Sedition Act crackdown ‘ chilling’ free speech

The act outlaws speech deemed to incite unrest or insult Muslimmajority Malaysia’s largely ceremonial Islamic royalty. It can bring three years in jail. International organisations have condemned the crackdown.

Kuala Lumpur, Oct. 19: A Malaysian government crackdown under its Sedition Act is creating a climate of fear in the country, according to rising numbers of critics who say it could stunt a recent flowering in freedom of speech.

About 40 people — mostly Opposition politicians including leader Anwar Ibrahim, but also student activists, lawyers, academics and a journalist — have been investigated, charged or convicted under the act this year, activists say.

The crackdown, accelerating in recent weeks, is widely seen as an attempt by Malaysia’s longtime regime to reverse years of increasingly boisterous speech that has coincided with tremendous electoral gains by the Opposition.

“It has a chilling effect,” said Ibrahim Suffian, head of independent pollster Merdeka Centre, who adds that many Malaysians are beginning to “self- censor”.

“I think we haven’t seen the worst of things.”

The act outlaws speech deemed to incite unrest or insult Muslim- majority Malaysia’s largely ceremonial Islamic royalty. It can bring three years in jail.

International organisations have condemned the crackdown, including a group of United Nations human rights experts who said last week it “threatens freedom of expression by criminalising dissent”.

The US embassy in Malaysia joined in on Friday, saying it had “raised our concerns about the rule of law and human rights with the Malaysian government”. It urged the government “to apply the rule of law fairly, transparently, and apolitically”.

Malaysia has seen years of increasingly open, Internet- enabled criticism of the ruling United Malays National Organisation ( UMNO), which is frequently taint- ed by corruption, rights abuses and other scandals. UMNO tightly tethers traditional media, but its critics have harnessed the power of the unshackled Internet in a country with huge rates of social media use.

Outspoken independent news sites have helped inspire millions to envision a political alternative in a country where power is monopolised by the Malay Muslim majority, to the chagrin of its sizeable religious minorities.

But many fear that flowering is now under threat.

“( The sedition crackdown) has definitely had a negative impact on freedom of speech in Malaysia,” said Andrew Khoo of the Malaysian Bar Council, and “perpetuates a cycle of ignorance and intolerance”.

Mr Khoo helped organise a Kuala Lumpur protest march Thursday by hundreds of lawyers who decried the Sedition Act as “an antithesis of democracy, rule of law, justice and human rights”.

“It’s a huge issue,” said Irin Tan, 22, a law graduate who took part in the march.

“It’s an abuse of human rights. Now we even have to be careful what we put on Facebook.”

Some of the sedition charges are questionable at best, critics say.