Param: Seek accountability, not apology

Param: Seek accountability, not apology
Malaysiakini (subscription reqd) - Mar 24, 2008

New law minister Zaid Ibrahim’s suggestion that the government should apologise to those victimised in the 1988 judicial crisis does not meet the test of accountability, said Param Cumaraswamy.

The former United Nations special rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers said that those who committed the transgressions should be the ones to apologise.

“Those who perpetrated the transgressions are still alive and they must be called to account for their conduct and seek forgiveness from the six valiant judges, their families and Malaysians generally for the sacrilege committed to the temple of independent justice,” he said in a statement today.

Param, a former Malaysian Bar president, named then Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad, Attorney-General Abu Talib Othman (currently chairperson of the Human Rights Commission of Malaysia) and Chief Justice Hamid Omar as those deemed accountable.

“There were other personalities who carried out what in military terms is called ‘superior orders’ for fear of being dismissed from their positions,” said Param.

“Having made the transgressors publicly accountable, the government must offer adequate compensation to the victims and their families (as) reinstatement of the three dismissed is no longer possible.”

Param noted that Malaysians have a right to know who was responsible for the events and why it happened.

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