By Debra Chong The Malaysian Insider May 08, 2011
GEORGE TOWN, May 8 — Bishop Antony Selvanayagam (left) said Utusan Malaysia lied about the Penang Catholic Church’s role in an alleged plot to make Malaysia Christian, adding he will consult a lawyer to discuss legal options against the Umno newspaper.
The cleric said neither he nor the Catholic Church were aware of any Christian meeting taking place in Penang as reported by the Malay newspaper, which also said yesterday the meeting was to discuss changing the country’s highest law to put a Christian in place of a Muslim as prime minister.
“That report is not true. No such conference took place in any Catholic church or facility here. As bishop, I would know,” he told The Malaysian Insider when contacted last night.
“That is false reporting,” Selvanayagam said, adding that neither Utusan nor any other person, apart from The Malaysian Insider, had contacted him to verify the report before its publication or since.
Asked if he planned to take action against Utusan Malaysia, he said, “Immediately, I would not be able to say. I would need to consult the Catholic Church and my legal advisor.”
In the front-page article headlined “Malaysia negara Kristian? (Malaysia a Christian country?), the Malay daily reported that “Malam ini pula akan diadakan satu majlis di Pusat Kristian (Katolik) Pulau Pinang di sini dan satu ceramah perdana pula dianjurkan esok. Pertemuan itu dikatakan dianjurkan setiap tahun”.
[In English: “Tonight there will be a function at the Penang Christian Centre (Catholic) here and the inaugural lecture will take place tomorrow. The convention is organised every year.”]
The National Evangelical Christian Fellowship (NECF) has clarified that the meeting reported by Utusan is the Unashamedly Ethical Conference it has co-organised with another group, Marketplace Penang, and two others, including Global Day of Prayer and the Penang Pastors Fellowship.
The NECF stressed that it was not a religious event and the convention was aimed at increasing Christian awareness of social ills, such as corruption, and finding ways to tackle them.
Selvanayagam, who has been bishop since 1980, also dismissed allegations connecting the Catholic Church to a political conspiracy to make Christianity the country’s official religion.
“As far as the Catholic Church is concerned, we are not involved,” he said, and strongly opposed attempts by Muslim groups to drag the Church into the controversy by raising the issue of the Herald’s court case on “Allah”.
Several Muslim organisations, including right-wing Malay rights group Perkasa, have lodged police reports after reading the Utusan report, which was based entirely on allegations by several anonymous bloggers known to be pro-Umno.
The bloggers have accused the DAP of sedition in an alleged conspiracy with Christians to change the country’s highest law to put a Christian in place of a Muslim as prime minister.
To back up their allegation, the bloggers pointed to a grainy photograph showing what they described to be a secret pact between the DAP’s Jelutong MP and pastors at a closed-door dinner party in a Penang hotel on Wednesday.
The DAP has vehemently denied the allegations and its secretary-general, Lim Guan Eng, has directed its members to file police reports to counter them.