| Yang Berbahagia Dato' Ambiga Sreenevasan |
|
|---|---|
| 24th President of Malaysian Bar Council | |
| In office March 2007 – March 2009 |
|
| Deputy | Mr. Ragunath Kesavan |
| Preceded by | Mr. Yeo Yang Poh |
| Succeeded by | Mr. Ragunath Kesavan |
| Chairperson of Bersih 2.0 | |
| Incumbent | |
| Assumed office 2011 |
|
| Preceded by | BERSIH 2007 |
| Chairperson of Bar Council Orang Asli Committee | |
| Incumbent | |
| Assumed office 2010 |
|
| Director of Securities Industry Dispute Resolution Centre | |
| Incumbent | |
| Assumed office 2011 |
|
| Executive Committee of Women’s Aid Organisation | |
| Incumbent | |
| Assumed office 2009 |
|
| Personal details | |
| Born | 1956 |
| Nationality | Malaysian |
| Relations | daughter of Dato' Dr G. Sreenevasan |
| Alma mater | University of Exeter, England LLB 1979 |
| Occupation | lawyer |
| Award(s) | Darjah Dato' Paduka Mahkota Perak (DPMP), 2008 [1] |
| International Women of Courage Award, 2009 | |
| Honorary graduand of University of Exeter, 2011-12 | |
| Honorary doctorate in Law of University of Exeter, 2011 | |
| Legion of Honour, 23 September 2011[2][3] | |
Dato' Ambiga Sreenevasan (born 1956) is a Malaysian lawyer who served as the President of the Malaysian Bar Council from 2007 to 2009. She is a former student of Convent Bukit Nanas and served as the Head Prefect in 1975.
Dato’ Ambiga has been a practising Advocate and Solicitor since March 1982. She is a founding partner of Sreenevasan, Advocates & Solicitors.
She was also a panelist of the Kuala Lumpur Regional Centre for Arbitration under the Malaysian Network Information Centre Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (“MYDRP”) from 2006–2009. She was Chairperson of the Intellectual Property Sub-Committee of the Bar Council from September 2005 – March 2006. She was the Vice President of the Malaysian Intellectual Property Association in 2002.
Currently, Dato’ Dr. Ambiga is a Mediator on the Panel of the Bar Council, Malaysian Mediation Centre. She is also Co-chairperson of the Bar Council Committee on Orang Asli Rights and a member of the Executive Committee of the Women’s Aid Organisation. She is a member of the Malaysian Intellectual Property Association, the International Association for the Protection of Intellectual Property (AIPPI), as well as the Asian Patent Attorneys Association (APPA). She also heads Bersih 2.0, a citizen’s movement for free and fair elections. She is a Director of the Securities Industry Dispute Resolution Centre. She has been involved in the drafting and presenting of several papers and memoranda on issues relating to the rule of law, the judiciary, the administration of justice, legal aid, religious conversion and other human rights issues.
Dato’ Dr. Ambiga holds a LLB (Hons) from the University of Exeter, England.[4] In July 2011, She was conferred honorary doctorate in law by University of Exeter.[5]
She was one of eight recipients of the US Secretary of State “International Women of Courage” Award in 2009.
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In March 2009, Ambiga became one of the eight recipients of the 2009 Secretary of State's International Women of Courage Award.[6][7] In the ceremony, the United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton commented:
| “ | Ambiga Sreenevasan, has a remarkable record of accomplishment in Malaysia. She has pursued judicial reform and good governance, she has stood up for religious tolerance, and she has been a resolute advocate of women’s equality and their full political participation. She is someone who is not only working in her own country, but whose influence is felt beyond the borders of Malaysia. And it is a great honour to recognise her and invite her to the podium.[8] | ” |
In July 2011, Ambiga was conferred an honorary doctorate in law by her alma mater University of Exeter. She contributed services to her profession as a lawyer as Ambiga had been vocal during her two-year term as the Malaysian Bar president from 2007 to 2009. She has played an active role in other sectors of the legal profession for almost 30 years including as a member of the Securities Industry Dispute Resolution Centre and speaking out on Malaysian intellectual property protection.[9]
Marc Barety, the ambassador of France to Malaysia, granted the Legion of Honour insignia to Ambiga in 23 September 2011. She was recognised for her contributions to the human rights defense.[2][3]
Ambiga Sreenevasan has stood up for religious tolerance and was the lawyer for Lina Joy in her apostasy case. Ambiga has argued that Article 121(1A) of the Constitution of Malaysia does not deprive Muslims from equality and freedom of religion. All Muslim groups accuse her of disputing Syariah law.[10]
Acting in her capacity as President of the Malaysian Bar Council, Ambiga accepted a memorandum on the formation of an inter-faith commission, which also made 14 demands. Ambiga further held a forum on Article 121(1A) concerning syariah law and the rights of Muslims for freedom of religion, despite objections from conservative Muslim groups.[11]
Elected in March, 2007, Dato’ Ambiga is the second female Bar Council president in that organization’s history. Six months after assuming her leadership, she organized the “March for Justice,” in Malaysia’s administrative capital, calling for judicial reform and investigation of a tape allegedly showing a key lawyer fixing judicial appointments and judges’ case assignments. Her public actions, and an intense lobbying campaign, led to a Royal Commission and a finding of need for corrective action.
Dato’ Ambiga has also consistently supported the rule of law during her tenure, condemning the politically-motivated arrests of two journalists, and the government’s banning of an ethnic Indian activist group and arrest of its members.
Dato’ Ambiga’s most controversial work is in the areas of religious freedom and women’s rights. She has assertively confronted sexism in Parliament, taking her case directly to the public when necessary. “Gender equality is a responsibility of all Malaysians,” she wrote in a press release that protested a politician’s patronizing remarks. She successfully fought to amend Malaysia’s Federal Constitution to ensure that women’s testimony would carry equal weight to men’s in Shari’a courts. She continues to fight for the religious freedom of women who convert to Islam upon marriage. Under current law, these women are not allowed to return to their original religions on dissolution of the marriage, regardless of the reason for its termination.
As a result of her attempts to find legal solutions to issues that continue to generate inter-ethnic tensions and constitutional problems, Dato’Ambiga has received hate mail, death threats, and had a Molotov cocktail thrown at her house. Hundreds of people from religious groups and conservative members of government have protested at the Bar Council building and called for her arrest.[12]
As President of the Malaysian Bar she played a significant role in the establishing of a panel of eminent persons, together with LAWASIA, the International Bar Association’s Human Rights Institute and Transparency International-Malaysia in the year 2008. This panel reviewed the judicial crisis of 1988 and issued a report which was the first of its kind, setting an important precedent for organisations to establish their own panel inquiring into abuses of power.[13]
Ambiga chaired Bersih 2.0, the organisation behind the July 2011 rally in Kuala Lumpur which drew 20,000 people.[14] She summed up the main issues raised by Bersih as "unhappiness... in the Sarawak [election], unhappiness about corruption, [and] unhappiness about the independence of our institutions."[15] She said demands made during the first rally in 2007 have not been addressed, hence the follow-up rally.[16]
Ambiga later said the rally "exploded many myths" in Malaysia, including the notion that people of different ethnic and religious backgrounds could not work together and that the middle class was "too comfortable to step up to the plate."[14]
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