On the way to Mersing, I have learnt of two latest victims in the crackdown of the sedition dragnet against dissent and criticism, which have put Malaysia back on the radar of unfavourable international media attention, this time for high-handed, undemocratic and discriminatory use of repressive colonial laws against freedom of speech and expression.
The two latest victims are a lawyer and an Opposition political leader.
The first is Edmund Bon, currently overseas but who is being called up by the police for sedition for comments he made in a news article in The Malaysian Insider in January on whether non-Muslims should adhere to a fatwa and the second is another lawyer but who is also the Johor PKR vice chairman Hassan Karim, whose laptop and mobile phone were seized by the police in his Pontian home this afternoon in an ongoing sedition probe against him.
They join a lengthening list of Pakatan Rakyat Members of Parliament and State Assemblymen like Teresa Kok (DAP – Seputeh), Khalid Samad (PAS – Shah Alam), N. Surendran (PKR – Padang Serai), Tian Chua (PKR – Batu), RSN Rayer (DAP – Seri Delima, Penang), academician Azmi Sharom, journalist Susan Loone, activists Safwan Anang and Ali Abdul Jalil, preacher Wan Ji Wan Hussein and religious teacher Abu Bakar Baikalani Abu Hassan who have been hauled to court under the repressive colonial law of Sedition Act.
Two days ago, former Prime Minister Tun Mahathir called the Malays “lazy”, “unashamed of being failures” and accused them of “lacking integrity in handling money” and even suggested that they are petty thieves.
DAP and Pakatan Rakyat leaders would have been arrested and hauled to court under the Sedition Act if they had said what Mahathir said two days ago.
In fact, without having to refer to Mahathir’s latest diatribe against the Malays, Mahathir and many UMNO Ministers and leaders (including Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak) would have been arrested and hauled to court for sedition based on their past speeches and statements if the current sedition blitz had not been afflicted by the sins of discriminatory bias and malicious/selective prosecution.
I need only give one example.
When I contested in Gelang Patah in the last general elections in May last year, Mahathir made the preposterous, false and vicious accusations that
• I contested in Gelang Patah to cause a confrontation between the Malays and Chinese in Johore as I wanted the Chinese in Johore “to dislike and hate the Malays”; and • that DAP rejected the concept of Malay/Chinese/Indian power-sharing as the Chinese want to oust the political power of the Malays.
These were not only downright lies, but utterly irresponsible, reckless and malicious aimed at inciting racial ill-will and hatred among the races, and are many more times “seditious” compared to those made by those who are currently the victims of the sedition dragnet launched by the authorities.
I am not suggesting that Mahathir and UMNO Ministers and leaders should be arrested and hauled to court for sedition, but Malaysians are entitled to know the reason for the sedition blitz against dissent and criticism when Mahathir and UMNO Ministers and leaders had been guilty of even greater “sedition”!
It is time for rationality to return to Malaysia and I call for an immediate halt to the sedition dragnet against dissent and criticism and withdrawal of all sedition charges as the country’s longest-serving Prime Minister, Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad and many UMNO Ministers and leaders should be the first to be hauled to court for sedition if the current sedition blitz is not afflicted by the sins of discriminatory bias and malicious/selective prosecution.
(Speech at the Mersing DAP Branch anniversary dinner on Friday, 12th September 2014)
Lim Kit Siang