Ambiga Barred from UM Talk; Law Students Submit Memo Free Malaysia Today 7 April 2014 Oleh P Ramani

Ambiga barred from UM talk; law students submit memo Free Malaysia Today 7 April 2014 Oleh P Ramani

KUALA LUMPUR: A group of Universiti Malaya law students handed a memorandum to Pakatan Rakyat members of parliament today to voice their dissatisfaction on academic freedom.

According to Richtuyne Yusoff, the students’ spokesperson, UM’s Students Affairs Division’s decision to disallow former Bar council president and ex-Bersih 2.0 co-chairperson S Ambiga from giving a talk on ‘Public Interest Litigation’ in the university was deemed as suppressing academic freedom.

Pakatan MPs who were present to receive the memo were Serdang MP Ong Kian Ming, Bayan Baru MP Sim Tze Tzin and Bukit Bendera MP Zairil Khir Johari

Richtuyne said that on March 25 an official letter was sent to deputy vice chancellor of Student Affairs to seek permission for Ambiga to deliver the lecture.

The deputy vice chancellor agreed on the condition that there must also be a pro government speaker at the function to balance the view during the lecture.

Nevertheless, on March 27, the approval was retracted with the reason that the lecture was not part of the programme. The talk, organised by the UM Law Society , was to have taken place on March 29.

Curbing students rights

Richtuyne also attempted to contact Deputy Education Minister P Kamalanathan to hand in a copy of the memorandum but the latter failed to response to the students.

The students said they would pass a copy of the memorandum to the Pakatan MPs to be passed on to Kamalanathan.

In the memorandum, the students are seeking the UM management not to intervene into students’ affairs.

They also criticised UM for practising double standard by not allowing a high profile public speaker to appear for the talk.

The Pakatan MPs meanwhile urged UM to ensure a better academic freedom to the students and stop curbing students’ rights to receive appropriate knowledge from any public lectures deemed to be vital for their education process.