, remain indefensible. “Complexity” is an operational challenge for the police that does not justify the override of domestic safeguards under Section 83 of the Child Act 2001, and broadly Malaysia’s international obligations under Article 37(b) of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC). The protection of minors unequivocally prevails over other laws—even more so when the minor is a witness—as provisions under the Child Act are more than sufficient for obtaining statements while ensuring the child’s welfare.

The detention of this minor is a direct symptom of the "arrest first, investigate later" mentality facilitated by the 28-day pre-charge detention period without judicial oversight under Section 4(5) of SOSMA. Without restoring judicial oversight at the remand stage for security offences, the incentive for inadequate police investigations and dragnet arrests—which result in the arbitrary and prolonged deprivation of liberty for individuals, including the innocent and those held on mere association—will persist. For minors, this systemic flaw risks repeating egregious violations by the state of its own statutory protections.

SUARAM demands:

• Meaningful inclusion of CSOs, the families of SOSMA detainees and SUHAKAM in the upcoming engagement sessions for the amendment matrix to ensure that the fundamental right to fair trial is prioritised;

• Strict adherence to the July/August timeline to table the SOSMA amendments, and;

• Substantive amendments to SOSMA that restore judicial oversight, by repealing or amending Section 4(5), while ensuring that revisions to Sections 13 and 30 responsively address issues of prolonged detention and corresponding socioeconomic harm inflicted on detainees and their families.

In solidarity,

Azura Nasron (Executive Director at SUARAM)