You will be subjected to DNA Act soon!

The bill on DNA was tabled for second reading in Parliament today. And the debate at policy stage has started. This bill was tabled only last week and it was originally slotted after the debate on Universities and Universities Colleges Act (UUCA). But the sequence for debate in the Order Paper was changed yesterday morning to give priority to the DNA bill to be debated first. The government seems to be bulldozing the bill within this week itself! What is your conclusion? Mine is that the government gave higher priority to "someone" sodomy charges than the future of our university students.

The PM said the bill was nothing to do with any particular case and it was planned many years ago. If we have already waited a few years, why can't we wait another few months? It is very clear the bill needs to be passed as soon as possible as wanted by the government. The Human Rights Committee of the Bar Council presented their views to DAP MPs in Parliament this afternoon and we held a press conference to highlight the matter. The bill is very important in the sense that it might be applied to anyone. If you are detained by the police even on minor offences, you are legally obligated to give your DNA.

Our position is that while we acknowledge the importance of DNA is solving criminal cases, there must be sufficient safeguards in the law to protect everyone and prevent it to be misused by the authorities. In this case, the police is given absolute power to govern the whole thing. The head of the DNA data bank is a police officer, those who take the samples are police officers and they are managing it as well. There is not check and balance in the system. The authencity of the samples cannot even be challenged in court!

And the bill did not go through the process of consultation with the staekholders, NGOs, Bar Council, criminalogists and other relevant experts. Even some backbenchers agreed that there are many loopholes in the bill including the MP for Kinabatangan Bung Moktar. I have suggested that the bill should be referred to a Parliamentary Select Commitee so that a nationwide public hearings can be held to obtain feedbacks from all stakeholders to ensure a proper bill can be presented to the Parliament which take into considerations the views of the civil society.

Here are some of the concerns raised by the Bar Council:

1. There are no safeguards in relation to the storage and testing of DNA samples and for DNA profiles as well as how they are to be handled. No regulations were prescribed.

2. No provision for the accused to do his or her own independent DNA test which means that the accused have no way of testing the authenticity of the DNA sample claimed to be his or hers.

3. Categories of persons from whom samples may be taken from are to arbitrary and wide meaning that regardless of whether or not one is being investigated for an offence, DNA sample can be extracted from them.

4.Criteria and power safeguards are lacking in relation to suspected and convicted persons rendering it susceptible to manipulation

5. Privacy rights is illusory and those who refuse to provide samples will be subject to punishment and criminalisation

6. The bill would mean that those who have not been charged or convicted prior to the passing of the bill would be affected by it

7. Destruction of samples should not only be permissive but mandatory after a certain period of time as this provision will leave the head of the DNA databank discretionary powers to do anything with it.

8. Clause 18 of the bill gives no assurance that the extracted DNA sample is not to be used and stored somewhere else after it has been used for a particular case.

9. Clause 24 of the bill states that the extracted samples are conclusive evidence which means that the court and the accused have no authority to question the process of the DNA profiling.

10. Without proper DNA data protection laws, the power to export DNA samples to foreign law agencies should be curtailed all together..