CABINET NOD FOR INTERNAL PROBE
It must be done to restore public confidence, says minister
THE cabinet on Wednesday discussed the 2015 Wang Kelian human trafficking tragedy and agreed that police should carry out an internal probe over an alleged cover-up in the investigation into the case.
Several ministers, including Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Datuk
Paul Low Seng Kuan, confirmed this with the New Straits Times yesterday.
A portal quoted Low as saying last week that an internal probe on the matter must be done to restore public confidence.
The report quoted the minister as saying the meeting had agreed that the authorities “must get to the bottom of it”.
“The police themselves must launch their own investigation.
“Who is involved? Were the officers and syndicates working together? Why are there discrepancies (in the police’s internal reports)?” Low said, adding that the police’s Integrity and Standard Compliance Department (JIPS) must conduct an independent internal probe, too.
He said the Enforcement Agency Integrity Commission could only step in if there was a complaint lodged.
“This will be a test of the police’s institutional integrity and capability,” Low, the minister in charge of governance, integrity and human rights, was quoted as saying.
He said Deputy Prime Minister Datuk Seri Dr Ahmad Zahid Hamidi, who is also home minister, had stressed that it was imperative to get to the root causes of the problem.
“This is a high-profile case. “Many lives were lost, untold cruelty and a number of human rights violations were committed. The DPM (Zahid) said we need to get to the root causes.”
The NST had, on Wednesday, run on its cover its Special Probes Team’s four-page expose, which unearthed the dark secrets of Wang Kelian that claimed the lives of no less than 150 migrants, mostly from Rakhine State, who had come here, desperate for a second chance at life.
Among the revelations from the team’s exhaustive two-year investigation were that the mass graves in Wang Kelian, Perlis, were discovered on Jan 19, 2015, and not May 24, as was announced during a police press conference on May 25.
The newspaper also highlighted the glaring discrepancies in reports filed by those involved in the discovery, including those regarding syndicate members who were nabbed during those operations.
The team’s findings were then presented to Zahid, who ordered investigations into the case be revisited. He vowed that “those with direct or indirect involvement in the case will be made to pay for the crime”.
After the report was published, this newspaper yesterday frontpaged Bukit Aman’s response to a number of burning questions the NST had asked in its report. The answers from the federal police headquarters were published verbatim.
The police, among others, assured that no matter who they might be, those behind this heinous crime against humanity would be brought to justice.