IPU eBulletin header Issue No.23, 20 August 2010   

eBULLETIN --> ISSUE No.23 --> ARTICLE 3   

COMMITTEE ON THE HUMAN RIGHTS OF PARLIAMENTARIANS: THREE HIGHLIGHTS

Mexican Senator Rosario Green, chairing the IPU Human Rights Committee, headed a press conference on 15 July at the United Nations in Geneva in which inter alia she spoke about the cases of Mu Sochua of Cambodia, several members of the Palestine Legislative Council, and Anwar Ibrahim of Malaysia.

A little over a year ago, the Prime Minister of Cambodia made a derogatory statement about Mu Sochua as a woman. Mu Sochua, an opposition member of the Cambodian Parliament, was deeply offended and announced her intention to sue. Immediately afterwards, she was herself sued by the Prime Minister. Her case against the Prime Minister was dismissed, her immunity was lifted by parliament, and the courts found her guilty of defamation of the Prime Minister.

Human rights
The conviction of Mu Sochua was a violation of her right to freedom of expression, said Senator Green. No evidence proving either damage to the reputation of the Prime Minister or malicious intent was ever presented. Instead, the courts used correspondence between Mu Sochua and the IPU and the Global Fund for Women to imply bad faith. The IPU found this state of affairs deeply distasteful - for the last thirty years, parliaments everywhere had cooperated with its Committee on the Human Rights of Parliamentarians, set up for the sole purpose of defending the human rights of members of parliament. The case was a travesty of justice. The Committee called on the authorities of Cambodia to prevent further injustice and ensure that Mu Sochua was not imprisoned.

Turning to the situation of members of the Palestinian Legislative Council, Senator Green said that four days after an Israeli soldier had been kidnapped in a cross-border attack on Israel in 2006, the Israeli Interior Minister had revoked the residency status of three permanent residents of Jerusalem who were members of the Palestinian Legislative Council: Mohammed Abu Tir, Mohammed Totah and Ahmed Atoun. The decision was not immediately implemented since the three men, along with many other Change and Reform list members of parliament, were arrested and prosecuted on a charge of membership, leadership and action on behalf of a terrorist organization, Hamas. The three were found guilty merely because they had participated in the elections on the Change and Reform list, had been elected and exercised their parliamentary mandate, allegedly on behalf of Hamas. They were sentenced to prison terms ranging from two and a half years to nearly four. Abu Tir was released from prison only one month ago.

In the past weeks, all three had been told that they were permitted to stay in Israel for only one month, which was tantamount to being served deportation orders. All three had families and had spent their entire lives in Jerusalem except for the periods they were in Israeli jails.

The deportation of these three men would be unlawful on many compelling legal grounds and ran counter to Israel’s obligations under the Fourth 1949 Geneva Convention and other treaties to which it was a party. It would also be an inhumane and cruel act towards the men, their families and their community. The Committee urged the Israeli authorities to stop the deportation proceedings immediately.

Another case discussed by the Committee was that of Anwar Ibrahim, a member of the Parliament of Malaysia and a former Deputy Prime Minister. Mr. Ibrahim was being prosecuted for the second time on a charge of sodomy. The charge had been brought in 2008 on a complaint lodged by a former male aide in Mr. Ibrahim’s office, first alleging that he had been forcibly sodomized but later revised to indicate homosexual conduct by persuasion. Mr. Ibrahim had pleaded not guilty to the charge. If convicted, he would be forced to relinquish his parliamentary seat, and if sentenced to even one year of imprisonment or fined even RM 2000 (US$ 600), he would be barred from standing in elections for five years.

Ms. Green said that the Committee remained deeply concerned at the new sodomy charge brought against Mr. Ibrahim, which had been widely criticized as a bid to wreck his political career, and which seem to suffer from flaws similar to those of the first trial several years ago, at which Mr. Ibrahim was acquitted. It continued to believe that, in the light of two medical reports, charges should not have been pressed in the first place and should now be dismissed. The Committee was also deeply worried that members of the prosecution team who had been accused of fabricating evidence in the first sodomy trial were again involved in the proceedings. It was also alarmed at the rejection of all defence applications for access to prosecution evidence that it needed to prepare its case, saying that unless steps were taken to guarantee that the defence could exercise its rights, any judgments issued by the court would be fundamentally flawed.

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