Kuala Lumpur: Malaysians suffered a decline in their freedom to be safe from their government in 2023, according to a global rights monitor that found them to be at increased risk of being persecuted or worse by authorities.
According to the Human Rights Measurement Initiative’s (HRMI) Index Right Tracker 2024, the rights to freedom from extrajudicial execution fell to 6.8 out of 10 in 2023, compared to 7.5 in 2022, following a steady increase since 2019.
“Malaysia’s safety from the state score of 5.8 out of 10 suggests that many people are not safe from one or more of the following: arbitrary arrest, torture and ill-treatment, forced disappearance, execution, or extrajudicial killing.
“For civil and political rights, we do not have sufficient data across East Asia and Pacific countries to allow for a regional comparison. However, compared to the other countries in our sample, Malaysia is performing close to average on the right to be safe from the state,” it said in the report.
There were four grades in the HRMI tracker: very bad, bad, fair and good.
Under the section of the Safety from the State, there were five categories: arbitrary arrest, forced disappearance, death penalty, extrajudicial execution and torture and ill-treatment.
According to the information gathered from human rights practitioners, Malaysia scored seven out of 10 on the rights to freedom from forced disappearance in 2023.
As for the arbitrary arrest, Malaysia scored an inconsistent pace from 2019 (6.1) before dipping to 5.8 in 2020 and back to 6.1 (2021), gradually went down to six in 2022 and slipped to 5.2 over 10, last year.
While the right to freedom from the death penalty remained unchanged for the past five years at 10 out of 10.
Malaysia recorded a steady pace for the past five years which was 5.6 out of 10 in 2023 compared to 5.5 over 10 in the previous year for the rights to freedom from torture and ill-treatment.
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