Sabah, Sarawak Churches stand firm against hudud

The Kuching Ministers’ Fellowship says implementing hudud is tantamount to re-negotiating the Federal Constitution.

KUCHING: The Kuching Ministers’ Fellowship (KMF), a network of church pastors and leaders in Sarawak, has expressed solidarity with the Sabah Council of Churches which issued a statement on March 27, 2015 on Kelantan’s hudud Enactment.

Chairman of the KMF, Pastor Daron Tan, said that Sarawak Churches were also deeply concerned over the passing of the Kelantan Syariah Criminal Code II Enactment 1993 (amendment 2015) on 19 March 2015.

“The introduction of hudud law was a fundamental breach and deviation from the expressed commitment to complete religious freedom, a key term underpinning the Malaysia Agreement signed in July 1963 between the United Kingdom, North Borneo, Sarawak, Malaya and Singapore.”

Pastor Tan added that the original basis upon which Sabah and Sarawak had entered into a Federation with Malaya has been broken in a very fundamental way. “The recently-passed Kelantan hudud Enactment was in direct contradiction to the aspirations of our founding fathers to keep the Federation secular as evidenced in several historical documents that explicitly state this.”

Pastor Tan went on to call on all Christians in Sarawak to stand firm against any fundamental shift in the way the country’s laws affect them.

He further called on the government to make all efforts to maintain the Federation as a secular one in which all religious faiths could co-exist, and flourish together.

He urged lawmakers across the political divide not to pass any legislation that changed the foundations laid by the founding fathers.

The criminal justice system remained in the Federal List and was part of the entire constitutional package embodied in the Ninth Schedule of the Federal Constitution, he pointed out. “Any fundamental change to this package, changes the very basis upon which the Christians in Sarawak also agreed to Federation and was tantamount to re-negotiating the Federal Constitution.”