KUALA LUMPUR, Feb 12 — A petition urging the US to make freeing Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim a priority in its foreign policy with Malaysia is not “unprecedented” as the White House took similar steps in the case of Myanmar’s Aung San Suu Kyi, said the former diplomat behind the bid.

John R. Malott, the former US ambassador to Malaysia who launched the petition to the White House on February 10, pointed out that his country has in the past made the release of the Nobel laureate and other non-citizen prisoners a key goal in its foreign affairs.

“Yes, in Myanmar with Aung San Suu Kyi, in Russia with Anatoly Sharansky, in China with a number of people, and other cases. It is not unprecedented,” he told Malay Mail Online in an email interview yesterday.

Malott, who wrote the first petition entry on Tuesday evening, said he woke up yesterday to see that 27,000 individuals had signed it, saying: “I am very confident that we will hit the 100,000 mark”.

Only online petitions that pass 100,000-signature threshold will get an official response from the US government.

While Malott acknowledged the petition will not secure Anwar’s release, he said it was important in diplomatic relations between countries to register concern over issues.

“But the US Government can make it clear to Najib and the Malaysian government at all levels that we are greatly concerned by these developments and by the general suppression of political dissent in Malaysia, such as the increased use of the Sedition Act, which Najib promised to repeal but didn’t,” he said, referring to Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak.

Going about business as usual and failing to address these issues would give the impression that the US government does not care about them, he added.

When asked about the possibility that his petition may be viewed as interfering with Malaysia’s sovereignty or Putrajaya’s administration, Malott pointed out that he was exercising his right as a US citizen to petition the US president and was not writing to Malaysia’s prime minister.

The fact that he was formerly a US diplomat here is “irrelevant” to his rights as an American, Malott said, also saying that he continues to follow developments in Malaysia closely owing to his posting here.

“In the United States, it is very common for former government officials to comment on their areas of expertise,” he said, saying that he wants the Obama administration to voice greater concern of Malaysia’s human rights situation, while also hoping Putrajaya would carry out the political and economic reforms advocated by Anwar and his federal opposition pact Pakatan Rakyat.

At the time of writing, Malott’s online petition to help push for Anwar’s freedom from a five-year jail term for a second sodomy charge has garnered over 40,000 signatures.

When it was pointed out that a counter-petition titled “Respecting the sovereign nation of Malaysia” was started yesterday on the same “We the People” site, Malott said he believes in “free speech, so they have a right to say whatever they want to.”

The counter-petition that claims to be from the “citizens of Malaysia” said it was outraged by the White House’s expression of deep disappointment with Anwar’s conviction on Tuesday, also telling the US government to look at its own human rights record. It has garnered 2,775 signatures.

Malott served as the US envoy here from 1995 to 1998, and is no stranger to Anwar and his family and calls them “good friends”.

While his dealings with Anwar during his tenure as ambassador here were “purely official”, Malott said he later grew close to the Opposition Leader’s family during the latter’s imprisonment more than a decade ago.

“It was only after Anwar was arrested and imprisoned — and I had retired from the State Department — that my wife and I became close to Azizah and the children. We believed that it was important for us to show support for them, both personally and politically, because we knew the truth about what had happened,” he said, adding that his late wife also authored a biography of Anwar’s wife Datuk Seri Dr Wan Azizah Wan Ismail titled “Struggle for Justice”.

“But this is not just about Anwar and my friendship with the family. I really would like to see the Malaysian people living in a genuinely free country,” he said, saying that his support for political freedom here is not a “theoretical” notion, but was about the “real” people he had met here.

The Federal Court on Tuesday upheld the Court of Appeal’s 2014 ruling that had reversed Anwar’s acquittal of sodomising former aide Mohd Saiful Bukhari Azlan, also sentencing him to five years’ jail.