So folks.... be careful with what you write nowadays

Original Article : Malaysia amends law to hold publishers responsible for user comments (Clickable link)

Malaysia amends law to hold publishers responsible for user comments

Added 6 hours ago by Emily Tan , Be the first to comment

Sedition Act now affects publishers like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Google, but many don't believe the Malaysian government is intent on targeting international or corporate players.

News

inShare8

UN says laws greatly restrict human right to free speech

In a move The Economist has described as ‘thuggish’ the Malaysian government strong-armed a series of bills through in the past month that greatly impede the right to free speech for the country's citizens. The worst of the lot are arguably the Prevention of Terrorism Act, which allows subjects to be detained indefinitely, and amendments made to the Sedition Act.

For the marketing and communications industry, the changes that bring the biggest chill of apprehension are the those made to the Evidence Act and the Sedition Act.

"The amendments to the Sedition Act are tremendously repressive and draconian," commented Ong Kian Ming, member of parliament for Serdang (a Malaysian town) and a member of the Democratic Action Party.

The United Nations has urged the Malaysian government to withdraw the amendments made to the Sedition Act as the laws "curtail human rights". 

Digital News Asia explains these changes as follows:

As noted by [Malaysian] lawyer and Digital News Asia (DNA) columnist Foong Cheng Leong last week, when read with the Evidence Act amendments – the infamous Section 114A – the Sedition Act amendments become more chilling.

 The Sedition (Amendment) Bill 2015 creates liability to ‘any person’ and "thus may include owner, host, editor and subeditor" of "online forums, online news portals, and even Facebook Page/ Group owners," he wrote.

Sections 3 and 4 of the Bill introduce the words ‘caused to be published.’ Under the newly amended Section 4(1)(c) of the Sedition Act 1948, a person who, among others, publishes or caused to be published any seditious publication is guilty of an offence.  

So what does ‘caused to be published’ here mean? It seems to cover a website operator who allows a comment to be published on his website (especially in the case where comments are moderated). This also covers a comment or a posting published on a Facebook page," he added.

Facebook, LinkedIn, Google and Twitter have been quiet on the subject. Requests for comment made to these organisations in the past few days have either gone unanswered, in the case of Google, or have found communication heads unable to comment.

PRWeek Asia emailed Foong Cheng Leong to pose a few more questions:

What power do these amendments give the Malaysian government against the tech giants?

Foong: Our laws may not reach foreign tech giants. However, with the new amendments to the Sedition Act and even under the Communications and Multimedia Act 1998, it is possible to block the websites of these foreign tech giants. 

What could it cost them potentially to keep operating in Malaysia?

Foong: Possible problems: being criminally liable, servers and other electronic devices being seized as evidence, and so on, during investigation. 

 What are their options? Self-monitor like Tencent?

A self monitoring practice is possible but it will be costly and time consuming. Unfortunately, we do not have takedown notice provision (other than under our Copyright Act) or laws to protect intermediaries, hence monitoring is required in Malaysia. 

One possible option is to have their operations moved out from Malaysia which is detrimental to our economy. 

Do you think lobbying will change these amendments?

Foong: Lobbying for laws to protect intermediaries would be recommended. Other than affecting the freedom of expression, it also affects our digital economy. Foreign investors will have to think twice before setting up their operation and putting their servers here in Malaysia. 

The impact to marketing and communications in Malaysia

Most agencies with a presence in Malaysia were unwilling to comment on the record. As one source puts it, "That’s just the problem, the government could choose to take issue with anything we say."

David Lian, general manager of Zeno Group Malaysia, however, was willing to speak on the subject. "Right now, we have clients asking about the implications of these acts, but without details on the government’s plans to implement, you just can’t plan. It is at present a statement of intent. We are advising clients to wait and see."

Lian pointed out that the bill had been tabled in the past, usually just prior to Malaysia’s elections when the government wanted greater control over dissenting voices. In 2008, the government arrested prominent political blogger Raja Petra Kamarudin for posting anti-government comments and in February 2015, the government arrested a cartoonist for a Tweet he made about the controversial Anwar trial.

"Wait and see", is the consensus of industry sources. Most are confident that even if the amendments raise a potential risk for clients, the Malaysian government will not use the law to act against corporate entities. Instead, it will be a weapon against political discourse.

"We’re advising our clients to tighten their policies around community moderation and to be upfront about it," said an agency lead.

"I actually don’t believe this legislation will have much of an impact on corporate communications behaviour in Malaysia," said Bob Pickard, chairman Asia-Pacific of Huntsworth. "The market already has a reputation necessitating calculated restraint in public relations and media relations."

The new laws, Pickard added, may however adversely impact the nation’s marketing industry. "Our craft is at its best when freedom of expression trumps even well-meaning efforts which may have the consequence of stifling creativity or squelching insights and, in so doing, holding back the development of a country’s marketing services industry. My best communications counsel for both clients and  governments is to proactively engage the online public as a source of new ideas to be openly shared."

Mongolian's murder haunts Malaysian elite

Abdul Razak Baginda

Mongolian's murder haunts Malaysian elite

By LESLIE LOPEZ / Kuala Lumpur of The Edge Review

Published on Thursday, March 12, 2015 - 17:43.

Last updated on Thursday, March 12, 2015 - 20:17.

In mid-December 2012, a handful of Malaysia’s top lawyers adjourned for late drinks at a bar in a posh Kuala Lumpur hotel after attending a wedding dinner.

What exactly transpired among the group of friends that evening is now the focus of a nearly two-year probe into charges of misconduct against one of the attendees, who has been implicated in the widely publicised murder of a Mongolian woman nine years ago.

After six months of quizzing a dozen witnesses, including those present at the drinks party, a three-member disciplinary panel of Malaysia’s Bar Council is expected to decide in coming weeks whether Cecil Wilbert Mohanraj Abraham, one of Malaysia’s most senior lawyers, did engage in professional misconduct.

He is alleged to have acted improperly by drafting a private investigator’s sworn statement that government critics claim was part of a conspiracy to limit the fallout from the killing of Altantuya Shaariibuu by two police commandos.

The officers were at the time of her murder members of Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak’s security detail.

Abraham, who declined to respond to questions for this article, has never made any public comment on allegations that first surfaced in late 2012 that he was involved in preparing the statement by the investigator.
Lawyers familiar with the tribunal proceedings say that Abraham has testified in recent months that he was not involved in any way in the making of the statement.

But the tribunal has also heard statements from other lawyers who have insisted that Abraham had privately admitted his role in drafting the sworn statement, which was also the subject of discussion at the mid-December drinks session.

Disciplinary cases are common in the Malaysian Bar Council, which counts close to 15,000 lawyers as members. The Advocates and Solicitors Disciplinary Board – an independent body under the Bar Council empowered to investigate professional misconduct – receives as many as 600 complaints against lawyers annually. These complaints largely involve dishonesty among solicitors who misuse funds belonging to their clients.
Few have attracted the kind of intense public scrutiny as the complaint against Abraham. Here’s why.

For starters, it was the Bar Council itself that lodged the grievance with the disciplinary tribunal demanding an investigation into Abraham.
Then the disciplinary case goes directly to the heart of one of the biggest scandals that continues to bedevil the Najib administration – the murder in October 2006 of Altantuya, a part-time Mongolian translator, whose body was obliterated with hard-to-come-by C4 explosives in a jungle clearing outside Kuala Lumpur.

A one-time political advisor to Najib, Abdul Razak Baginda, admitted to having an affair with Altantuya and was charged with abetting the murder. But he was acquitted without having to present a defence.

Thirdly, there has been renewed public interest in the Altantuya murder in recent weeks. The two police commandos were found guilty of the murder in 2009 and sentenced to death, but their convictions were overturned and they were freed in 2013 over gaps in the evidence. This January, however, Malaysia’s highest court reinstated the convictions.

One of the two convicted killers, Sirul Azhar Umar, was arrested later in January in Brisbane, Australia, after fleeing Malaysia in October, and there is widespread speculation that the rogue officer could shed fresh light into the murder in order to secure asylum and avoid extradition and execution in Malaysia.

In particular, analysts say that Sirul could reveal the identity of the person, or persons, who ordered the two policemen to carry out the murder, an issue that both the defence and the prosecution failed to address in the lengthy murder trial.

Meanwhile, the disciplinary charge against Abraham is another possible window into why Altantuya was murdered.

The following account of events leading to the disciplinary charge and the many twists in the tribunal’s proceedings that have involved Kuala Lumpur’s leading legal lights are based on interviews with lawyers closely tracking the case.

Most of those involved directly in the matter have declined comment on grounds that disciplinary proceeds are held in secret.

The charge against Abraham principally revolves around the affairs of the private investigator P. Balasubramaniam, who died in 2013.

Balasumbramaniam, who had  formerly been attached to the Special Branch division of the Malaysian police, was hired by Najib’s one-time advisor Abdul Razak Baginda to protect his family against harassment and threats from Altantuya.

Balasubramaniam testified in the trial against Abdul Razak and the two police officers in mid-2007. Displeased with the court proceedings, the private investigator signed a statutory declaration, as it is known in Malaysian law, on July 1, 2008, claiming that the police investigations were compromised to protect powerful political personalities.

It included allegations that Najib, who was deputy prime minister at the time, and Altantuya knew each other and had even had an affair. (Najib has always denied ever having met Altantuya).

That statement was made public at a press conference on July 3, 2008, but just a day later, in an astonishing about-turn, the private investigator made a second sworn statement retracting all of his previous claims. He and his family shortly afterwards fled the country and went into hiding.
Balasubramaniam reappeared in November 2009, and in a widely circulated video he recounted how he was forced to sign the second statutory declaration under duress.

He also claimed that he was never introduced to the individual who prepared the second sworn statement and only dealt with businessman Deepak Jaikishan, who coordinated the entire exercise to expunge the damning first sworn statement.

Balasubramiam’s new version of events didn’t amount to much at the time. But it did turn the spotlight on Jaikishan, a businessman with interests in carpet manufacturing who was widely regarded in Kuala Lumpur’s business circles as someone who enjoyed close ties with premier Najib’s family.

Sometime in December 2012, news surfaced that Jaikishan had fallen out with the premier’s family and was facing serious financial problems because of large loans on several property deals that had gone sour.
In what appeared to be an attempt to buy time and also some powerful intervention in his problems, Jaikishan began making public statements backing Balasubramaniam’s claims on events leading to the second statutory declaration.

In several press conferences, Jaikishan acknowledged that he helped facilitate the production of the second sworn statement that Balasubramaniam had said he was forced to sign.

He never publicly identified the author of the second statutory declaration, but there was widespread speculation at the time that Jaikishan was directing the blame at Abraham in private conversations.

Abraham, who started his law career in 1970, is widely regarded as one of the country’s top litigation lawyers. He holds the rare distinction of having acted as counsel for two sitting premiers.

Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew appointed him as lead counsel in the late 1980s when the then premier sued Malaysian Star Publications newspaper group for defamation.

Abraham also acted for Dr Mahathir Mohamad in a 2000 case in which the then Malaysian premier resisted moves by political rival Anwar Ibrahim to have him testify as a witness in the latter’s corruption trial.

A former senior partner of Shearn Delamore, one of Malaysia’s most prestigious firms, Abraham is currently a senior partner at Zul Rafique & Partners, a mid-sized legal firm considered one of Malaysia’s most politically well-connected law outfits.

According to lawyers close to the situation, the Bar Council wrote to Abraham on a number of occasions in January and February 2013 enquiring whether he had any knowledge of the allegations made against him with regard to the preparation of Balasubramaniam’s sworn statement.

They say the response the Bar Council received from Abraham’s solicitors was that their client could not provide any assistance on the matter because of solicitor-client privilege and confidentiality.

Things changed dramatically in mid-March 2013. Balasubramaniam died of a heart attack, and days later lawyer Americk Singh Sidhu told a packed annual general meeting of the Bar Council that he had met Abraham a couple of weeks earlier.

Americk, who had helped Balasubramaniam prepare his first sworn statement on the Mongolian woman’s murder, publicly declared that Abraham had admitted to him that he had drafted the second statutory declaration on Najib’s instructions.

Americk also confessed that he and Abraham had agreed that the matter would remain confidential. But he was forced to break that promise after Balasubraminam’s death.

Abraham denied Americk’s allegations in response to queries from the Bar Council in early April. But that did not stop Bar Council President Christopher Leong from lodging the official complaint against Abraham for professional misconduct a day later on April 4.

The disciplinary proceedings moved at a glacial pace for much of 2013, with Abraham flatly denying Americk’s claims about what was discussed at their meeting.

Sometime in mid-March 2014, the case took a surprising twist when the lawyers acting for the Bar Council in the disciplinary hearing were informed of the drinks session at the Renaissance Hotel in Kuala Lumpur in mid-December 2012 and that Abraham’s alleged involvement in drafting the second sworn statement had emerged as a topic of conversation there.

According to sources familiar with the disciplinary probe, six lawyers were present at the drinks session. Apart from Abraham, the other senior lawyers included Tommy Thomas, a senior constitutional and corporate lawyer; Johari Razak, a partner with law firm Shearn Delamore who is also a brother of premier Najib; Lim Chee Wee, a former Bar Council president and a senior partner of Skrine & Co; and Darryl Goon of Raja, Darryl & Loh, and his wife Foo Yet Ngo, who is a prominent family lawyer.
The sources say that all of the lawyers present have been asked to provide testimony to the three-member tribunal during several closed-door hearings over the past six months.

Sources say that one of the lawyers did acknowledge that conversations with regards to the second sworn statement did take place, the rest informed the tribunal that they could not recall or that they were not aware of any such discussion taking place.

The tribunal is expected to make a decision in coming weeks, which could see either Abraham liberated from the allegations against him or face disciplinary action, which would result in his suspension, or in the most extreme circumstance, an expulsion from the Bar Council.

In the latter case, too, the questions surrounding Malaysia’s most notorious murder scandal of recent years – in particular why the second sworn statement was prepared – will not go away easily.

- See more at: http://www.theedgereview.com/node/1008#sthash.QsEwN2eO.dpuf

The Injustice System of Malaysia

Today is yet another sad sad day for the fellow citizens of Malaysia. A "whistle-blower" is found guilty after pointing out on the truth regarding the so called indelible ink that was used in the last General Election (G.E) 13. The most interesting part about that article.... was that the defence counsel couldn´t attend the proceeding, and the accuser was forced to represent himself! Is this how the law system really works? When your "lawyer" is unable to attend the proceeding, you just force the person to represent himself? It is definitely a clear message sent all across that the courts and the jury and judges have already come to a conclusion of that poor man´s fate! So now instead of correcting yourselves, you decide to disappoint the people of Malaysia by putting out the guilty sentence on him!

When will the people in Malaysia finally have a fair and just government who´s not so dirty till its all over the media?

Article : Found guilty, indelible ink whistle-blower says "see you in Allah´s court"

Found guilty, indelible ink whistle-blower says ‘see you in Allah’s court’

BY MUZLIZA MUSTAFA

Published: 12 January 2015

Royal Malaysian Air Force officer Major Zaidi Ahmad was today found guilty of violating protocol in revealing problems with the indelible ink used in the May 2013 general elections. – The Malaysian Insider pic by Najjua Zulkefli, January 12, 2015.Air Force Major Zaidi Ahmad was today found guilty by a military court of two charges of violating protocol in revealing problems with the indelible ink used in the May 2013 general election.

Asked by the court martial to appeal for a lighter sentence, the 45-year-old Royal Malaysian Air Force officer said he would meet his accusers and judges in the afterlife in "Allah's court".

After pronouncing Zaidi guilty, the panel allowed him to produce a witness to support his appeal for a lighter sentence and gave him time to address the military panel.

Zaidi charged the panel with having a political agenda, and said they were more concerned with "filling their stomachs" than using their heads.

This caused the court to interrupt his speech. As he continued speaking, he was stopped again and told to respect the court.

This prompted Zaidi to end his speech abruptly, telling the court that he had nothing more to say if he was not allowed the freedom to speak.

"I have nothing more to say. Jumpa nanti di mahkamah Allah (meet again in Allah's court)," he said.

Earlier today, the panel court ruled that the prosecutors had managed to establish a prima facie case against Major Zaidi in two out of seven charges made against him.

The panel, led by presiding officer Col Saadon Hasnan, said eight witnesses had been called to the stand since the trial began in May 2013.

“The prosecutors have managed to create a prima facie case against the accused for the second and the third charges and therefore, we found him guilty for the two charges,” said Saadon.

He earlier announced that Major Zaidi will be representing himself in court as the defence counsel ‘could not attend the proceeding’.

“The defence counsel could not attend the court, but the court will still resume,” he said before proceeding to announce the verdict.

Zaidi was found guilty for breaching two standing orders – speaking to the media without the consent of the Defence Ministry, and sharing confidential information with the media without the consent of the Armed Forces Council under Section 50 of Armed Forces Act 1972

Saadon in delivering the decision said that the accused had been given the chance to defend himself, but chose to remain silent.

Prosecutor Rose Annuar Aripin asked the court to make Major Zaidi’s case as an exemplary case for the benefit of all, including those in the Armed Forces.

“He is also one of the top officers in charge of his squadron and therefore he should be punished heavily,” said Rose Annuar.

Rose Annuar added as someone with more than 20 years in the service, Zaidi should be aware of what he was doing and should have been more mature in his actions.

The court adjourned for three hours and will resume at 2pm today where the court will decide on the sentence. – January 12, 2015.