KUALA LUMPUR, May 12 — Pakatan Rakyat (PR) leaders urged today for better enforcement here against pornography, particularly that featuring children, following recent news of Malaysian Nur Fitri Azmeer Nordin’s conviction in the UK.

PAS lawmaker Mumtaz Md Nawi agreed that a special law against pornography should be enacted in Malaysia, saying that such obscene sexual materials “degrades human civilisation”.

“All reasonable human beings will support that (special) law with more integrated agency and power of enforcement. It is a must,” said the leader from the party’s women’s wing.

“Pornography violates human privacy and degrades the human civilisation... it is the private affairs of men and women,” Mumtaz added.

Her allies in PKR and DAP, however, said there was no need for fresh legislation as current laws are sufficient to deal with crimes involving pornography.

They agreed, however, that local enforcers here must pay better attention to such offences.

“In all honesty, we need a more holistic solution in dealing with such a complex problem afflicting so many worldwide. I do not believe in purely legislative means,” said PKR’s Nurul Izzah Anwar.

“We have sufficient laws but enforcement seems problematic. Why do rapists keep getting away, whilst their victims are numbering?” the PKR vice-president asked.

DAP’s Hannah Yeoh echoed Nurul Izzah’s view, saying that there were “more than enough laws in Malaysia” and the existing ones just needed to be better enforced.

“If we need special laws, it should be laws to enhance the protection of children so that kids are protected from sexual exploitation and that includes child pornography,” the Selangor Speaker said.

Last Sunday, a women’s wing under Pertubuhan Ikram Malaysia (Ikram) urged Putrajaya for a special law against pornography at a launch of their anti-pornography campaign.

Nur Fitri, who was studying on a scholarship under Majlis Amanah Rakyat (MARA) at Imperial College London, was recently sentenced to 10 months’ jail for possessing over 30,000 videos and photographs of child pornography when the police raided his home in London last November.