Designer peeved over confiscation of his products

By Yeng Ai Chun, The Star

Designer of satire-laced and funny T-shirts Patrick Saw is not amused that the Home Ministry has confiscated his products again

Officers from the Publication and Quranic Text Control Division raided his kiosk at Central Market at 12.30pm yesterday and took away 83 T-shirts worth RM3,000.

Witty: Saw showing samples of the T-shirts confiscated by the Home Ministry in a raid at his kiosk at Central Market yesterday.

“This is the third time they have raided my kiosk. My worker called me when they came and when I tried to speak to the officer in charge of the raid on the phone, he told me he could not speak English.

“So how is it possible that he can confiscate my T-shirts, which are in English?” said a peeved Saw.

His attention-grabbing T-shirts poke fun at current issues and popular culture.

Saw’s designs include quotes from the V.K. Lingam video clip controversy, caricatures of frogs to depict the party-hopping culture in the political scene, Mao-isms and naughty, tongue-in-cheek quips such as “Just Did It (myself)” accompanied with an image of a sperm.

Saw said that during the first raid in 2005 at Bangsar Village, 36 shirts were taken away with the explanation that the division was researching his designs although no action was later taken.

He said that in the second raid at Central Market in 2007, officers confiscated 74 T-shirts but later returned the non-Mao T-shirts when he threatened to go to the press.

“Now, they took back the T-shirts they have returned to me after the second raid and also my other Mao T-shirts.

“When I asked for guidelines on what can or cannot be used, they can’t tell me. It means that they can just walk into any shop, interpret what they see fit and take the products away. No retailer is safe from them,” he said, calling this as a form of harassment.