The story of the UKM4 Movement retold

The story of the UKM4 Movement retold

By Lim Su Lin

Wednesday, 14 Jan 2015, 07:33 PM

Woon King Chai was one of the UKM4.

In 2010, four Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia students decided to take a drive to Hulu Selangor to observe the by-election being held there. They ended up getting detained and interrogated by the cops for having political posters in their car boot.

Later, they were summoned by the university authorities to attend a disciplinary tribunal for allegedly breaching the University and University Colleges Act.

With their backs pushed against the wall, the four decided to take legal action.

Their battleground would be the Kuala Lumpur High Court, seeking to challenge the constitutionality of Section 15(5)(a) of the Universities and University Colleges Act (UUCA), upon the grounds that it violated their rights as citizens to freedom of speech and expression as enshrined in the Constitution.

Though there were some setbacks, Muhammad Hilman Idham, Woon King Chai, Muhammad Ismail Aminuddin and Azlin Shafina Mohamad Adza eventually succeeded in the courtroom, and all charges against them were dropped by the university.