- 1 hour ago
- #considerthis
At least three minors were recently arrested under the Security Offences (Special Measures) Act, or SOSMA. As many of you are aware, SOSMA is a controversial procedural law, which allows for detention without judicial oversight for up to 28 days, which is why the use of SOSMA against children in this recent case has raised serious concerns. On this episode of #ConsiderThis Melisa Idris speaks with Melissa Akhir, SUHAKAM Commissioner & Women and Child Rights Advocate.
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:10Hi, welcome back to Consider This. I'm Melissa Idris. Let's continue our discussion about
00:15the use of SOSMA or the Security Offensive Special Measures Act against children. This
00:21because recently three minors were arrested under this controversial procedural law which
00:27as you know allows for detention without judicial oversight for as long as 28 days. Joining me now
00:34to discuss this further is Melissa Akhir who is a Suhaqam Commissioner and a women and child rights
00:41advocate. Melissa, good to have you on the show today. I am learning so much about the case and
00:47it is really concerning me but I'm curious to know from Suhaqam's perspective from someone like
00:53yourself who is an access to justice consultant. How are you looking at this? What is most
00:59concerning to you about the use of SOSMA on minors in this case? Yes, thank you so much Melissa for
01:07having me to represent Suhaqam and all the regards from the Children's Commissioners from Suhaqam as
01:13well because we're speaking about the subject matter that impacts them. Firstly, I would like
01:19to bring it back to Malaysia's human rights obligations because for Malaysia when we say that
01:25there are laws in the country, we pair it with our international human rights obligations. So number
01:31one on children, firstly there was something called the Havana rules on how children should be treated
01:37differently from adults. That was in 1990 and then Malaysia signed on to the Convention on the Rights
01:43of the Child in 1995. So now it's 2026, we have provisions within our laws and children's detention
01:52should be a matter of last resort, not the first resort. And all other matters must be exhausted before
02:00we decide to put children in detention or prisons or any other form of detention. So to start with,
02:08Malaysia has just been reviewed in terms of the status of children's rights in our country. Our report
02:14card on children's rights came out in February this year and that report card mentions precisely one of
02:20the matters is this. SOSMA and all other forms of detention and the government in Geneva promised to do
02:27improvements regarding how children are treated compared to adults. And this is where we stand now
02:33and we should follow through on our report card for improvements so that we get an A shall we say
02:39in terms of children's rights. So timely that the CRC review happened not too long ago and now we have
02:46this case dominating our headlines. With this case in particular there's been concern or there was speculation
02:52around terrorism or investigations into terrorism. I wanted to ask you Melissa about the way this
03:04affects children because there is clearly a concern that globally terrorist recruitment through social
03:11media through online gaming is happening. So from Suha Khan's perspective what would a more appropriate
03:17response look like if in fact these children were indeed groomed or at or radicalized online?
03:24Yeah even in the circumstance of grave or serious crimes there has to be a degree of proportionality.
03:32We understand the need for safety for security within the country but again since it's 2026 there must be
03:40more let's say elite or sophisticated modes of investigation that do not involve detention that
03:47actually look at children who could actually be victims in the recruitment techniques and within our
03:54own laws within our child act it says due to their lack of maturity due to their young age they
04:01are
04:02supposed to be protected from any manner for example grooming even in circumstances of extremism or
04:09fundamentalism or terrorism. So these approaches techniques for investigation is something that Suha Khan
04:16take seriously and we have been asking to meet for example with the inspector general police
04:22and we are wanting to propose joint training for example in our module with the police we're going to roll
04:30out hopefully treatment for of child witnesses for example in Sabah. So we want to work together for this
04:37technique so what I said earlier on the detention as a last resort can be a reality.
04:42Right okay just talk to me about that about the proportionality of the response what would be a
04:51proportional response because I'm wondering what this case reveals to you about the way we should adapt
04:57and have yet to adapt to the new forms of of threats involving children particularly online.
05:06Yeah so the good practices for example of police techniques that actually go to the root
05:12cause of the matter what is the pattern of recruitment how are children targeted so that is addressed
05:19first and then after that they can address the root cause in a community-based solutions way what is
05:27the involvement of the parents whether there's who have been contacting the children things like that
05:32if this is addressed this avoids for the situations of the children being recruitment and subsequently made
05:40worse in terms of the violence or action that they could be duped into shall we say so within some
05:48countries like Italy for example they catch it at the root so they don't need to detain anyone they have
05:55addressed it at the root and they can be rehabilitative or reformative approaches done so then the behavior
06:02change happens so it doesn't worsen and this happens across the world even in European countries where
06:09where the parents are already terrorists but the children are saved let's say from the situation of
06:15fundamentalism and the it is the government's duty to take care of all children in the country from
06:22being looked in further when when i say take care take care doesn't mean detention take care means
06:27reformative activities and interventions okay reformative activities and interventions um i'm just wondering in the
06:36the case of these three miners i know they've been released but are there protections or follow-up
06:42supports that that should be in place for them i can only imagine the um psychological and the long-term
06:51impact on these miners of being held in detention without access for was it 26 days and in solitary
06:59confinement with all the lights on in such harsh almost torturous conditions are there is there any support
07:05provided for these miners for these children yeah there's a great point for example the standpoint
07:12against convention against torture has been very clear uh degrading treatment these are some of the
07:17things that has been pointed out to malaysia where even if imposed on adults the lights on and all
07:24the modes that you said is already a high level already amounts to torture imagine again on children and
07:30their vulnerabilities that would be compounded so again we have specific laws in malaysia there are
07:36right standards that has been incorporated in there for example when you do referral to a court for
07:42children there's supposed to be orders made when you are releasing for example the approaches that goes
07:48away from just punitive uh an interactive workshop for example can be ordered together with the parents
07:54so this involves a social or community intervention mode and this workshop addresses how things might
08:03happen and the pattern so how is it avoided so it has to be tailored to that child in question
08:08using what
08:10is available in the malaysia law however we at sohakam and the children's commissioners are usually told that
08:17it doesn't pass that way and the interventions for example by the social welfare department is very sporadic or
08:24ad hoc and this is not something that we are doing in a systematic way perhaps uh sohakam can extend
08:31its hand to the government agencies and then we can work together for these orders to actually be
08:36realized we're happy to show the step by step on how this is done so so melissa how do we
08:42how do we stop
08:43this from ever happening again how do we prevent something like this from ever happening to another child
08:51uh number one we have the laws in substance but number two we need to look at what's in the
08:58structure
08:58and what's in our culture so our culture shouldn't be number one we put it put children in detention and
09:04throw the key away and then only we investigate no we investigate first and the preventive methods because
09:12that's your question is to get to know the community see the patterns if there's specific zones and locations
09:18this is where we say the more sophisticated way of investigation is addressing it at the root
09:24cost no child is born for example an extremist fundamentalist or terrorist there must have been
09:31approaches and layers of how the information got to them including by online means so this is where we
09:37need to invest in uh the investigative techniques needs to focus on to avoid uh things becoming more serious
09:46and like i mentioned in italy they even uh manage to link it to triads or people going to
09:52syria and isis they manage to address that in a bigger scale so if this is possible with children and
09:59young
10:00persons in other countries why can't we do it let's invest in the preventive measures first
10:05and melissa i really liked how you said you you extended the hand of suhakam to say that you know
10:11suhakam is here
10:12willing to help willing to train willing to give um whatever capacity help that that you can provide
10:19i am curious to know suhakam's role in this if i understand correctly suhakam has the i guess authority
10:26to visit to places of detention how was the due process in this case and what role did did suhakam
10:33play and when does suhakam play going forward okay precisely thank you for bringing up we issued several
10:39statements on this issue actually suhakam as an independent monitoring body of human rights
10:45including children's rights are also human rights we play several roles including monitoring in terms
10:51of detention in terms of why isn't it a diversion away from criminal opportunity measures and instead
10:59rehabilitative and reformative so we have asked repeatedly to be given access because that is part of
11:05our mandate as the statutory body we also advise the parliament for example the parliamentary select
11:12committee on human rights the parliamentary select committee that's in charge of children so therefore
11:17this uh let's say uh mode of how we can improve ways in which uh children are handled in these
11:26investigations so uh when we visit also sometimes maybe some government agencies are a bit surprised but
11:34it's for improvements it's for good practices and we can see certain things are doable community-based
11:42policing for example has moved forward a bit in timor leste our fellow neighbors in asean so if this
11:49is possible uh we can see how is it adaptive within the zones within the realities in malaysia whether up
11:56north
11:56or east coast or sabah and serawak even we're happy to work together with the agencies on this uh following
12:02the
12:02visits where we do the analysis and the reports thank you so much melissa ahir sahakam commissioner there
12:08wrapping up this episode of consider this i'm melissa idris signing off the evening thank you so much for
12:14thanks for watching and good night
Comments