The Federal Constitution.

Know your Rights

A bunch of tech-savvy law students are using Facebook, Twitter and other social networking tools on the Internet to raise awareness about the Federal Constitution.

The ten law students have joined the Bar Council's constitutional law committee (ConstiLC) led by lawyer Edmund Bon, and a number of journalists, for its My Constitution Campaign.

Launched last October, the campaign aims at 'empowering the rakyat and creating greater awareness of the Federal Constitution' through advertisements, booklets and a host of other awareness-raising and interest-building programmes.

While some of the students are involved in the task of 'translating' parts of the constitution and shedding it of its more cryptic legal jargon to be incorporated into the pocket-sized 'Rakyat Guides' (RG) planned for publication, some have been tasked with taking their activism online and keeping the discussions alive.

Interviewed by Malaysiakini, fourth year student Yip Xiaoheng said he is among those in charge of updating the campaign's official website.

“We have people on duty to upload articles to make sure that the website is active, and we have a team called the 'activators' to move the campaign online,” he said.

In addition, the students are also kept busy keeping discussions alive on the campaign's Facebook, twitting live updates of their events through Twitter, and uploading videos onto the campaign's Youtube page.

With currently 4,800 fans in its Facebook, the activators are not slowing down. They are even conducting workshops about their campaign in colleges all over the Klang Valley.

“We try to make the campaign as interesting as possible so that people will participate and understand the importance of the constitution to them,” 21-year-old student Joshua Tay said.