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."

Hmm.. Sedition

[Creepy Crawler]

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.

Re:I call bullshit.

[owlnation]

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.

Granted, not specifically two years (maybe, I haven't checked) and not for a blog post, however people in the early 70's in the UK were indeed incarcerated on a ship on a lake in Northern Ireland for long periods without trial. Read up on Internment, and then come back and call us all paranoid. The UK categorically does NOT have the right to freedom of speech. And in the UK you do NOT have the right to remain silent, since remaining silent can be construed as an admission of guilt in UK law.

Re:trial shmial

[Bryansix]

He's lucky he survived having two 500 pound bombs dropped on the house he was in. He WAS involved with the militants who attacked and killed two Afghan fighters and then opened fire on the US troops outside.

Also I don't think you understand what extradition means. You ask for extradition when you want to try someone in your own country. Canada doesn't want to put him on trial. They want to repatriate him whatever that means.

Re:Fuck "sedition"

[slughead]

We've had one [wikipedia.org] since 1940. Thank you, FDR!

It gets even better

[the_B0fh]

Read his comment at his website: http://mt.m2day.org/2008/content/view/12913/84/ [m2day.org]

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."

Re:When in Malaysia..

[Chicken_Kickers]

O.k. I'm a Malaysian (Malay) and I consider myself to be quite progressive in my views. Yet, what the rest of the world does not realise is that Malaysia is sitting on a highly unstable racial powder keg. It's like a bad Tolkien-knockoff fantasy kingdom. We have the Malays who are something like the Hobbits in temperament, the Chinese who are like Dwarfs and the Indians who are just unpredictable. The Malays rule the country, the Chinese controls the economy and the Indians corner the legal and medical professions. It has been like this since the British dramatically changed the demographic from almost all Malay to something like 65% Malay, 26% Chinese, Indian 8% in less than 100 years. It didn't help that the British used divide and conquer to keep everyone in check, by assigning roles to each race. The end result is that each race wants to keep their identity, religion and language intact. Keep this in mind when you read anything about Malaysia. Malays by history and by law, are Muslims and it is firmly tied to our identity. This is why there is such a big hue and cry over the case that the AC mentioned as it is perceived more as a slap to the racial identity, than just to the religion. To Malaysian's credit, we managed to live together for 50 years, barring several flare ups. We did this by very carefully tip-toeing around controversial issues and making deals and compromises between the major races. Undeniably, this means that many issues have been swept under the rug but progress has been made. Unfortunately, many people, like the blogger mentioned (who is a Malay) are impatient and want change NOW, without realising the inherent instability of the country. My view is that change, towards a more liberal political and social environment is inevitable as the country matures but we must do it slowly and with deliberation.

Re:When in Malaysia..

[TheLink]

There was a higher percentage of chinese during the time of British (before 1957), compared to now[0].

In the 1980s the Malaysian Government started encouraging large numbers of Indonesians to come over and become "Malays". Tons promptly came over, got Malaysian citizenship, but continued behaving like Indonesians instead of Malays (the Malays themselves tell me those aren't Malays, I dunno what do you think?).

That plus the dwindling birth rate of the Chinese (and Indians?) has led to the 65% Malay ratio.

It's interesting that those Indonesians get to be considered "Sons/Princes of the Soil" (bumiputera) whereas the Chinese who have been around for generations (especially in Malacca and Penang) are in practice still considered squatters and "immigrants" by the political leaders (ironically some of them "Malays" whose grandparents were foreigners).

It seems Indonesian terrorists can easily get Malaysian citizenship[1], whereas it's hard for decent professionals from other countries to do so. In other countries like Australia - you get extra "points" if you are a plumber or in some other desirable profession. In Malaysia it almost seems as if you get extra points if you've blown up a church or are a terrorist leader. If instead you've trained the Malaysian badminton team to win world championships, you can't even get a permanent residentship [2].

I know someone who is legally a bumiputera in Sarawak, but in practice is not considered bumiputera in Peninsular Malaysia - when he applied for some privileges the bureaucrats said he had to convert to Islam first. He basically told them to shove it.

As for Islam being firmly tied to Malay identity. Seriously look at Malay culture - look at the _Malay_ style clothes the Malay ladies were wearing before the wave of Islamization in the 70s and 80s, go ask your older relatives on Malay fashion in the 40s and 50s. Tapai is as alcoholic as beer and it's been part of Malay culture for a long time (centuries?), so much so that it's politically incorrect to make it haram (and thus change Malay weddings and kenduris a bit ;) ). Many Malays are now blindly switching to Arab culture and thinking that's Islamic culture.

BTW I know a Malay Christian who was detained under the ISA in 1987[3] - AFAIK he didn't do anything dangerous to the country. He's a rather jovial and even-tempered guy. Not someone who would wave a keris around and say inflammatory things.

Malaysians have lived together mostly in peace all these decades DESPITE the meddling of the politicians. The ruling government is the one stirring things up and doing the divide and conquer (yes the British did it, but the ruling government is doing it too).

Recently the Malaysian Government has used the ISA to detain a reporter who correctly reported inflammatory remarks made by a politician in the ruling party, instead of the politician himself[4], and used the ISA to detain a politician in the opposition party instead of the reporters/editors allegedly misreporting her remarks[5].

Did RPK (the infamous blogger) say anything that would cause large numbers of people be angry at large numbers of people? No just large numbers of people angry with their "leaders" (and in most cases justifiably so).

The Gov also has spent their time trying to jail another blogger who tried to get people to post images of the Malaysian flag upside down on the web as a sign of distress, instead of dealing with real problems like corruption.

The present leaders are the ones who have been making inflammatory remarks, and who have created a immigration system that gives terrorists citizenship (go figure how destabilizing that is).

Back in the 1969 race riots it was also the politicians who started it.

Now that the ruling party has lost its 2/3rd majority (and thus lost some power), I think it's time for the Malaysian voters to have their turn at divide and conquer - dividing and conquering the politicians.

BTW the NEP while rather flawed has done some