In rare march, lawyers press Putrajaya to show door to Sedition Act

By admin-s On Oct 16, 2014

(MMO) – “You cannot have a law which you have actually slated for repeal, then being used – as it is now – to the hilt”

Malaysian lawyers will trade the courtroom for the streets today, in an uncommon march by the legal profession to demand Putrajaya honour its two-year old pledge to repeal the Sedition Act 1948.

The rare spectacle is set to add to mounting pressure on the government to abolish the colonial-era law whose use in an ongoing crackdown has drawn criticism from both local and international groups including the United Nations.

Christopher Leong, who heads the Malaysian Bar that represents 16,000 lawyers in peninsular Malaysia, pointed out that the prime minister himself has asked moderates to speak up instead of ceding public space to extremists.

“This walk by the Malaysian Bar is part of our response to that call by the prime minister for moderates to stand up and speak out,” Leong said in an interview with local radio station BFM yesterday, adding later that the professional body believes that the national leader was right to decide to pledge the abolition of the law.

In 2012, Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak vowed to repeal the Sedition Act 1948 and replace it with national harmony laws as part of his legal reforms to provide Malaysians with greater civil liberties.

But the move has since run up against resistance from conservative Malay-Muslim groups, who contend that eliminating the law would remove restrictions on alleged demands to do away with a host of constitutional provisions, primarily those concerning Bumiputera privileges.

When explaining the need for the Malaysian Bar’s “Walk for Peace and Freedom” this morning, Leong said the Sedition Act sweeps “important social issues” under the carpet instead of allowing Malaysians to freely discuss and learn to grow, saying that such matters would then “fester” in society and turn “rotten”.

Inherited from British colonialists, the Sedition Act 1948 criminalises speech that “excites disaffection” against the government, but its broadly-defined terms allow it to be wielded against virtually all forms of dissent.

The Bar’s vice-president, Steven Thiru, called the Sedition Act an “obsolete” law that represses free thought, and highlighted the fact that Putrajaya has used the decades-old law far more often than ever before since declaring its intention to repeal it.