{"id":13272,"date":"2015-07-22T19:36:19","date_gmt":"2015-07-22T11:36:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.therocket.com.my\/en\/?p=13272"},"modified":"2015-07-22T19:36:19","modified_gmt":"2015-07-22T11:36:19","slug":"lawyers-travel-ban-is-appalling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.therocket.com.my\/en\/lawyers-travel-ban-is-appalling\/","title":{"rendered":"Lawyers: Travel ban is ‘appalling’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Travel ban is unconstitutional and a blatant abuse of power<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Eric<\/a>

Eric Paulsen (Pic from Free Malaysia Today)<\/p><\/div>\n

Lawyers for Liberty is shocked and appalled that members of Parliament Tony Pua, Rafizi Ramli and\u00a0The Edge Media Group owner Tong Kooi Ong\u00a0have been barred from leaving the country. The immigration authorities stopped Tony Pua today at KLIA 2 airport while Rafizi Ramli and\u00a0Tong Kooi Ong were reported barred according to checks with the Immigration Department’s website.<\/p>\n

As no clear reasons were given for barring the trio from travelling out of the country or under what legal provisions the immigration authorities have acted upon, we can only assume that they have been targeted due to their criticisms and expos\u00e9s concerning the massive 1MDB scandal that is currently engulfing the nation.
\nThe authorities must be reminded that the Federal Constitution guarantees freedom of movement, limited only to the lawful and reasonable exercise of discretion for reasons of security, public order, public health and the punishment of offenders. Needless to say, these reasons are not applicable to any of them and the immigration authorities\u2019 actions are clearly politically motivated, irrational and a blatant abuse of power.<\/p>\n

We are further appalled that the authorities seem more concerned in investigating those who have leaked the 1MDB information or those who have made further use of the information rather than the extremely serious expos\u00e9s themselves.<\/p>\n

Investigating the whistleblowers or the press is clearly misconceived, a case of shooting the messenger bearing bad news.\u00a0It should be noted that due to the 1MDB expos\u00e9s, a few persons linked to the scandal have been arrested, which goes to show that the exposes are substantiated.<\/p>\n

We call upon the authorities to lift the travel ban, cease investigations into the whistleblowers or the press, and more importantly, to bring to justice the perpetrators and account for the massive 1MDB scandal.<\/p>\n

– Eric\u00a0Paulsen,\u00a0Executive Director,\u00a0Lawyers for Liberty<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Travel ban is unconstitutional and a blatant abuse of power Lawyers for Liberty is shocked and appalled that members of Parliament Tony Pua, Rafizi Ramli and\u00a0The Edge Media Group owner Tong Kooi Ong\u00a0have been barred from leaving the country. The immigration authorities stopped Tony Pua today at KLIA 2 airport while Rafizi Ramli and\u00a0Tong Kooi […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12968,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[283],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13272","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.therocket.com.my\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13272","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.therocket.com.my\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.therocket.com.my\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.therocket.com.my\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.therocket.com.my\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13272"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.therocket.com.my\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13272\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13273,"href":"https:\/\/www.therocket.com.my\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13272\/revisions\/13273"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.therocket.com.my\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12968"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.therocket.com.my\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13272"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.therocket.com.my\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13272"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.therocket.com.my\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13272"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}