Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak,
The Prime Minister of Malaysia,
Office of The Prime Minister,
Main Block, Perdana Putra Building,
Federal Government Administrative Centre,
62502 Putrajaya, MALAYSIA
19 May 2015
Dear Prime Minister Najib,
We, the undersigned international organisations, urge the Malaysian authorities to drop charges against cartoonist Zulkiflee Anwar Haque “Zunar”, who is currently facing a record-breaking nine charges under the Sedition Act for comments made on the social media network Twitter, for which – if convicted – he could face up to 43 years in prison.
We also call upon the Malaysian authorities to repeal the Sedition Act, a law that is used as a tool to stifle legitimate debate and dissent. In 2012, Prime Minister Najib Razak made a commitment to repeal the Sedition Act. However, following the most recent election, he has instead extended the Sedition Act’s reach and strengthened the penalties for infringement in a move we believe is intended to help maintain his party’s hold on power.
Freedom of expression is an essential part of any democratic society and the Malaysian authorities must protect this right for all, including those who are critical of government. Rather than safeguard this right, the authorities have intensified their crackdown on journalists, writers, activists, students, academics and artists. We, the undersigned international organisations, condemn these violations and urge the international community to support Zunar and everyone in Malaysia to speak freely in accordance with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Sincerely,
ARTICLE 19
English PEN
Index on Censorship
Media Legal Defence Initiative
PEN International
CC:
Tan Sri Abdul Gani Patail, Attorney General
Tan Sri Dato’ Sri Khalid bin Abu Bakar, Inspector General of Police
Former NSA contractor Edward Snowden attempted to explain mass surveillance through a conversation around dick pics during an interview with John Oliver on Last Week Tonight, a satirical current affairs show aired by American network HBO.
“Even if you sent it to somebody within the United States, your wholly domestic communication between you and your wife can go from New York to London and back and get caught up in the database,” Snowden said in the interview, conducted in his temporary residence in Russia after the United States cancelled his passport for leaking details about NSA domestic spying in June 2013.
The elimination of complicated terminology in the discussion has allowed us to understand that although emails sent between Gmail accounts are encrypted and unidentifiable to outsiders as they move from Google’s data centres in the US and across the world, in reality the racy pictures embedded in these emails can actually be stored in several data centres worldwide as a way to provide backups in case one centre fails.
These encryption techniques have been around since 1991, when hacker Philip Zimmermann uploaded a free encryption program called Pretty Good Privacy – better known today as PGP – to the internet. Using a form of cryptography developed in the 1970s known as public-key cryptography, users are given a public key that can be shared which encrypts messages that are sent to them, and another one they keep private to decrypt messages they receive.
As public-key cryptography was generally reserved for military and government use prior to the release of PGP, the availability of these advanced encryption algorithms to the general public was a significant step in the realm of free expression at the time. But while web-based communication has become part of daily life, the average citizen is only beginning to grapple with the idea of mass surveillance let alone the tools associated with it.
Should individuals accept the surveillance environment, allowing – for example – government officials to obtain personal photographs shared between two consenting adults through a corporate service, as raised by Snowden?
To what extent is it possible to escape everyday surveillance amidst these developments and how would this affect our communications? And even if technological advancement brings us newer tools providing stronger privacy protection, where should governments draw a line in monitoring what we share with friends and family?
“The one thing the powerful cannot stand is laughter,” said British cartoonist Martin Rowson, speaking at an event with persecuted Malaysian cartoonist Zunar in London last night.
Citing the story of the emperor’s new clothes, and the revolutionary potential of the little boy who laughs out loud at what he sees, Rowson said he felt “very humbled” to be talking to a fellow cartoonist who could soon be condemned by his own government to spend the rest of his life in prison.
Zulkiflee Anwar Haque, aka Zunar, is currently facing a record number of nine simultaneous charges under Malaysia’s sedition act in a trial that is scheduled to begin on 20 May.
Originally enacted by British authorities in 1948, the sedition act is an old piece of colonial legislation which is being used to silence opponents and suppress free speech in a country where the ruling party has not changed in 57 years.
“Maybe here you have a government,” Zunar told a packed house at London’s Free Word Centre, “in Malaysia we have a regime… a cartoon government”.
Visiting London a week before his trial is due to open, 53-year-old Zunar remained upbeat despite the possibility of his spending up to 43 years behind bars.
Zunar took the opportunity to launch his recent book of cartoons, Ros in Kankong Land. Poking fun at Rosmah Mansor, the powerful wife of Malaysian PM Najib Razak, the book has been repeatedly barred from being launched officially in Malaysia.
With five of his books already banned for containing cartoons deemed “detrimental to public order”, his Kuala Lumpur office repeatedly raided, and publishers and bookstores across his country warned off printing or carrying any of his titles, censorship is an everyday challenge for Zunar.
Why carry on? Because he “wants to tell Malaysians that you are the ones who suffer from corruption”, ending the evening by drawing a cartoon depicting his fellow countrymen, propping up their regime and suffering painfully under the weight of their rulers.
“Talent is not a gift. It’s a responsibility,” said Zunar, underlining his intention to “draw until my last drop of ink” and inviting “you all to join me in fighting this government”.
Discussing the power of cartoons to cut across divides universally, Rowson added an interesting perspective, telling the audience he had come to think his “purpose is not to shame politicians into resignation” but “to empower people to laugh at them”.
“I am a satirist and a cartoonist because I am offended,” offered Rowson, reflecting on whether there are any limits for cartoonists. “Why pinch when you can punch?” said Zunar, suggesting people mix up moral right and artistic right. “I saw cartoons of the prophet Muhammad and I didn’t like them all…”, but “if he was alive today, Prophet Muhammad wouldn’t have ordered cartoonists killed”.
How you can help Zunar
Zunar was visiting London to raise awareness of the situation for him and his peers. To call on the Malaysian government to drop all charges and renew its commitment to freedom of expression, you can sign this petition.
Prince Charles’ “black spider” letters to government ministers have been published following a 10-year legal battle (Photo: Dan Marsh/Flickr/Creative Commons)
It has been hailed as the damp squib to end damp squibs. The let down of let downs. The mother, the pearl of non-stories. Prince Charles’s “black spider” letters to various government ministers including the prime minister Tony Blair over eight months between 2004 and 2005 have elicited barely an OMG! or a WTF?, but many, many, mehs.
“Where’s the crazy stuff about homeopathy?”, we mumble. “Isn’t there supposed to be some stuff about talking to vegetables, or converting to Kaballah? Aliens? Surely some crop circles?”
Nothing. Or at least nothing worth shaking a divining rod at. One mention of herbal medicines. A hat tip to the Patagonian toothfish and the “poor old albatross”. Lots and lots of impressive detail about agricultural policy.
If anything, having scanned the letters I found myself thinking more highly of Prince Charles than previously. He clearly knows his stuff (or at least has had the good sense to employ someone who knows their stuff) and is genuinely concerned for the farming and fishing sectors.
That is not to say I am comfortable with the existence of these letters. I am a dyed-in-the-wool, though realistic, republican. That is to say, I sincerely disagree with monarchy in any form, but realise there’s not much point in going on about it in the UK. Most people seem reasonably happy with the archaic, arcane set up of the British monarchy. They’re not doing much harm, really, and doesn’t the Duchess of Cambridge have lovely hair? And none of it really matters.
Except that it does matter. The weirdness of the entire set up was exposed after the birth of Princess Charlotte in April. Royal correspondents openly spoke of her assumed lifelong role as second fiddle to her brother, George, who will one day be king.
The BBC did that thing where it reminds you that it is a state broadcaster, informing subjects about how the newborn had brought joy to the entire nation. I am not yet sufficiently misanthropic to be displeased by the birth of a child, but the whole thing had the feeling of the celebration of a successfully completed pagan ritual.
I sometimes wonder if it’s different if you were raised with this stuff: if the British are immune to the oddness of it all.
Times journalist Hugo Rifkind, a writer I admire and generally believe to be right about pretty much everything, confused me with a column after the Supreme Court’s decision that the letters should be published in which he suggested that those who wanted the letters published were guilty of taking the prince too seriously: “[The letters are] the late-night rages of Mr Angry of Highgrove,” Rifkind wrote. “They’re the green ink letters to the press. In a sane and sensible nation, they wouldn’t matter at all.”
The problem is that this isn’t a sane and sensible nation. It is a nation where, purely by birth, Charles has a constitutional role to play. In a republic, the adult first-born of a president could sent whatever letters they wanted, and we’d leave them to it. In a monarchy, you cannot just be the child of a head of state: if that role depends on lineage, then it follows that Charles, while not head of state himself, still has power. It is one thing for a head of state to have regular meetings with her prime minister, but another for her son to throw his weight around on specific policy issues, even if it is all relatively boring stuff. If the monarchy is essentially meaningless and impotent, then scrap it. If not, well, it scrapping is even more urgent.
The government must also take its share of the blame for the fiasco that led to a 10-year legal fight with The Guardian at an estimated cost of £400,000. Why such determination to block the publication of a few letters on farming? Why the panic?
One supposes that they worried not just about the monarchy (former Attorney General Dominic Grieve suggested that the release of the letters would hamper Charles’s future ability to govern), but also about the implications: freedom of information gone wild. If a newspaper can demand to see correspondence from the heir to the throne, where does it all end?
Tony Blair claimed that one of his biggest regrets in government was the introduction of the Freedom of Information Act, which he claimed hampered candid conversations at cabinet level. I have some sympathy with this viewpoint, but I think the benefit of FOI has outweighed any negatives.
But now, with the publication of these old letters, ministers fear they will lose control of the freedom of information process. Hence attempts to strengthen a blanket ministerial veto on freedom of information requests. This on top of the exemption to FOI for senior royals introduced in 2011, in response to the black spider case. It’s a regressive step in an age where we keep being told of the need for open government. But that’s the mess monarchy has got us in to.
We’re not even a week into the new government, and already alarm bells are ringing over freedom of speech (with the government’s extremism plans) and freedom of information. The next few months and years will see bitter wrangling between government and civil libertarians.
If only we knew someone who would be sure that his concerned letters to ministers would be given full attention.
