Last October, the UM Students’ Representative Council (MPPUM), Student Affairs & Alumni Division (HEPA) and Department of Special Affairs (Jasa) organized a 1MDB town hall forum in Universiti Malaya. It started off by an arbitrary decision by the President of MPPUM, Hazwan Syafiq in collaboration with the Student Affairs Department to organize the 1MDB town hall event without any discussion or meeting with the members of MPPUM beforehand.
The speaker was Arul Kanda Kandasamy, the president and executive director of 1MDB, making the town hall event a brainwashing session.
UMANY were dissatisfied with how the university had been repeatedly used by the BN government to rationalize and legalize any wrongdoing of the infamous 1MDB scandal, the largest of all kind in our history.
Therefore, 4 UMANY representatives (UMANY4) held placards after the Q&A session as a means to protest the scandal and were later charged by the university. UMANY4 were found guilty and punished with stern warnings and fines of RM150 to RM600 by the university on first proceeding. After appealing, the fines were revoked but the students were still found guilty with stern warnings. In other words, the appeals were actually not successful.
UMANY4 has lost their eligibility to participate in the campus election due to the fact that all 4 students were found guilty by the university. Among them, Tan Jia You as an ex-elected MPP from the Faculty of Business and Accountancy (FPP)has been revoked from his position as a Elected student representative upon receiving stern warnings for his charges last semester. Now, he will not able to contest in the campus election again.
As announced by Student Affair Department (HEP) UM, the campus election of University of Malaya will be held on 28th September 2017 while the nomination day will be on 25th September 2017. Hence, we sincerely urge all UM students to fully support the Pro-Student Camp (Pro-M) by voting our candidates to lead the student union again. We need your help to punish Penggerak Mahasiswa that serve as a puppet of the administration by solely promoting the authority’s interest instead of the students. Moreover, Penggerak Mahasiswa has continuingly defies the basic rights and welfare of the students. Therefore, we, the Pro-Student Camp promise to continue to safeguard the rights of the students and academic freedom as well as regaining student’s autonomy from the university one step at a time.
Dissatisfied with the guilty verdict, UMANY4 have now decided to take legal action against the university that infringed basic democratic rights of the students. At the same time, we hope to convey a message to UM that “University Students rejects to be the subject of suppression” and the “University should not be used as a pawn to fulfill whatever interest of the ruling regime”. Hence, 4 UM students are now officially filing a judicial review to challenge the university’s verdict in which they had completely defied freedom of expression that is guaranteed by the Federal Constitution.
In order to conduct the judicial review, UMANY is in urgent need of funds to sustain our legal fees, court fees, documentation and other expenditures. The estimated fundraising target is RM5000 for the time being. If the amount of the total raised fund has exceeded our estimation, we will be using it as a fund to sustain our various programs as in campus political education and student movement activities. UMANY will declare the amount of the total raised fund regularly. We will be deeply indebted to everyone who support us.
We appeal to the public to participate in our fundraising campaign. Together, we can build a just, fair and democratic society for Malaysia. Thank You.
Contributions can be made to the following account:
Bank：Public Bank
Account Name：Persatuan UMANY
Account Number：3204477300
Snap a Picture of Your Receipt and Send to any of the following:
1. FB PM to: m.me/umany2001
2. Whatsapp to: https://hi.jomwasap.my/umany