Student anger about Malaysian ‘hypocrisy’

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33966, 6 October 1975, Page 16

Student anger about Malaysian ‘hypocrisy’

(New Zealand Press Association)

WELLINGTON, October 5.

A Malaysian Opposition leader, Mr Syed Hamid Ali, the secretary-general of the Malaysian Socialist Party, was prevented from leaving Malaysia for Australia and New Zealand this morning.

The president of the New Zealand University Students’ Association (Mr Alick Shaw) said in Wellington that Mr Ali’s passport was confiscated at the airport by immigration officers.

Mr Ali was attempting to come to New Zealand and Australia at the invitation of the N.Z.U.S.A. and the Australian Union of Students. Mr Shaw said the action by the Malaysian Government was clearly an attempt to stifle dissent within Malaysia and to prevent New Zealanders and Australians from having access to a view which differed from their own. , “As the Prime Minister of Malaysia (Tun Abdul Razak) s soon to visit New Zealand, he Malaysian authorities can

well expect a marked increase in the hostility with which the New Zealand university students will view the visit."

“Civil Govt”

Mr Shaw believed that Mr Ali had been refused a visa at the New Zealand High Commission in Kuala Lumpur. “If this is the case, our Government is guilty of the same sort of shortsightedness and hypocrisy as the Malaysian Government.”

New Zealand students would not tolerate this attempt to prevent thefn from talking to Malaysian “patriots.” The New Zealand Government felt threatened by the possibility that the public might learn the truth about one of its South-East Asian allies. The Malaysian Government was a cruel and repressive Government, and the attempts by the New Zealand and Malaysian authorities to prevent public exposure of this would serve only to heighten public awareness of it.

The demonstrations against Tun Razak, in New Zealand “might well prove to

be more boisterous than N.Z.U.S.A. had intended because of this high-handed action by the New Zealand and Malaysian authorities,” said Mr Shaw. He had requested an urgent meeting with the Prime Minister (Mr Rowling), the Malaysian High Commission, and the New Zealand Foreign Affairs Department to discuss the question.