(September 21, 1998) The Malaysian government continues to use broad legislation and lengthy, expensive court proceedings to punish its critics and control free speech.
Lim Guan EngOn August 25, 1998 outspoken opposition parliamentarian Lim Guan Eng was jailed after he lost an appeal before the Federal Court. The Court upheld his sentence of two concurrent eighteen-month prison terms for sedition and malicious publishing of false news in connection with statements he made and published in 1995 accusing the Malaysia's Attorney General of mishandling allegations of statutory rape of a schoolgirl made against the Chief Minister of Malacca.
Irene Fernandez
Irene Fernandez, also accused of malicious publishing, has been on trial for more than two years. Fernandez, head of the Kuala Lumpur-based women's rights organization called Tenaganita or "Women's Force," faces the possibility of three years' imprisonment and substantial fines for publishing a short memorandum in July 1995 on abuses in immigration detention centers in Malaysia that the government claimed contained errors. The abuses cited included beatings, sexual assaults, extortion, inadequate food and water, unsanitary toilet facilities and poor medical care.
Param Cumaraswamy
Param Cumaraswamy, a Malaysian attorney who serves as United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Independence of Judges and Lawyers, faces a $25 million defamation suit brought by two Malaysian companies for a 1997 interview with the London-based magazine International Commercial Litigation, in which he commented on his investigations into allegations of corporate interference with the Malaysian judiciary. The companies also requested a restraining order barring him from "speaking or publishing or causing to be published . . . words defamatory of the plaintiffs." The Malaysian government refused to recognize the immunity granted him in his capacity as Special Rapporteur by the United Nations Secretary General. In August 1998 the case was referred to the International Court of Justice.
Murray Hiebert
Murray Hiebert, the Malaysia bureau chief of the Far Eastern Economic Review was found guilty of contempt of court and sentenced to three months in jail on September 4, 1997 for a story he wrote in January which published details of a civil suit brought by the wife of an Appeals Court Judge against the International School of Kuala Lumpur because it dropped her son from its debating team. Hiebert had written about the case in an article "See You in Court" which commented on growing litigiousness in Malaysia. The article noted that the plaintiff was the wife of a judge and that the case appeared to move through the judicial system with unusual speed.