In its memorandum to the new higher education minister Zambry Abdul Kadir, the Universiti Malaya Association of New Youth (Umany) called for a technical committee formed in 2018 to abolish Auku to be revived.

Umany vice-president Lai Yue Yi said that the controversial law restricts the freedom of university students and called for it to be replaced with a new Act.

While Zambry’s predecessor, Khaled Nordin, had tabled a bill to amend parts of Auku to give students greater “financial autonomy”, she claimed this proposed amendment is meaningless.

“If we are to observe the bill closely, there are no actual changes in the autonomy given to students,” she said, adding that the changes were cosmetic and merely in the administrative system.

“These amendments are totally insincere and are not acceptable,” Lai, a third-year law student, told reporters after Umany submitted the memorandum.

In its manifesto for the 15th general election (GE15) in November last year, Pakatan Harapan Youth had pledged to repeal Auku. This was also in PH’s manifesto for the 14th general election (GE14) in May 2018.

However, after the unity government was formed, Khaled had said that his ministry did not have any plans to abolish Auku as repealing the Act would interfere with the administration of public universities.

Umany also urged Zambry to withdraw the purported proposed guidelines for concerts and cultural events held at public universities, describing the rules as restrictive and redundant.

It claimed the ministry failed to heed the protests of students toward the alleged guidelines, and even allowed the respective management of universities to come up with their own stricter rules for such events.

“(The guideline) is not justified and the ministry and (various) university administrations are plainly using such rules to further limit the freedom of students,” Lai said.

Khaled previously said he had no knowledge about the proposed guidelines for concerts in varsities, which were purportedly leaked on social media.

While Umany had planned to file a judicial review on the purported guidelines, the then higher education minister described this as a waste of time since it was not approved yet.

Umany’s third demand is for varsities to be allocated more funds to repair or improve campus facilities, citing a lack of maintenance.

Umany was also accompanied by representatives from the International Islamic University Malaysia’s Student Union, Universiti Putra Malaysia’s Gerakan Mahasiswa Maju, and several other student bodies from Universiti Malaya.