Reforms on Malaysia’s ‘draconian’ Peaceful Assembly Act encounter further delays

Filed 1h ago · Via Global Voices · The Buffoon Desk

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Kevin MacLeod · incompetech.com · CC BY 4.0

Photo: Diliff · CC BY-SA 3.0 · via Wikimedia Commons

Human rights groups are pressing Malaysia's government to amend the Peaceful Assembly Act, a 2012 law used to file harassment charges against protest organizers and civil society leaders. Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim pledged in 2025 to fix the law's more restrictive sections, and Malaysia's Federal Court struck down its five-day notice requirement as unconstitutional that July, calling it a disproportionate intervention amounting to prohibition.

Despite that ruling and the government dropping its review bid in January 2026, the amendment bill has stalled in Parliament for a year. Police broke up a protest near Parliament in July 2025 and blocked a memorandum submission, while Malaysia's own Human Rights Commission had to remind police in February 2026 to follow due process.

Amnesty International Malaysia says anti-corruption activists and student protesters keep getting charged under the law, the Penal Code, and the Minor Offences Act. Civil society groups are now demanding Parliament simply commit to a timeline, having apparently given up on the promises themselves.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.

✒ FROM THE EDITORIAL DESK

A government can say 'reform' as many times as it wants, but if the same officers are still hauling in the same students a year later, the word has stopped meaning anything. Anwar's cabinet found time to drop its court appeal but not to write a bill, which tells you which one actually cost them something. When the human rights commission has to remind the police how to do their jobs, that's not a stall, that's a choice.

Source: Read the original at Global Voices → Scored: Circus of Freaks · Kevin MacLeod · CC BY 4.0

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