KUALA LUMPUR, Feb 12 — The Human Rights Watch (HRW) today lauded the Attorney-General’s decision to bin the sedition charge against law lecturer Dr Azmi Sharom, saying it represents a glimmer of hope for Malaysia.
HRW’s Asia deputy director Phil Robertson described the decision a “light in a dark tunnel” but asked if this would be followed by more such charges against opposition politicians and activists being dropped.
“The question now is whether that light will grow, or whether it will be snuffed out?” he asked in a statement.
“The Attorney-General should reverse the sedition crackdown, and show he understands how wrong it is to criminalise people just for expressing peaceful political views that disagree with the government,” he said.
Azmi should not have been charged in the first place, Robertson added before urging the AG to drop similar charges against at least two dozen others.
“The AG should immediately drop the sedition cases against the many people hit with charges in 2015, such as cartoonist Zunar, lawyer Eric Paulsen, opposition politician N. Surendran, and more than two dozen others,” he said.
Azmi was charged on September 2, 2014, under Section 4(1)(b) and alternatively under Section 4(1)(c) of the Sedition Act for remarks made in an August 14 news report titled “Take Perak crisis route for speedy end to Selangor impasse, Pakatan told”.
The trial in the Sessions Court only began late last year after the Universiti Malaya law professor sought unsuccessfully to challenge the constitutionality of the Sedition Act, during which his lawyers argued that the law was invalid as it was not passed by the Malaysian Parliament.
Earlier this morning, the AG Tan Sri Mohamed Apandi Ali announced in a statement that the AG’s Chambers has decided to discontinue its prosecution of the law professor.
