This time Raja Petra is sued by a senior lawyer, Datuk Muhammad Shafee Abdullah, who went to court to apply for an ex parte injunction (ex parte means order of injunction given without (or exclude) the other party in another word only 1 party presence) to order Raja Petra as the editor of www.Malaysia-Today.net, to remove 3 articles posted at his blog. The 3 articles accused the lawyer was the one who was masterminding the recent sodomy charge faced by Anwar Ibrahim.
The articles were entitled “Shafee Abdullah: Sodomologist Extraordinaire”; “Money, Power and Sex: What Motivates Man”, and “The Real Dalang Behind the Anwar Sodomy Allegation“.
In fact, the lawyer has also filed a defamatory suit against Raja Petra over the same articles previously.
The said injunction also ordered Raja Petra to remove all the comments posted by the readers in relation to the articles.
In addition, the court also compel Raja Petra to reveal the identities of the readers who commented on the articles.
Based on TheMalaysianInsider.com, lawyer Shafee also intends to sue the commentors. Shafee hope this will be a landmark case to stop comments made by irresponsible party especially those who comment with anonymous name.
Some lawyers are concerned that this case will contravene with the Bill of Guarantee stated under the MSC which guarantees no internet censorship. However, this doesn’t mean that such guarantee is made without any limitation. The spirit of the guarantee is to promote freedom of speech, however, such freedom (in fact, any freedom) should be confined within the baundary of law and social adoption. Absolute freedom will bring a society into a mess, with no order. If a statement made online is defamatory and baseless, I agree it should be censored. This is to prevent the harm that it may cause on the innocent party.
It seems that Raja Petra is facing almost a dozen of law suit (criminal and civil) against him. In view of this he is not only the “fighter” for the bloggers but also the “biggest contributors” to the precedent of cyber law cases in Malaysia. I hope our Malaysian law can keep up to the development in cyber space. So that the our court can have more “guidline” to refer to instead of still relying on the 1974 old UK court decision in the Norwich Pharmacal case.
If we have the statute alike the US Communication Decency Act, then the approach to this case may seen to be different.
Relevant reports:
2 responses so far ↓
1 steven ling // Aug 24, 2008 at 11:32 pm
Hi Eddie,
Well, I stay in KL now. Looking for a time or chance to go back hometown.. Which part of Sitiawan do you stay?
I see your blog in Google listing when i type “Streamyx+compensation”.
It’s bedtime..tomorrow got to work. See u..
mGBU & fmly…
2 Eddie Law // Aug 30, 2008 at 5:34 pm
Hi steven- I stay near kg kok.
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