Teresa Kok

I called a press conference yesterday to highlight the plight of a woman from China, Yu Xuezhen who is legally married to a Malaysian.

On Thursday (Nov 3) night, at or about 11pm, she and her mate, a Chinese citizen holding a passport from China, were arrested by police near Kepong/Sungai Buloh.

The police officers saw them holding Chinese passport and hinted them to pay bribe. Yu and her friend thought that since they were holding genuine China passport, they need not pay bribe. They, five other Chinese women and two Indonesian women, were arrested and brought to the Sungai Buloh police station. They were transferred to the PJ police station at around 6am.

When they were at the PJ police station, the male officer at the counter check her bag and took out RM50, saying “yam cha”. She has to reluctantly “gift” it to the officer because she was in fear. Her student friend had only RM3 in her bag and the same officer still took away that mere RM3. She then saw that officer distributed the money to all his colleagues in the police station.

Yu told the press that before they were asked to enter the lock-up, they were all asked to strip naked before a woman police officer in a room. When she was asked to take off her bra, she felt ashamed and turned her back towards the police woman and the
police officer slapped her on the face. She saw a policeman peeping when she was undressing and she screamed and then the door of that room was closed.

The women were detained until Monday (Nov 7) afternoon and released Immigration verified their passports were genuine.

I confronted the police officers at the police station, arguing that they have no right to detain them unless they could the passports were fakes. I also told them it was wrong for these foreigners to be detained solely based on suspicion.

During their detention they were not provided drinking water. They were forced to drink tap water and some of them suffered from stomach upset because of that. Yu found her expensive clothings, toothbrush, toothpaste and towels, brought to her by her husband were missing when she was detained in the lock-up.

After their release on Monday, the five Chinese women came to my office to thank me for helping them.

They agreed to come to my office the next morning so that I could assist them to lodge a report to Bukit Aman Disciplinary Department nd ACA, but only Yu returned to my office.

Yu was a bit hesitant when she came to me but I gave strong encouragement and I told her that her case is not unique and she would be helping hundreds of women from China if she came forward to expose the wrong doing of the police.

In today’s press conference, Yu said the newspapers in China have reported similar incidents where Chinese tourists were arrested and detained by police while they were in Malaysia. She said many China people don’t have good impression on Malaysia.

I have written a letter to the IGP on this case. I asked him to review the present practice where police officers can abuse the rights and dignity of tourists. I also told the media that it is futile for the government to hire 20 Chinese interpreters in KLIA to assist Chinese-speaking tourists if the police continue to arrest and mistreat Chinese tourists.

The bad, corrupt practises of the police at road blocks and wrongful detention need urgent attention and must be stopped