KUALA LUMPUR, April 1 — A group of journalists covering the ongoing parliamentary session turned up in black today as a sign of solidarity with news portal The Malaysian Insider, which is currently under investigation for sedition. Four of the news portal’s staff, including its chief executive Jahabar Sadiq, and The Edge publisher Ho Kay Tat were detained overnight to assist in a probe on a recent report linking the hudud controversy to the Conference of Rulers.
The first three — managing editor Lionel Morais, Bahasa news editor Amin Iskandar and features and analysis editor, Zulkifli Sulong — were picked up on Tuesday after the police and Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) officials raided TMI’s office for materials linked to the report. Jahabar and Ho were arrested yesterday morning at the Dang Wangi district police headquarters when they arrived to record their statements.
All five have since been released. After Jahabar’s and Ho’s arrests, word was spread on social media for members of the press to don black clothing today as a mark of solidarity with TMI. The arrests also triggered outrage among journalists and media groups, who held a vigil at Dang Wangi last night to protest the police action. Last week, TMI ran a report citing an unnamed source as claiming that the Conference of Rulers had rejected proposed legal amendments that would allow hudud to be enforced.
This was later denied by the Keeper of the Rulers’ Seal, who also lodged a police report over the article. BN MPs then called for legal action against the news portal over the report and for reporting “twisted facts” in another article on Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak’s speech on the Sedition Act during the recent Police Day celebrations. Besides the five, TMI columnist Khoo Ying Hooi, a Universiti Malaya academic, is also being investigated under Section 500 of the Penal Code for criminal defamation over an article titled “Who owns the police?”
Picture by Yiswaree Palansamy | The MalayMail Online
