Oh yes, it is that easy! They don’t take the whole bunch of course but just do it to a few to make a point. How do you and your family feels if you are among the unfortunate few? That is all it takes.

In the case of Nathaniel Tan, I am not sure who could claim victory for his release – human rights activists who were a little too eager to make a martyr out of this young lad who by their activities condemned Nathaniel to four days in remand instead of two perhaps, or the politicians.

Whoever is responsible for Nathaniel’s detention must have figured out that the arbitrary arrest of this individual would send shock waves through the entire blogging community. They could always rely on human rights activists to do their dirty job for them – which was what happened.

The real victim really is Nathaniel and family members who have had to appeal to human rights activists to cancel their candle light vigil so he could be released earlier.

First you gotta know that the police are not free to do as they please. Procedures are all laid down in detail in the country’s Criminal Procedure Code (CPC). The police has to comply with these provisions. Otherwise detention of prisoners would be illegal – meaning they can be freed given access to counsel who knows what to do.

The U.S. Department of State Report on Malaysia refers to “…in general police practice is in accord with legal provisions concerning detention.”

Nathaniel’s detention is according to procedure laid down under the CPC. You cannot therefore say his detention is illegal. You can say there is evidence of abuse of the law. The remand period of three to four days are routinely granted by magistrates who are prosecution minded (more so than a judge because they are usually recent graduates who are just beginning their career in the judiciary) to the police who are charged with investigation. Except in the case of poor Nathaniel they have no intention of charging him with anything! The detention is the punishment.

Why do they want to punish poor Nathaneil – that soft-spoken, honest and God fearing and church going individual? His link to the opposition party PKR only provides the excuse rather the reason for his detention.

The real reason, I respectfully submit, is to frighten bloggers who paddle trash, libel and slander to the public. The message is clear. If they can do that to a young and innocent God fearing law abiding individual like poor Nathaniel who probably would have difficulty in stomping an ant, imagine what they could do to the rest of the bunch.

It is like a kid…u keep on scolding the kid not to do this, or that….but they never listen. I am exhausted just reading the materials….dont know how Kit has the energy to keep fighting a losing battle.

These bastards dont even show any respect to senior MP’s in parliament. They act like a bunch of retards. I bet most of these retards would be failures if they were running companies…..well actually, indirectly they are running the companies and this is the main reason i dont invest in Malaysia. These bastards manipulate everything.

You do not achieve real, permanent and long term results by throwing money at the problems.

Neither do I think that the ulterior motive is primarily to intimidate dissent and a threat to all bloggers in the Malaysian blogosphere because if that were so, RPK and Malaysia Today would be a better candidate than Nathaniel Tan!

It is more likely the arrest of Tan is substantially to find out only who are the person or persons behind the anonymous website against Johari which explains why RPK is spared – because his postings are exculpatory in this respect notwithstanding they may be incriminatory in other respects to all other powerful politicians……..

If allegations that the anonymous website posting the corruption allegations against Johari could originate from within the police itself (or rather certain sections within) were true, why would one section of the police investigate themselves in another section?

Which of course leads us to the next question – if certain sections within police are not prepared to investigate other sections in relation to who was responsible behind the anonymous website, why the fishing expedition and crackdown on PKR and Nathaniel Tan?

It cannot be due to the superimposed photograph of “a romantic evening that the deputy premier would prefer to forget” that Tian Chua, PKR’s head of publicity ill advisedly posted – because the only serves to remind the public that there are many ill wishers out there that desire to malign Najib without cause.

Maybe because they (PKR) have their sources within the power structure: you would remember they could get their hands on the Litrak Concessionaire Agreement and publish it notwithstanding the OSA.

Besides PKR, unlike RPK, has a political agenda and being Malay majority based with a supposedly multiracial platform is a political rival and threat to the ruling party and its defacto leader Anwar has proven fearless in expose, unrestrained in pulling a rabbit out of the hat just before the coming general elections.

In the premises there are likely motives linked tio power play behind the whole episode which are unlikely just to intimidate dissent and threaten all bloggers.

It is not so easy to threaten bloggers or to stamp out dissent when a country embraces the Internet like the way Malaysia does and when so many politicians and cronies benefit from ICT projects to ostentatiously make an “e-government”.

“…in general police practice is in accord with legal provisions concerning detention.”

How do you view Nathaneil’s detention? How could his arrest and detention be seen as arbitrary when they acted within the Criminal Procedure Code?

” Police may request a magistrate to extend the period of remand without charge for up to 2 weeks. After this extension, the police, if they wish to hold the suspect, must charge him and seek an order of detention from a magistrate. In some cases, police have released suspects under remand and quickly rearrested them on new but similar charges. However, in general police practice is in accord with legal provisions concerning detention.

Police may deny prisoners under remand access to legal counsel and routinely they do so. During this period of remand, police also may question suspects without giving them access to counsel. Police justify this practice as necessary to prevent interference in ongoing investigations. Judicial decisions have upheld this practice. Defendants’ advocates claimed that the lack of access to counsel seriously weakened defendants’ legal rights.”

Your thoughts??

I won’t say he did a great job, but he definitely did better than Badawi. Prime Minister? More like PUPPET MINISTER! A puppet which has all strings tied to each an every UMNO members.

UMNO will say Badawi is better than Dr. M cause UMNO members can do what they want under Badawi.

Don’t get me wrong, Badawi perhaps is a kinder person compared to Mahathir. But it doesn’t matter how kind you are, as a leader without power, you are a useless leader.

Kudos to you Kit as Leader of the Opposition for seeing through the smokescreen and in being able to see the wood from the trees!

The crime is in the detention.

Please cut and paste the relevant section of our CPC so that we could debate on whether the police has complied with the law in remanding Nathaniel Tan.