Dr. Jeyakumar Devaraj, chairman of the Socialist Party of Malaysia (PSM), and two other leaders of the party have been booked for obstructing public servants in the discharge of their duties and are set to be tried in a court.

The two-year-old case is related to a PSM-led movement against the illegal eviction of farmers in Kanthan, Chemor, in Malaysia’s northwestern state of Perak, in September 2023.

Apart from Jeyakumar, PSM secretary in the town of Sungai Siput, R Karthiges, and PSM secretary of sub-district Hulu Kinta, P Kesavan, along with a farmer Ho Pin Tien, have been asked by the Ipoh police to appear in court to face trials under section 186 of the penal code.

All four of them were arrested in September 2023 during a protest against the eviction. PSM has maintained that the act of eviction was illegal as farmers had every right to farm the land as they had been doing for over seven decades.

Despite the protests and ignoring a stay by the Ipoh High Court, authorities went ahead and destroyed the standing crop of several farmers and appropriated their land.

If convicted as charged, Jeyeakumar and others can be sentenced to up to two years in jail or fined up to RM 10,000 (around USD 2,500) or both.

The PSM issued a statement on Thursday expressing its disappointment and opposition to the persecution notice and demanding its immediate withdrawal.

Attempt to eliminate opposition to illegal state action

The PSM has questioned the intentions of the ruling coalition in the country in the entire affair. It has claimed that, by persecuting the people who questioned the illegal act of the authorities during the eviction of farmers under section 186, the ruling parties and coalitions in the country are basically trying to shut down all attempts to establish transparency in such matters.

In another statement issued on Friday, July 31, S Arutchelvan, deputy chairperson of the PSM, also questioned the timing of authorities’ decision to persecute Jeyakumar and others, hinting at possible political calculations, including the attempt of the ruling party to disrupt the PSM campaign.

The PSM was fighting for the Rahang constituency in the legislative elections for the Malaysian state of Negeri Sembilan, which took place on August 1.

In the elections, the right-wing coalitions Barisan Nasional (BN) and Perikatan Nasional (PN) won a decisive victory. They gained a supermajority of 25 of the 36 assembly seats. The election represents a major setback for the Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim-led centrist Pakatan Harapan (PH), which has been in power in the country since 2022, suffered a major setback.

The PSM has also reiterated that it continues to oppose the evictions and expropriations of land by the authorities in Perak, calling them illegal and a deliberate assault on the livelihoods of hundreds of farmers.

The PSM claimed that the actions such as those in Perak disregard the food security in the country and concerns about the possible environmental impacts of plans to convert the agricultural land into industrial plots.

Instead of going ahead with the project and persecuting the activists, the PSM asked, the government must abandon the economically and environmentally disastrous projects in Perak and work for justice for “farmers and community activists.”

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