Tuesday, August 14, 2007

Laws & Crimes

Alas, our last resort, our final hope, where we thought we could speak freely, is now under scrutiny. Due to recent controversies such as Raja Petra's blog post ( http://malaysia-today.net/blog2006/ ), Namewee's rap version of Negaraku ( you can find it in Youtube ), the government has decided that new cyber laws need to be enacted in order to retain the "peace & harmony" in the country.

Peace and harmony? Laws? One look at the Malaysian Judiciary system is more than enough to say it all. The number of criminals that escaped the punishment they deserve, is infinite. What happened to Canny Ong's case? Anyone received duly what they deserve? Altantuya's case? Crap proceedings, nonsense, everyday, which only sore your eyes. Where is the justice? Why do criminals go unpunished?

Instead, higher authorities decide to take action against relatively smaller crimes. Or are they even crimes in the first place? Let's use Namewee as example ( any of you who knows Mandarin, do watch the video in Youtube which he directed ). This guy here, has done nothing wrong at all. All he wanted to do was to voice his opinions on certain issues in Malaysia. And creatively, he made a rap version of Negaraku to serve this purpose. And all he got was? Hot soup and trouble. Have we ever stop for a moment to think about the constitution-protected and sensitive issues which we are not allowed to touch? To speak about? To debate over? This "untouchables" ( as I called it ), are they really protected in order that peace and harmony in this country be retained? So that the May 13th 1969 Tragedy do not occur again? Or is it because of some deeper reasons - that is if one really stands up to these issues, one's reason would win?

I'm young, I do not want to get in trouble. The blogosphere is not safe anymore. No longer can we speak our thoughts, or unleash our dissatisfaction. In years to come, I believe freedom of speech can no longer be fully expressed in this country. We're definitely suffocating. Somebody, do something.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

yeah totally agree with you.
we have no freedom of speech anymore..

nostalgia.jesskang said...

Malaysian police will only "investigate" when there is wide publicity of the related news and by the time people forget about that, they forget too.

Instead, Malaysian authorities are so enthusiastic in investigating trivials like "act which will break country peace" in blogsphere and sueing these "criminals"...

Somebody should really have started somewhere, if not, we will have to obey by orders in every circumstance rather than voicing out our opinion like westerners..

wadefish said...

nice to meet u nostalgia.jesskang. yes, i totally agree with what u've said. well, i heard in UK, everyone talks freely. during the time when Tony Blair stepped down as president, people just went up and condemned him. dats the ultimate freedom of speech which is not found here.

nostalgia.jesskang said...

Nice to meet you, Clarence!

I look forward to working in UK when I graduate!! My cousin is there, she said even though we're second class citizen there, still we're treated better than we are here, Malaysia as the real citizen... *sigh*

mike said...

well, there are laws that won't 100% restrict blogging... so... you know...