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Malaysian Blogger On Trial For Sedition
neonsignal writes "Raja Petra Kamarudin, a Malaysian blogger, is in court under the Internal Security Act, under which he can be detained indefinitely. He is well known for his commentary on the Malaysian government, and was arrested after a piece on the murder of a Mongolian woman, who was allegedly killed by two policeman and an associate of the deputy prime minister."
Man, it's about time that countries which value free speech got rid of sedition laws.. so as to send a clear message to countries that don't. What constitutes "sedition" is so vague, anyway, that the laws should be struck on just that basis.
How we know is more important than what we know.
.. I read in the local English news paper about the "victory" of a muslim group that stopped the government changing a women's ID card which had her religion as Muslim.
Since she converted to Christianity she wanted her ID card changed. Yeah, that was big news at the time and gives on an insight into how backwards the place can be.
I say backwards not because it's about religion, but because I can't believe these strangers that don't know her have nothing better to do then demand the government not give her a new ID if she wants one because "if you're Muslim, you're always Muslim"
Posting Anon - I might still need to go back some day.
While I can't speak to the specifics of this particular government, or this particular implementation of the policy, I don't see any reason why sedition on a blog should be treated any differently from sedition on a streetcorner or a radio program or a billboard or a secret revolutionary committee meeting (for some definition of "sedition"; and obviously your mileage will vary based on local customs, values, and priorities).
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
Have the plebes learned? One doesnt mess with those authority types, especially when they revel in power?
Happens here in the USA, happens in UK, happens in Germany, happens in Australia, and damn near everywhere else where there is power at a few people and the will to keep it.
Malaysia is NO different in that regard. We just cover it up a bit better.
Yeah, but I'd rather be in gitmo then a Malaysian prison, or worse its neighbour, a Thai prison. In a Thai prison the guards will give you a chance to run for freedom and get shot rather then spend your sentence there eating cockroaches for nutrition (no I am not exaggerating).
Really? Happens all the time? Interesting. Then I suppose you can cite one instance in the USA, UK, Germany, or Australia where a citizen has been incarcerated for a minimum of two years without trial for a blog post that is critical of the government. Go ahead and include some links under my post. Take your time. I'll wait.
Your post is offensive on multiple levels: It minimizes Kamarudin's plight ("well what else should you expect when you criticize the government?"), but it also makes the claim that *every* other nation has just as bad a civil rights record. I can tell that you've never spent much time in Malaysia.
Some interesting notes.. particularly the USA's Smith Act, which made it a crime to advocate or teach the desirability of overthrowing the United States Government, or to be a member of any organization which does the same.
I'm not a lawyer.. but doesn't the preamble of our own declaration of independence state "it is [the people's] right, it is their duty, to throw off ... Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security"
Man, I don't think I could ever be a lawyer.
I love my compiler too much - logic and consistency is actually enforced.
there is actually a difference between your rights in the say, germany, and malaysia. germans are more free than americans in some freedoms of expression, but don't dare mention nazis, for example, in germany. but in germany and australia and the usa, overall, your rights and freedoms to express views which run contrary to those in power is respected. no really, it is. to conflate that with what goes on in malaysia, and egypt, and iran, and china, and other places, where you can, and will be put in brutal conditions, simply for expressing a political opinion. of course its not pure freedom of expression in the west, but there are orders of magnitude in difference
to talk about your rights to expression malaysia in the same breath as roughly comparable to your rights to expression in germany, is to be woefully ignorant of the reality of the situation. this doesn't mean you aren't free to say lots of critical things in malaysia and get away with it. this doesn't mean you can't get abused by the authorities for simply expressing yourself in germany. but, overall, there are orders of magnitude of difference in the kinds of things you can safely say, and the punishment you face for saying unpopular things
and to not realize that, and to not think the difference is important and large, is pure ignorance on your part
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
What's the problem with al-Jazeera? They're about the only independent Arabic-language station there is, consisting in large part of ex-BBC staff who went their own way after the World Service shut down their Arabic branch. Everyone else is under the thumb of some government or other. Are we not in favour of freedom of speech and information here? Plenty of Arab governments have tried from time to time to silence al-Jazeera, and so have the Americans, occasionally with GPS-guided explosives, yet they're still going - must be doing something right.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
Read his comment at his website: http://mt.m2day.org/2008/content/view/12913/84/
Basically:
"You've insulted Islam, a jailable offense, even though we cannot prove that in the articles that we've printed out. But your style of writing is too sophisticated, and dumb people who are not at the same intellectual level as you could misinterpret what you say, and mistakenly think what you wrote as an insult to Islam. Hence, we are going to send you to jail for insulting Islam."