Of sodomy, caning and potato chips

Sodomy, caning and potato chips. Which one is more important?

In Malaysia, questions on the constitutionality of the criminalisation of  homosexuality and the punishment of caning are just brushed aside without any known reason.

By Art Harun

Some months ago, my learned friends, Fahri Azzat and Amer Hamzah appeared in the Court of Appeal to argue an appeal. They were representing a man who was found guilty of sodomising a boy. He was sentenced to 60 years of imprisonment and 22 stroke of caning although he maintained that the sodomy acts were consensual.

During the appeal, the two lawyers brought up constitutional issues which have never ever been brought up before. As these issues were never brought up before, it follows that there has never been any judicial pronouncement on those constitutional issues. Those issues are:

• the law provision which makes the act of sodomy is unconstitutional as it transgresses the right to privacy, which is a part of our fundamental liberties;
• the act of  criminalising and penalising the act of sodomy, when it is consensual, amounts to an act of discrimination and inequality, especially against men with homosexual tendency. As discrimination on the basis of, among others, gender, is prohibited by the Constitution, it follows that the criminalisation of consensual sodomy is unconstitutional;
• the caning sentence is also discriminatory in nature as under the law women cannot be caned.

Now, I am not going to touch on whether the arguments were correct or not. But these arguments were taken up for the very first time in our legal history. Furthermore, they were taken up in the second highest Court of the land, namely, the Court of Appeal.

It goes without saying that the Court of Appeal should have seen it fit to hear the arguments in totality. Then it should consider the arguments in depth. Then it should decide on the arguments. After that, it should write a proper and well reasoned grounds for its judgments so that the people know what it was thinking and how it came to such thinking.

That decision would have been one of the most important decision in our Constitutional law. It will serve as a precedent and as a guideline to all of us Malaysians, to the police, the AG Chambers, to legal practitioners, law lecturers and law students alike.

Guess what happened? Fahri was cut short in the middle of his constitutional issues/points. The learned Judge asked him to stop arguing midway through his arguments. He was asked to go to the next point. After hearing the both of them, the Court of Appeal dismissed their case there and then.

Read more at: Of sodomy, caning and potato chips