Diabolical Abuse of Power

Screw Photobucket for constantly timing out my connection. I've been spending the last 30minutes or so pressing F5.

Today's The Sun printed an article with the ex-MB of Selangor Tan Sri Mohammad Muhb Taib as UMNO Kelana Jaya branch division chief clearly exercising his recent rise to infamy fame by making another press statement.

Below is the excerpt from The Sun which I obtained. The web edition of the paper can be obtained here.

Strip Those Who Betray Country Of Citizenship
The Sun, Monday August 13th 2007

The government should strip the citizenship of Malaysians who betray the country by making comments that humiliate Islam or raise racial tension, Kelana Jaya Umno division said.

An emergency motion to discuss this was passed at its meeting yesterday. “If the offence is committed by foreigners outside the country, they should be barred from entering the country,” said the motion, tabled by Kelana Jaya Youth chief Abdul Halim Samad.“If (it is made) by foreigners in Malaysia, then legal action should be taken and those responsible should be deported and blacklisted.”

At a press conference later, Umno information chief Tan Sri Muhammad Muhd Taib, who also heads the Kelana Jaya division, warned that a riot could erupt if no action is taken against those humiliating religion or other races, and if they are allowed to continue doing it.“Do we want the situation to come to the level that it is more explosive than May 13?” he asked.

The motion came in the wake of heated debate about postings on the Internet. Last month, the police held Parti Keadilan Rakyat’s webmaster and blogger Nathaniel Tan for four days under the Official Secrets Act, for publishing comments on his blog that might have contravened the act.

On July 23, Muhammad lodged a police report against Raja Petra Kamarudin for posting articles allegedly insulted the King and Islam on his website, Malaysia-Today. Recently,a Malaysian student in Taiwan, Wee Meng Chee, came under heavy criticism by some quarters for allegedly mocking the national anthem and making offensive remarks in his rap video circulated YouTube.

As our National Day approaches, we have a convoy of ministers and people-in-power who has increasingly threatened law and action against other people outside their jurisdiction. Clearly, there is something going on?

Shouldn't the ex-MB himself be subjected to police probes just for issuing an underlying warning that riots will happen if this goes on?

The National Anthem Act 1968 punishes those who disrespect the anthem with a fine of RM100 or a maximum prison term of one month. If the basis of the outcry was the disrespect of The national anthem, why have AMNO (hereby referred to as 'AMNO' for convenience) nutheads systematically lined up to invoke the Internal Security Act, Sedition Act, or revoke Meng Chee (the video author)'s Malaysian citizenship?

The increasing message of fear that is being sent nationwide through distrusted local media has focused mostly on socio-political bloggers. It is also widely acknowledged among political analysts that the government has started a campaign against bloggers. In recent limelight since the Jeff Ooi and Rockybru incident was Nathaniel Tan and Raja Petra Kamarudin with the former being detained and the latter having to turn the tables on his interrogators at an interrogation at Dang Wangi recently.

Read here, here and here for more information.

Lastly, a few important quotes from alternative news sources.

Oriental Daily News, a Chinese vernacular daily, best described the mood when it headlined its front page Tan's arrest story as a "white terror" striking down bloggers. The daily asked, "Is the campaign against bloggers started?"

Political analysts see the "anti-blogger" campaign as an attempt to "instill fear" and also curb "unrestrained" attacks on national leaders especially on Badawi ahead of a crucial general election widely expected later this year.

Officials fear that "too many Malaysians" were being taken in by the alternative blogs and websites that offer an explosive mixture of gossip, hard opinions and few facts, capturing the imagination of millions of readers.
IPS News

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GMI believes these threats of using the ISA are none other than abuse of powers, as illustrated in the past, against dissidents who have exposed corruption practices within the government. Firstly, shouldn’t the government investigate the alleged corruption of civil servants and politicians involved instead of going after the whistle blowers? Secondly, shouldn’t the government investigate the author of the alleged law breaching postings in the blogs of Nathaniel Tan and Raja Petra instead of harassing the blog owners as in the case of four-day detention of Nathaniel Tan and long hour interrogation as in the case of Raja Petra? Does the government afraid that the author of these postings may well turn out to be coming from the cyber troops of UMNO as alleged by Raja Petra?
SUARAM

Yes, Raja Petra alleges that he knows who the AMNO cybertroopers headed by Aza1ina-lesbian are, and MalaysiaToday also alleges that they are the ones inciting unrest in the site.

A few more postings to come up pretty soon. I've delayed my dinner by 2 hours already, boy I'm hungry.