 Good evening for those of you who don't know me, I'm Carol Tan, the head of the School of Law. I'd really like to extend a very warm welcome to all of you. I think most of you are our students, but if you're not our students then I hope you will be a student here at some point. Because we have some very exciting programmes run by the School of Law. If you're from Malaysia, well, Slamat Datang and Slamat Sajatra, as this topic tonight is on Malaysia. So, this lecture series was the brainchild of Professor Masud Badarin when he was head of the School of Law some years ago. It was conceived to inspire and encourage our students and that's why we hold it in the first term of each year. Particularly, as some of our students will be new to us and others coming back for their second or third years. Now, this year's inception lecturer is Dr Azmi Sharum. Now, he has a degree from SOAS, he has a PhD from SOAS, which he did under the supervision of Andrew Harding, who left us a few years ago and is now teaching at the National University of Singapore. Prior to his PhD, Azmi studied at Sheffield for his LLB and in what I assume was his attempt to acquire a kind of veneer of respectability, he went on to do his LLM at Nottingham University. If you're in Malaysia, you'll know that that was the traditional choice of the royal families of Malaysia. So, Azmi is currently associate professor at the University of Malaya, Malaysia's oldest university, where he teaches human rights law, international environmental law and conflict of laws. He's also head of the Human Rights Research Group. Now, typical of Azmi's versatility and commitment, he's also the person who looks after mooting at his law school. And for his colleagues, he represents them as the president of the academic staff union of the University of Malaya. Within the ASEAN region, Azmi is part of a network of human rights scholars. But important as these credentials are, I think Azmi himself would say, well, that's all the boring stuff really. Indeed, that's because there is much more to Azmi than his official CV. Like one or two other Malaysian scholars of his generation, Azmi, it seems to me, was simply born to teach. He is, as at home, speaking through a loud hailer, sitting in the square in Kuala Lumpur where independence was proclaimed 60 years ago, expounding on the finer points of the Malaysian constitution as he is teaching students in lectures and tutorials. It's a bit of an understatement to say that Azmi has wide reach in Malaysia. He has long written a regular column, in fact two regular columns in two local daily newspapers in Malaysia. More recently, he took to sitting down in a chair and speaking a monologue as part of short videos on one of the websites of a daily newspaper. Unfortunately, he tells me that due to self-censorship of this particular press, he has stopped doing these monologues. But I believe some of them are still searchable, and so you can watch those at your leisure. He's been called a rock star professor, instantly recognisable, particularly by the young in Malaysia. Indeed, his image adorned a large billboard, and I mean really large, by the roadside very close to the airport last time I travelled through KLIA. I do mean something much bigger than this, for instance. He's well known because he has felt compelled to speak out on issues such as democracy, governance, secularism and race. In other words, all the hot button issues on which rests the future of Malaysia. No introduction to ASMI would be complete without mentioning that in 2014, ending only two years later, he had been under a charge of sedition. The charges were later dropped. In speaking truth to power, ASMI forms part of a continuum of SOAS alumni who have done the same along the world and which will be connected with new generations of SOAS alumni. So, in view of earlier troubles, we are particularly thankful that you are able to join us here this evening. Thank you very much, Carol. Thank you to the school for inviting me. It is an incredible honour, and I don't say that lightly. I know a lot of people say it's an incredible honour, but they don't really mean it because they think they're really cool. But I was totally blown away when I was invited to speak here. It was very unexpected, and when I saw who was speaking before me at the inception lecture, all these QCs and judges, I was, as the saying goes, passing bricks. I'm literally just an ordinary academic, and I feel totally out of my depth. But there is one thing that sets me apart from all these previous luminaries of the legal world, and that is my relationship with SOAS. Now, as Carol says, yes, it's true. I did my PhD here under Andrew Harding, and I was assisted greatly by the generosity of the staff like Lynn Welchman. So I'm a graduate, but my relationship with SOAS is a lot more intimate than that. Many, many years ago, when my father was doing his PhD in SOAS, I was conceived and born. It doesn't stop there because exactly 30 years later, while I was doing my PhD in SOAS, my second son was conceived and born, and I told him in no uncertain terms, I said, boy, we have established a family tradition here. So when you are 30, I expect you to be doing your PhD in SOAS at giving me a grandson. Now, no matter how grand the previous speakers were, I'm quite certain that none of them have their procreation and their procreation activities as intimately linked to SOAS as I have. So I suppose that qualifies me to come and speak here to you today. Now, on to boiling the frog. Now, as you may know that if you place a frog into boiling water, it'll scream and jump out. Well, actually, I'm not sure whether it screams or not because I've never actually put a frog in boiling water, but I presume you will say something and jump out. But if you put a frog in cold water and then slowly boil it, the frog will just cook to death without doing anything because it's cold-blooded and it doesn't know that this is happening to it and it just eventually slowly dies, right? And this is how I feel. This is what I feel is happening in Malaysia. We are slowly being boiled like little frogs because the chipping away of human rights, it doesn't have to happen in a huge dramatic way. It happens bit by bit. And before you know it, it's all gone. And that is my fear about what's happening in my country today. So for this lecture, I shall be examining a few key cases in the last 10 years, just the last 10 years that to me best illustrates this erosion of our human rights. I'll also be looking at some pretty scary legislation as well. But first, a bit of context for those of you who may not be that familiar with Malaysia. Can I have a show of hands, please? How many Malaysians are in this room, actually? All right, about half of you. Now you can just turn off, play with your phones, do your tweets, whatever it is now because you'll be bored with this. For the rest of you, just in case you don't know, Malaysia is a federation of states, 13 states to be exact, and three federal territories. Now don't worry, I'm going to be brief. I'm just going to talk about the legal points, governance points which I think are relevant to my talk. So we are a federation of 13 states, three federal territories, and we follow Westminster parliamentary system because we used to be under the yoke of the British. Except the difference between us and the UK is that we have a written constitution which is supposedly the supreme law of the land, and it has a section called Fundamental Liberties which are supposed to be our rights. I keep saying supposed because you will see that it doesn't really mean very much. Lawmaking is divided between the federal parliament and the 13 various state legislatures. Now what feels can these two legislative bodies make law in is determined by Schedule 9 of our constitution, and there's a list of the areas where parliament can make laws and where the state legislative assemblies can make laws. So it's quite clearly divided. You can make laws in this, we can make laws in that. So that's an important point. Oh yes, one more thing. Article 3 of our constitution says that Islam is the religion of the federation. Now I mentioned this particularly because it's very important. It's a rather controversial provision in the constitution. For some, it justifies their argument that Malaysia is actually an Islamic state, whatever that might mean. I argue there's no such thing. And the reason I say that is because if we look at the preparatory works for our constitution which can be found in the Read Commission report. The Read Commission, by the way, was the body of men who were appointed to help draft our constitution. And in their report where they introduced this article 3 that Islam is the religion of the federation, the key political players of the time, the three political parties which were going to be the rulers at the time who were going, the government in waiting. They specifically said that just because this provision is in the constitution, it does not mean that the constitution is not secular. So that was very, very clearly stated in the preparatory works to our constitution. So for me, the country is a secular country. But we will talk about this a bit more as we go along. Right, any questions? Excellent, just like my class at home. And now on to the lecture. There shall be three main themes. I'm looking at three main themes. The first is democracy as a human right and how it is being disregarded by our judiciary. The second, I will be looking at some internal security laws. And finally, I shall be looking at how religion or more accurately the use of religiosity is eroding our human rights. So these are the three main themes that I shall be looking at. Can I have the next slide please? I've only got two slides. Oh, do I turn it? Oh, sorry. Oh, there you go. There you go. I don't normally use slides. Now, because this is a lecture, I thought it would be useful to have the actual cases which I'm going to be talking about and the laws in case you want to take notes. You know, I live in hope always. But these are the cases and these are the legislation which I shall be looking at. So the first case that we're looking at, remember the theme is democracy. So in the first case, it's public prosecutor and Cot Wah Kwan in 2007 in the federal court. Now, in this case, what happened was there was a child. He was just under 13 years old and he was convicted of murder by the High Court. In the Court of Appeal, they argued that his sentencing was unconstitutional. And this is the reason why. He was sentenced according to section 97 of the Child Act 2001. And according to this section, his sentence was that he was going to be incarcerated at the pleasure of His Majesty the King. That means his jail time will depend on when the king says he can go. Now, he was argued in the Court of Appeal that this is against the separation of powers because the king is part of the executive. And the power to sentence is a judicial power which is something which, in other words, it's something which the courts do, not the executive. And in the Court of Appeal, they accepted this argument. They said, yes, there was a breach of the separation of powers. This act is actually, this particular section in this particular act is actually unconstitutional because it's giving judicial power to the executive. Case went to the federal court, which is the highest court in the country, and they reversed the decision of the High Court, sorry, on the Court of Appeal, and they reinstated the decision of the High Court and the boy was put in jail again. Now, I want to discuss the reasoning of the federal court here and it scares the living daylights out of me. The grounds for the decision was made by Justice Abdul Hamid Muhammad, and he had this to say. He said, Article 121, brackets 1 of the federal constitution states that judicial power of the federation shall be vested in the High Courts. And the High Courts shall have such jurisdiction and powers as may be conferred by under federal law. So they argued that, look, the child act is a federal law and it's given this power to sentence to the king. So tough, right? So the question then arises, what about the separation of powers? How do you argue this when there's this concept of separation of powers? Well, Abdul Hamid states that our constitution is unique and should thus be judged on its own merits and not based on some legal principle like the separation of powers. Separation of powers applies in Malaysia only in so far as it is provided for in the constitution, right? Separation of powers, and I quote, is not a provision of the Malaysian constitution. This is kind of really weird because if you look at our constitution, you know if you have nothing better to do and you Google it, you will see that we have three separate chapters. One called the legislature, one called the executive, and one called the judiciary. And in each one of these chapters, the powers of these three bodies, separate powers, different powers are listed very, very clearly. You would have thought that's enough to indicate that we have separation of powers. But he says no, there is no separation of powers because it's not stated in the constitution. For goodness sake, what do you need? Do you need it written in crayon and neon lights that we have separation of powers in Malaysia? It seems to be that you have to have this blatant statement that we have separation of powers before we can have separation of powers. Even though our constitution, by any reasonable person's reckoning, clearly separates the three branches of government and separates their powers. But that's not all. He says that look, he justifies himself. He justifies himself and says look, look at subsidiary legislation. subsidiary legislation is made by the executive. That proves there's no such thing as separation of powers. Although of course everybody understands the separation of powers. The subsidiary legislation comes from a primary legislation which is made by the legislature. Empowers the executive to make subsidiary legislation as and when it is required. But that's not the most frightening thing. This is the scariest part of the judgment. I quote here verbatim. The constitution provides for elections, which is a democratic process. That does not make democracy a provision of the constitution. In that where any law is undemocratic, it is inconsistent with the constitution and therefore void. So we have elections, but it doesn't mean we are a democracy. It's crazy. This does not make democracy a provision of the constitution. The next case I want to look at. This is a little bit of historical background here. In 2008 we had elections and it was a tremendously meaningful elections because for the first time in about 40 years, the ruling party, the Barysau National, the National Front, how apt, did not get a two-thirds majority. They still won, but they did not have their two-thirds majority. So there was a huge number of seats won by the opposition. And not only that, but the opposition also won five of the different states. So they won five of the different state legislative assemblies. One of these states was a state of para, which is a northern state south of Penang. Penang is, of course, the best state in the whole country. Well, it's true. All the best folk come from Penang. But the state of para was a very narrow victory. So the opposition won 31 seats, whereas the incumbent, the Barysau National, had 29. So it was a very narrow majority. So this was in 2008, March 2008. In January or February 2009, in those two months, three opposition state legislative assembly persons suddenly decided to be independent. So they left their parties and now they were independent. By independent, it meant that they were leaning towards the Barysau National. On the 4th of February, the chief minister of para, whose name was Nisar, he approached the sultan because now, of course, there was a problem, because he didn't have the majority of the house anymore. So he approached the sultan of para, who has the power to dissolve the legislative assembly. And he asked the sultan to please dissolve the legislative assembly so that we can have fresh elections. And the sultan said no, ostensibly because he needed time to think about the matter. This was on the 4th of February. On the 5th of February, the very next day, Najib Razak, who was the deputy prime minister at the time, he's now a beloved prime minister. I'm being recorded, you see, so I have to say all these things. It's going to go on YouTube, right? So I have to cover my ass. He led a bunch of people, he led a troupe of legislative assembly persons to the palace, the 29 Barysau National folks and the three independent fellas. And they declared that they didn't want Nisar to be the chief minister anymore, and instead they wanted another state assembly person, a guy called Zambri, to be the new chief minister. And they told the sultan that they did not have confidence in the chief minister anymore, and therefore they wanted a new one. The sultan agreed and he duly appointed Zambri as the new chief minister of Para and therefore effectively dismissing Nisar as the chief minister of Para. But hold on, I mean, is this how you have a vote of no confidence? I would say, no, it's not. And the reason I say that is because of this case, Stephen Cullo Nincan and Tun Abang had you opening in 1966. What happened here? This was in the state of Sarawak, similar situation. Stephen Cullo Nincan was the chief minister of Sarawak and he was chief minister based on a kind of loose coalition, but the longer he became chief minister, he was, his popularity was dipping. In fact, he was becoming unpopular. And one day 21 of the state assembly persons out of 42 approached the governor of Sarawak who had the power to appoint the chief minister and said that we don't have confidence in Stephen Cullo Nincan anymore, so we please get rid of him. And the governor said, okay. And he wrote letters to Stephen Cullo Nincan saying you're dismissed. And Nincan challenged this in the court. And it went all the way to the highest court. And in the supreme court, in those days, the highest court was called the supreme court, now it's called the federal court. And in the supreme court, the judge said that, yeah, you can't dismiss him like this because a vote of no confidence is a term of art. It has to be done in the house. And when we say the house, we don't mean the governor's house or the sultan's house. We mean the house, the legislative house, right? So it's a term of art. And this was not done in Parra. Sorry? Did someone say something? Oh, sorry. Yeah, it wasn't done in Sarawak and neither was it done in Parra. Okay, sorry. Thank you very much. It wasn't done in both places. You confused me, right? So why should a vote of no confidence be held in the house? Well, of course. It's in a parliamentary democracy. The executive is created from the legislature. And, you know, if there's any change in the executive, it has to be done through the legislature as well, the legislative branch. This is especially true when considering the situation in Parra because the people of Parra voted in the House. Parra voted for the opposition, right? The change in the makeup of the legislative assembly did not happen via democratic means. It happened because three individuals decided to jump ship. So ideally, of course, what should have been done was we should have had fresh elections. But if we did not have fresh elections, then by all means we should have had open debate in the house. Not this kind of, like, secret meetings with the sultan. Okay? And so this, unfortunately, in the case of Dathod Zumbri versus Niza in the Court of Appeal, they decided that it's perfectly all right that Zumbri was appointed. They said it was okay. Right? The High Court did not, but the Court of Appeal said it's fine. Right? So now Zumbri is still the chief minister of Parra. Okay. I shall take a little excursion away from the law for the moment and talk a little bit about myself because this case got me into trouble. Carol spoke about my little adventure with the government of Malaysia when I was charged with sedition and it was basically about this thing. So let me tell you what happened. I was in Salaia in Thailand having a meeting with the Southeast Asian Human Rights Network and my phone kept ringing. And of course I didn't recognise the number and of course I wasn't going to answer it because it was roaming, it was expensive. But it kept insistently ringing and eventually the chap gave up and sent me a text message and he says I'm inspector so-and-so. Can I see you? And I said I'm in Thailand but when I come back home I will go and see you. So I get this message from some court. So I get home and I think it was a Monday, a Tuesday, I said okay so I'm going to go and see this policeman and see what to see one from me. On a whim I call my friend, an old friend, a school friend who's a lawyer, he's a very good lawyer actually and I said hey dude I got this call from the cops and they want to speak to me. And he says do you know what it's about? I said no. I said did you ask them? I said no. I said why don't you call them and ask them? I said okay. So I called the number and said hello inspector so-and-so. This is Azmi Sheroman. Why do you want to see me? Oh we're investigating you for sedition. He said ah. All right okay. So I called my friend again and said they're investigating me for sedition. He said my god you are moron. So you are not going there alone. I'm sending a lawyer with you and so he did. He sent me a lawyer and we went there and why were they investigating me? Because there was, this happened in Para. A similar thing was happening in Selangor. The state legislative assembly persons of Selangor were fed up with their chief minister and they wanted to get rid of him but he didn't want to go. So a reporter calls me up and he says you know could the Selangor people follow what happened in Para? That means to say go to the Sultan of Selangor and say please we want a new chief minister. And I said no they shouldn't because I believe what happened in Para was legally wrong. You know if you are going to do, if you are going to have a vote of no confidence then it has to be done transparently. You shouldn't be having secret meetings. Ladies and gentlemen I promise you that is what I said and that is seditious and I was charged and eventually the case was dropped because I think even they realised it was pretty weak but it took two years out of my life and this is the thing about using laws like the sedition act. Even if you are not found guilty it takes a lot out of you. It is still a threat because you know you got to get lawyers, you are frightened, you are nervous, you don't know what is going to happen to you. It stresses you, it stresses your family. It is quite a big deal. I was lucky because I had friends who represented me. Both my lawyers were school friends. One was a friend since I was in kindergarten. The other one was a bit younger than me. So in secondary school I was in fifth form and he was in the first form so he was very small. Of course being very small we did what all fifth formers do. We bullied them. He grew up to be this six foot tall giant of a man and a tremendous lawyer and everything but he was representing me. We were friends until one day I was in court and I was sitting there in the dock and he comes up to me and he says, remember the time when you bullied me? Your life is in my hands now. He said that the buzzer goes off and the court rise and he turns around and goes to the front. I'm going to come back, I'm sorry. So friends can be useful and they can also be a pain but that's what happened. So those three lines was enough for me to be charged for sedition. Right, so we have these two cases, the Wakwan where it says there's no separation of powers. The Datozambri case where it appears that they don't care that you could have a vote of no confidence by not having a vote of no confidence. So does that mean that the Malaysian government does not care about democracy? No. Well, you know, they say they care. They care so much that in the year 2012 they amended our Pino Code which is our criminal law to include a section called Activities Detrimental to Parliamentary Democracy. So now it is a crime to participate in activities which are detrimental to parliamentary democracy. This is section 124b of the Pino Code. So whoever by any means directly or indirectly commits an activity detrimental to parliamentary democracy shall be punished with imprisonment for a term which may extend to 20 years. If you print, publicise, sell, issue, circulate or reproduce any document which is detrimental to parliamentary democracy, that's 15 years. If you import such publications, that's 5 years. So this is a new law. But then what does parliamentary democracy mean? And what do you mean by saying an act which is detrimental to parliamentary democracy? The Pino Code does not help us at all. There's no definition as to what detrimental to parliamentary democracy means. So I have a student who was arrested because he was behaving in a manner which was detrimental to parliamentary democracy. What was he doing? He was taking part in a protest demanding the resignation of the Prime Minister. Here I was thinking that peaceful protest is part and parcel of parliamentary democracy. Obviously I was wrong. So it would appear that parliamentary democracy means that once you elected your leaders then they become sacred cows and you cannot say or do anything to challenge them. So we have this crazy law, this amendment to the Pino Code which has introduced this thing. But the Pino Code does not work in isolation here. These are known as security offences and we have certain internal security laws which are used to help with a substantive law. The internal security laws of Malaysia are not substantive. They are more procedural. They don't create offences. Instead they provide the means to investigate the offences that are provided for in other laws, for example in the Pino Code. So let's look at these national security laws. They are the Security Offences Special Measures Act, SOSMA. The Prevention of Terrorism Act, POTA. And the Prevention of Crime Act, POCA. I'm not sure whether they did this on purpose but it sounds like Japanese coffee that you buy in a cat. Have a can of POTA before you go to work. But these are our internal security laws. We used to have one big law called the Internal Security Act but that was repealed. So now we have these. So I'll just be looking at the first two. I won't be looking at the third one. SOSMA is ostensibly to prevent acts that can cause fear or violence, disaffection against the king and prejudice to public order or national security. So those are the Security Offences Special Measures Act, SOSMA. And what does it empower the government to do? They can arrest you without a warrant and you can be detained up to 28 days while investigations are conducted against you. And this is, I like this, Section 43 of SOSMA says no person shall be arrested and detained solely for his political belief or political activity. So that's supposed to make us feel a little bit better because they're very clear. If it's just for your political belief, they're not going to arrest you. They never arrest you for your political belief. It's never the reason, even when they used to have the Internal Security Act, it's not because, oh, we're arresting you because you're in the opposition party. You can make out the reason. So it's not a particularly comforting thing. And I'll give you an example. Actually, you're very good, aren't you? None of you are looking at your phones. They use SOSMA against a lady called Maria Chin Abdullah, who was organising a peaceful protest against the government. And on the eve of that particular protest, suddenly they arrested her under SOSMA and detained her. She was never charged after that, but she was detained without trial and it was convenient. And not only her, there were other people who were the key members of Berset. Berset is the organisation which organises these things. And they were also detained using SOSMA without trial and it was a convenient way of getting them off the streets just before a particularly big rally. So when you have time, please google Maria Chin Abdullah and you will see her face and that is a national threat to security. POTA, the Provincial Terrorism Act, is created to counter terrorist activities and terrorist activities are defined by the Pino Code. Again, you can be arrested without warrant and you can be remanded and for up to seven days where your case will be referred to the public prosecutor. The public prosecutor then suggests to the magistrates that there is enough evidence to warrant the holding of an inquiry. The accused is then held for another 30 up to 38 days while an inquiry is being held and this inquiry is conducted by a person who is known as the inquiry officer which for some reason reminds me of Monty Python and the Spanish Inquisition. You never expect the Spanish Inquisition, you never expect an inquiry officer and this inquiry officer, he then makes a suggestion to the Prevention of Terrorism Board and it is this board which then decides whether they are going to detain you. Not a court, a board they will detain you for up to two years and at the end of two years they can detain you for another two years and another two years and another two years. So this is basically detention without trial. No legal representatives and no judicial review and this is what scares me as well. In obtaining evidence, the inquiry officer does not need to bother with the niceties of existing law on evidence. What on earth does this mean? What about coercion? Is that okay to get a confession or torture? Incidentally, Malaysia is not party to the Convention against Torture. So these are some of the things that are quite blatant. Cases which I think are anti-democracy. We have laws which are clearly against our human rights and our right to a fair trial. But this is another thing which I want to talk about and this is the one that worries me the most actually and this is the suppression of human rights in the name of God. There are a couple of cases I want to discuss. The first is a case called the Titular Roman Catholic Archbishop of Kuala Lumpur versus the Minister of Home Affairs. This is 2014. Now what was this case about? The Catholic Church in Malaysia publishes a newsletter called The Herald. In The Herald, it's mostly in English but there's a Malay section as well. In the Malay section, they use Malay words to... because it's in the Malay section. So the word God, the Malay word that they use for God is Tuhan. For the word Lord, the word that they use is Allah. Now, a bit of context. Article 3 says that Islam is a religion of the Federation but all other religions can be practised in peace and harmony. Article 11 says that everyone has freedom of religion but there can be laws controlling the propagation of religion to Muslims. Now, the publishers of The Herald are aware of this. Therefore, on every copy of The Herald, there is a very clear statement saying that this is not to be distributed to Muslims. So they cannot be accused of propagation. However, the government took offence to the fact that they use Allah as the word for Lord and so they banned the publication. Of course, the Catholic Church went to court and they appealed against this ban. Their argument was we're just practising our religion in peace and we're not using this to propagate anything to Muslims. It's very clear. Our newsletters very clearly says that this is not for Muslims. The High Court agreed with them, said that yes, you know, you've done nothing wrong and you shouldn't be punished for this and so the High Court overruled the banning of The Herald. But in the Court of Appeal, they didn't agree with that. The Court of Appeal did not agree with The High Court and the reasoning of the judge in the Court of Appeal is very, very questionable. He interpreted Article 3 of the federal constitution. Remember, Article 3 says that Islam is a religion of federation but all other religions may be practised in peace. He interpreted Article 3 as beyond the ordinary understanding of those felly straightforward and simple words. The judge held that it is my judgement that the purpose and intention of the insertion of the words in peace and harmony in Article 3.1 is to protect the sanctity of Islam as a religion of the country and also to insulate against any threat faced or any possible and probable threat to the religion of Islam. It is also my judgement that the most possible and probable threat to Islam in the context of this country is the propagation of other religion to the followers of Islam. Okay, fine. The propagation is already in the constitution. If there's laws against propagation, you can't propagate. The Herald also says, no, we're not propagating, we make it clear. This is not for Muslims. But this whole business of expanding this simple term that Islam is a religion of the federation but all other religions can be practised in peace and harmony means the protection of the sanctity of Islam, etc. This is constitutional activism beyond a reasonable human being's thinking because the provision in Article 3 is very, very simple and very, very clear. So it's a submit that this leap of logic on the part of the judge to take a straight forward provision that protects the rights of non-Muslims to practice their religion in peace into a provision that is meant to protect the sanctity of Islam from any threats is taking constitutional interpretation a bit too far. He goes on to say, it is my judgement that based on the facts and circumstances of the case the usage of the word Allah, particularly in the Malay version of the Herald without doubt, do have the potential to disrupt the even tempo of the life of the Malaysian community. Such publication will surely have an adverse effect upon the sanctity as invasage under Article 3.1 sanctity which he interprets which is not actually found anywhere in Article 3.1 therefore the minister's decision was reinstated. I mean this case is so unjust on so many levels because no one knew about the Herald until the government actually banned it. I think most Catholics didn't know about the Herald until the government actually banned it. It did not become an issue until they made it an issue. And suddenly you're saying, you can't have this publication anymore and historically the Christian community of Malaysia has been using the word Allah to mean the Lord at least since the time of Munshi Abdullah who first translated the Bible into Malay and that was like 100 years ago. So that's one case. Another case I want to talk about is a case of Zi publications. In this case, Zi publications is a publication company and they had translated a book by an author called Ershad Manji who is a Canadian and a book is called Allah, Liberty and Love and it was translated into Malay and in Malay it's called Allah, Kebebasan dan Cinta and it's the Malay version which was banned. But here's the thing. It was banned by the religious, the Islamic Department of Selangor. Now, this is an important point. The religious department of Selangor, the Islamic Department of Selangor gets its powers from the Sharia offences law of Selangor. That means this is a state law. The constitution is very clear in article 10. Only federal parliament can make laws which restrict the freedom of expression. Only parliament can make laws that restricts the freedom of expression. But here we have a state legislature making a law to restrict the freedom of expression. So it's as clear as day. It's unconstitutional. The state legislation which allows this body to ban books is unconstitutional because if you ban a book, it is restricting the freedom of expression. Case goes up all the way to the federal court. And in the federal court, it was held that, well, you know, it's not really about expression, is it? It's about protecting the precepts of Islam. And this book goes against the precepts of Islam and therefore the state legislature has the authority to make laws to criminalise any activity which is against the precepts of Islam. So this is a particularly frightening case for me because it means that these different state religious bodies can ban books on the guys, on the pretext that it is against the precepts of Islam. Again, ladies and gentlemen, what is the precepts of Islam is not defined anywhere. It's what they say is precepts of Islam. And we lose the protection which article 10 is supposed to give. Why do we have article 10? Why does article 10 say that only Parliament can make laws that restrict our freedom of expression? Because surely it makes sense that our freedom is the same wherever we are in the country. It doesn't matter if I'm in Penang, it doesn't matter if I'm in Johor or in Sarawah or in Trunganu, my freedom of expression remains the same. But we allow this to happen where states can restrict your freedom of expression, then our fundamental liberties will differ from state to state. And something as important as this surely should only be dealt with by the highest legislative body of our country, which is Parliament. But all these arguments just doesn't matter because there is this literal streak in our courts where they say, look, it says this therefore is that. There is no effort on our courts to look beyond the words of our constitution, to look beyond the words of the law, to look towards some sort of aspiration towards human rights or democracy. And that's frightening to me. Now, banning books is something which happens a lot in Malaysia, by the way, just to let you know. There are two books which are banned right now which I have chapters in, so I've been banned. We have about 1,600 books banned now, approximately. And the banning of the books are done under the Printing Process Publications Act 1984. And I just want to talk a little bit about the most recent round of bannings. So generally speaking, book banning in Malaysia is done on two grounds. One is sex, and the other one is religion. And the latest round of bans happened on the 3rd of October of this year. So just a few weeks ago. 22 books were banned, 20 were related to Islam, one related sex, and one was a compilation of cartoons. And I just want to talk about two because I just want to give you a flavour of why they banned books, right? So the sexy book was called Tantra, the Search for Ecstasy. And the reason why they banned, this was the reason that they gave, the contents include drawings of sexual positions which are extreme, and in contradiction to the pure values and behavioural norms of Malaysians. So I didn't realise that we were so... So obviously, you know, we're kind of sweet when we have sex and we don't do anything extreme. Okay, but this is a book which was banned which is actually... which is also crazy. This is a book called Islam Without Extremes, a Muslim Case for Liberty. It's written by a Turkish writer called Mustafa Akil. And here's the reasons why they banned this book because the contents promote liberal ideas. And here's my favourite line. It uses logical thought. I swear to God, they're banning a book because it uses logical thought and contains insults to Islam and clearly goes against the teachings of true Islam, whatever that might be. So, you know, we have book bannings, we have courts which don't respect democracy, we have... the use of religion seems to be overriding our human rights to expression. What about the future? What does the future hold? Well, you know, there's a lot to be worried about. There's another law which I'll talk about which is the National Security Council Act. This was passed just last year. This is perhaps the most scary of the laws of the new ones. The National Security Council consists of the Prime Minister, the Deputy Prime Minister, the Defence Minister, the Minister of Home Affairs who, if I'm not mistaken, is currently the Deputy Prime Minister, so it's, you know, he has two in one. The Minister for Communications and Multimedia, the Chief Secretary of the Government, the Head of Armed Forces, and the Head of the Police. Now this council advises, but ultimately the Prime Minister is the one with the power to declare a security area. What is a security area? A security area could be quite small. It can be the size of say a campus. It can be the entire country. Security area can be as big as they want it to be. And what happens in the security area? Now this law was made ostensibly because, I don't know, you might not know this, but there was a little incursion in the state of Sabah by some Southern Philippine militants. And so this is supposedly for to protect us against armed incursions. Although, if you look at the Act, it says that this law can also be used to protect the country against any economic issues. So what does that mean? Right? Anyway, according to this law, once a security area is declared, this area will be under the control of a director general of national security and all government agencies will fall under his or her authority. And in this area, the government via the police and armed forces, they can evict you from your homes, they can take your property, they can destroy your property, they can arrest without warrant, they can seize and search without warrant, and they can use reasonable force against you, which means they can kill you and there will be no judicial review. Now, of course, the argument is that, hey, this is only for, you know, big emergency-type situations. If we're invaded, et cetera, we might need to declare an area, a security area. Well, before this, we already have a law. We have the emergency provisions. We have laws to declare an area under the state of emergency. We already have that. All right? In our history, the Malaysian government has declared emergency four times. Once was because the Indonesians were... If there's any Indonesians in the house, I love you all. The Indonesians were kind of like threatening us. They said, you know, they're going to take over. Actually, it was saber-rattling. But nonetheless, an emergency was declared. Another time, an emergency was declared after the May 13, 1969 racial riots. Now, in both these cases, you can kind of understand it. You know, there was a threat. But emergencies were also declared because of constitutional crisis in the state of Sarawak and the state of Kelantan. That means they're not beyond using emergency powers for political purposes. So when you have a law like this, I'm sorry if I'm overly cynical, but it scares the living daylights out of me. So that's what I think we're facing with. So, in conclusion, I've been accused of taking the Malaysian human rights situation too lightly. I've been told that, you know, I joke about it too much. Because, you know, if you don't laugh, you cry, right? And I make light of the threats of human rights in my country. And to a certain extent, this is true, I do. And I confess, there's an element of embarrassment about Malaysia. It's a bit embarrassing. Because, you know, we're not Myanmar. There's no genocidal tendencies there. We're not the Philippines, where there's all these extrajudicial killings. We're not Thailand, where there's now complete and utter military rule. So in a way, it seems that our human rights problems are not as big as our neighbours. I'm not even going to go further afield. So for me to come here making a big noise, it seems like I'm making a big deal out of nothing. But then that's why I call this thought boiling the frog. We don't need huge dramatic incidences or something to be worrying. It can be small, little bits and pieces where they chip here, they chip there. And each time they do it, yeah, there's opposition. We get up, we get angry, we talk about it, we oppose it, we sign petitions or whatever it is. But it's never quite enough to cause a huge outlaw. And then it dies down. And then they do the next thing. And then the next thing. And then the next thing. Until when? And that means we have to take it seriously. I worry about the future of Malaysia because we don't seem to have a judiciary which has any higher aspirations to protect human rights and democracy. They're quite happy to interpret things literally without thinking beyond that, without thinking about the principles, beyond why we have the constitution, why we have fundamental liberties, why we are a democracy, why there has to be separation of powers. And we have laws which can curb and oppress us easily. And I add to all this the emotive element of religion because I'm telling you now that it's a political minefield. Islam is a political minefield in Malaysia right now. Even the opposition parties, all these things which happen, they don't dare mix too much of a noise because it's political suicide because they will just be branded as infidels and they're terrified of losing the Muslim vote because of such things. So, you know, so there's not much opposition against these kinds of ZRI publications, the Roman Catholic Church case. There's not much opposition in the mainstream politics against such things. So, why are we left with? You know, it seems to me that we're really on the edge and the slightest push and it will all be gone. Now, I suppose the lesson that can be learned from Malaysia is that we must never ever take human rights for granted and any erosion of any human rights must be opposed. But you know, who am I to say anything to anyone? But to the Malaysian students here, I don't know man. This is our home and I think we should be aware. And you know, a lot of your lawyers are presumed and as lawyers you are in a unique position. Not everybody can go to court but you can. And you are in a position where you can understand the laws and the final points of the laws, the final points of the constitution whereas not many can. And I suppose what I'm trying to say is that they might be boiling us but it doesn't mean that we can't fight back. So, thank you very much. So, all it leaves me to do now is to present us me with a little souvenir from us. Presents? This is why I do things. This is a collection of essays that was published some years ago but there are authors in there whose names will be very familiar to you. It's a book of essays edited by Ian Edge on the comparative law in global perspective. So, ask me. Thank you very much.