This article was last updated on April 16, 2022
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A Malaysian court this Friday morning sentenced a student activist to 10 months in jail for sedition, sparking renewed calls from rights groups to repeal a colonial-era legislation increasingly used by the government to stifle dissent.
The guilty verdict against Safwan Anang, aged 24, follows a recent wave of charges under the Sedition Act, including three opposition legislators in the past two weeks and a respected university lecturer this Tuesday. Rights group Amnesty International called on the Southeast Asian nation to end its “alarming use” of the law, while dozens of students staged a protest on Friday to urge Prime Minister Najib Razak to honour his 2012 pledge to repeal the act.
Najib said this Friday that the government would continue to use the act until a more fine-tuned law to curb hate speech could be passed. The new legislation is expected to be ready by the end of 2015 according News 24. “I want to issue a warning that the existing law will be imposed on anyone attempting to jeopardise peace. This is certainly in force”, he was quoted by the national news agency Bernama as saying. “We must look for a formula where we provide space for the freedom of speech, but at the same time, there must be a limit.”
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