Sunday, September 28, 2008

In praise of ... Raja Petra Raja Kamarudin

In praise of ... Raja Petra Raja Kamarudin
29 Sept, 2008

The Guardian, UK: If jailing bloggers has become the latest way repressive regimes cope with the blogosphere, Malaysia has taken this trend one step further this week.

They served their highest-profile anti-government blogger, Raja Petra Raja Kamarudin, with a two-year detention order, removing him from the oversight of the courts.

It is no small source of shame that the law they are using to detain him without charge is a legacy of British colonial rule against the communist insurgency. Raja Petra, who edits the Malaysia Today website, has had several brushes with the law.

He was charged in May this year with sedition for alleging that a senior government minister was linked to the murder of a Mongolian model who was pestering him for money after he ended their affair. After his release on bail, he was detained again under the same draconian Internal Security Act on September 12 for "insulting Islam".

Blogging from his cell, Raja reported that his special branch interrogators admitted they found that none of his articles had insulted Islam. They told him his style of writing was so sophisticated that his readers could possibly misinterpret what he was trying to say.

To anyone outside the Malaysian government it is obvious who this blogger is: a well-informed critic of a corrupt regime. The renewable detention order is a way of putting him beyond the reach of the courts, where the specious actions against him can be exposed for what they are.

As he says himself, "heads they win, tails I lose".

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