Walk With Us

A reader by the name of A Voice wrote a thought-provoking piece in response to the AFP story: Bloggers undeterred by lawsuit. His thoughts deserve a prominent space for further in-depth discussions.

EXCERPTS:

We saw Kalimullah Hassan was successful to initially silence Husam Musa and Harakahdaily on the ECM-Avenue merger issue.

That was when the guerilla web/blog started to takeover and dessiminate online. It was heard that this sparked a minority challenge to the merger at the Avenue EGM. But it died down.

Matthias Chang attempted to garner attention but he went overboard with the accusation of corruption. Kali sued him and achieved the same “ceasefire”.

Finally, it was within the UMNO Penerangan Negeri sessions at FT, Selangor and Penang that they could not stop the issue anymore from the floor. Even when they had a Parliamentary PAC, it was hot for only 2 sessions and then, quiet.

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What these defamation suits against bloggers actually mean, and how bloggers are taking it – from the defendants’ point of view. It’s now on YouTube.

Video clip courtesy Zan Azlee of Fatbidin.com, under the series: ‘I May Be Malaysian, But I Carry A Big Stick’.

To view the video, click here to YouTube.

EXCERPTS:

SOURCE: Malaysiakini
URL: www.malaysiakini.com/opinionsfeatures/62781

Blogs and boundaries of responsibility
Premesh Chandran
Jan 30, 07 3:01pm

The political role of the Internet came to Malaysia in the form of Reformasi websites, following the arrest of former deputy prime minister Anwar Ibrahim in September 1998. Armed with their dial-up connections, early users would eagerly lap up the latest news and gossip from sites such as Mahafiruan (Great Pharaoh), FreeMalaysia and Laman Reformasi.

Published anonymously, these websites would pour scorn on the prime minister and his cabinet, mixing facts with a healthy dose of myth, speculation and propaganda. Yet, with the mainstream media cowed by government control, these websites developed a strong following, ebbing only when the Reformasi movement waned and lost its steam.

In formulating malaysiakini, the founders took a conscious decision to publish a site with a face. We would publish news that matters, and stand behind those posting. All our articles carried bylines. Readers who contributed to the Letters section would have their identity protected, with the editor carrying the responsibility for letters published. Over the past seven years, malaysiakini has successfully built a reputation for credibility.

Bloggers have a similar choice. Remain anonymous and publish as you please or identify yourself as risk legal action for every word that is published.
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It came from a man on the street at the Kuala Lumpur High Court today.

It’s a big issue of public interest. Will we get to hear it all at the open court instead of hearing in chambers?

Let’s not close an eye.

SOURCE: AFP/Malaysiakini
URL: www.malaysiakini.com/news/62804

Bloggers undeterred by lawsuit
Jan 30, 07 5:53pm

Two Malaysian bloggers being sued by a newspaper today said the move would not suppress their activities.

Malaysian bloggers and rights campaigners have come out in force criticising a defamation lawsuit by the government-linked New Straits Times Press (NSTP) against bloggers Jeff Ooi and Ahirudin Attan.

Under a deal floated by New Straits Times Press, its newspaper and Ooi today agreed to refrain from publishing articles or posting comments related to the unprecedented lawsuit.

The move follows a similar agreement between Ahirudin and the NSTP on Monday.

But the suit and the blackout, which both sides said was to prevent prejudicing the case, would spark even more comments online, the two bloggers said.

“The readers at large are discerning. We are viewing this defamation suit quite positively. It will sprout more blogs,” Ooi told AFP.

“This doesn’t stop other bloggers from writing about it. We can’t speak but others will want to continue speaking about it,” he said.

The NSTP’s lawsuit has triggered criticism from watchdogs who say it will stifle free expression in Malaysia, where the media is tightly controlled.
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WE APOLOGISE

As it turned out today, the anticipated move by The NSTP & Gang of Three to cite blogger Jeff Ooi for contempt of court did not take place.

Our ‘prediction’ fell flat on our face. What we reported by quoting sources from the legal circle didn’t happen, and Jeff is safe, at least for now.

For making that mistake, WE SINCERELY APOLOGISE to all our readers, the way all responsible journalists would whenever we report inaccurate information, the exception being Kalimullah Hassan for his erroneous June 11 column about the Mahathir-Abdullah Tokyo Meet-up.

As we are not from the same breed of Kalimullah, we apologise to you and we will slap ourselves hard on our face. But, believe us, we will come back to redeem our credibility in the days ahead.

The contempt of court issue arose over a post by Screenshots reader SuperShyteStirrer after the ex-parte injunction has been issued against Jeff. The NSTP shebang has instructed its lawyers Shearn Delamore to serve notice on the defence lawyers, while NSTP acknowledged that the particular reader’s comment had since been deleted from Screenshots.

These are the facts we will vehemently stand by for now.

However, we can’t guarantee that the issue of contempt over SuperShyteStirrer’s comment on the person of Kalimullah Hassan will not be invoked by the plaintiff when the hearing proper starts on March 6 for Jeff.

Jeff’s hearing Jan 30

At the hearing in chambers before Justice Abdul Malik Ishak at the civil high court in Kuala Lumpur this morning, the court was given the update that Jeff had filed an application to strike out the suit on the ground that the Statement of Claim against him was ‘fatally deficient’.

Separately, Jeff had also filed with the court to set aside the ex-parte injunction obtained by the plaintiffs on January 11.

However, this morning, the plaintiffs’ lawyers managed to obtain an ad interim to have Jeff continue to keep 13 allegedly defamatory postings off his Screenshots blog pending the March 6 hearing in relation to strike the defamation suit taken by the NSTP shebang against him.

In a development similar to the latest development in Rocky’s case, both parties have agreed not to publish anything that risks prejudicing the defamation suit. The joint statement recorded at the Court reads:

“By agreement, all parties henceforth agree not to publish any articles, comments or posts regarding the dispute presently before the High Court in this action that may be regarded as subjudice or that may prejudice the fair trial of the case.”

On the other hand, Jeff’s lawyer Haris Ibrahim said that the judge would first deal with the striking out application before hearing other matters when the parties meet in court on March 6.

It means that the interparte injunction and the setting aside of the ex parte injunction will be fixed for mention on March 6. If the striking out application is successful, the defamation suit against Jeff will be dropped and there will be no injunction left to contest.

ANALYSIS. Mark our words. When Jeff Ooi turns up for the hearing of the interparte injunction tomorrow, he will be cited for contempt of court!

The incredible thing that slays Jeff is: He was done in by a reader who made a crude remark about plaintiff Kalimullah Hassan, if only for less than 30 minutes online before Jeff had it deleted swiftly.

On January 23, Jeff revealed that his reader, who named himself SuperShyteStirrer, has used proxies to mask his digital trail, and had routed his posting to post in Screenshots through the network owned by “Safe Host Network Geneva”, Switzerland, via IP address 80.80.228.150.

KEY ISSUES:

HAVING compromised The NSTP’s defamation suit against Rocky, leadership at The NSTP had ordered their lawyers, Shearn Delamore, to cite Jeff for contempt of court when the hearing of interparte injunction begins before Judge Malik Ishak at Civil Court 6 tomorrow.

Prior to that, on January 11, Justice Malik had granted an ex-parte injunction against Jeff, ordering him to take down 15 articles the plaintiffs cited as defamatory from his popular blog.

According to people who drink at the same pubs as lawyers from Shearn Delamore and Zul Rafique & Partners, plaintiff Kalimullah Hassan has ordered Cecil Abraham to “skin Jeff alive”, and do it fast.

The main firepower for Kalimullah is said to be a comment left by a reader of Jeff’s Screenshots blog, who used the name of SuperShyteStirrer, that was deemed by the NSTP a breach of the ex-parte injunction issued against Jeff.

In his blog entry dated January 23, Jeff stated that the reader, whose comment was time-stamped 23:00hr January 19, 2007, had tried to implicate him for possible contempt of court by posting an offensive remark against one of the plaintiffs.

“Despite my plea to readers not to complicate my defending of the defamation The NST et.al took against me — where I warned you circa 11.30hr January 18, 2007, to “tread carefully when you leave your comments” — there was an evil attempt to implicate me and possibly ruin my case.

“LIAR KALI”

Over the weekend, drinking buddies of Shearn Delamore and Zul Rafique lawyers were circulating the rumours — yes, rumours even at this point in time — that Kalimullah blew his top, but soon grinned, when he saw SuperShyteStirrer’s comment:

Isn’t it rich that a PROVEN LIAR like KALIMULLAH HASSAN (hey LIAR KALI sue me if you dare – Jeff has my identity) has the gall to sue for libel.

Kali, if you lie in print and do not retract or apologise, in spite of of the fact that your error has been pointed to you by no less a person of your master and handler Abdullah Badawi amongst others, what do you think that the Malaysian public thinks of you? Once a liar always a liar. Yes we all agree that we make mistakes. But when our mistakes are pointed out to us, most normal people would apologise and put the facts right. You have had ample opportunities to do this and yet you refuse. So I will call you a LIAR. Sue me if you dare!”

Reliable sources familiar with the case also said Shearn Delamore has issued a letter to Jeff’s solicitor at Messrs Thomas Philip on January 22, cautioning them of SuperShyteStirrer’s remarks.

However, in the letter to Jeff’s solicitors, Shearn Delamore did acknowledge that, at the time of its writing of the notification to Thomas Philip, the said SuperShyteStirrer comment had since been removed from Jeff’s weblog.

People close to Jeff said he was on guard of the commentaries in his blog, and that SuperShyteStirrer’s remark was deleted within half-an-hour after it was posted.

Nevertheless, that didn’t seem to stop Kalimullah from claiming his pound of Jeff’s flesh. You just need to wait till tomorrow if our story is to be proven true.

SECOND TIME UNLUCKY

This is the second time unlucky for Jeff falling into the hands of his reader, which gave an opportunity for the same shebang from The NSTP Group, aided by the Son-in-Law, to hit Jeff hard as their main aim was to divert public attention on Abdullah’s failure to contain money politics during the 2004 Umno party election.
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Lawyers from Shearn Delamore, NSTP and the four individual plaintiffs were forced to take a haircut.

The fact is, the lawyers of the plaintiffs (NSTP, Kalimullah Hassan, Hishamuddin Aun, Brenden John Pereira and Syed Faisal Albar) had voluntarily proposed to defence lawyers, inviting them to enter into a joint undertaking to save a suit that was described as “fatally deficient“.

NSTP took the position after its lawyers had sensed that defence counsels were mulling over the weekend to cite subjudice against NSTP Group Editor-in-Chief Hishamuddin Aun, a plaintiff in the defamation case against blogger Rocky and Jeff Ooi, for co-authoring yesterday’s interview with PM/Umno president Abdullah Badawi in The NST and Berita Minggu, in which the No. 1 was pawned to spit venom at the bloggers with the defendants, Rocky and Jeff, made the specific contextual targets.

The draft, which was prepared by Shearn Delamore and later tendered and accepted by the Court, says:

That the parties agree to henceforth not publish any article, comment or post regarding the dispute presently before the High Court in this action that may be regarded as subjudice or that may prejudice the fair trial of the action.

With that recorded and deposited at the Court, both blogger Rocky and the entire stable of The NSTP media, which includes the weekday and weekend editions of The NST, Berita Harian, all its news portals and Monsterblog.com.my, are now forbidden to publish any articles or comment on matters that may be subjudice or prejudicial to the libel suit between the two parties.

Contrary to the January 26 report in The NST entiled: NSTP wants postings in blogs removed, Rocky has been allowed to keep hosting online all the 48 articles originally cited by the plaintiffs in their Statement of Claims against the blogger until the disposal of his application to have the suit struck off.

However, as a gesture of good faith, defence counsel Edmund Bon told the press that his client had voluntarily removed about 400 comments which were received from readers and posted after the lawsuit was announced

“It is in no way an admission that any of the content was subjudice,” Bon told The Associated Press.

“There was no way to remove only selected comments, so we had no alternative but to put it all off-line … We do this to err on the side of caution, to let the judicial process take its due course.”

Thus far, the defence has play a gentleman’s game. Let’s watchdog The NSTP so that it keeps to the commitment it made to the Court.

As it is, the records show that Kalimullah Hassan has cried wolf once too many as his announced retirement from writing in The NST has all been lies, nothing but blatant lies.

Witnessed by bloggers present at the function, who walked the Son-in-Law to the launch of the Monsterblog.com.my that The NST promotes in its pages thereafter?

And what role is NST Executive Editor (Production) P’ng Hong Kwang playing in the game? We have some confessions.

Is Stephen Francis saying the young, naive, unpaid bloggers had all been Shanghai-ed?

Follow the money. Connect all the dots and players. So you’ll see the big picture.

ANALYSIS. Yesterday, we alerted you on why The NST and Berita Harian, both subsidiaries of The NSTP, should be cited for contempt of court.

And the bloggers’ trial continues tomorrow, January 29 for Rocky, and January 30 for Jeff Ooi.

The new spin, we believed was primarily aimed at the Judges as Malaysia no longer practises the jury system, was published in January 28 edition of New Sunday Times, entitled Exclusive Sunday interview with the Prime Minister: ‘I’ve to do what I need to do‘, spread over the frontpage and pages 6 and 7.

The authors bylined for the story were Hishamuddin Aun, a plaintiff in the defamation suits against both bloggers, Berita Harian Group Editor Manja Ismail, and Berita Harian Putrajaya bureau chief, Kadir Dikoh.

In the article, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi resorted to the same tactic used by NSTP’s counsel, Shearne Delamore & Co., which made “global claims” of a generic manner where all bloggers were called names and accused of penal crimes but void of specifics. It has been a tactic described by the defence as “fatally deficient“.

In fact, he seemed to imply that his only critics are the bloggers! And this was swiftly picked up by Associated Press and reported up-to-speed by International Herald Tribune on the same day Thge NST and Berita Minggu articles came out:

In the so-called interview with plaintiff Hishamuddin Aun, Abdullah had called bloggers liars without saying specifically what lies bloggers told.

“Fatally deficient” as it may, Abdullah was quoted in the New Sunday Times as saying this:

Q: But do you think the criticism against you has gone overboard? If previously there were people who disagreed with certain matters the leaders did, the government did, today there seems to be more integrated efforts from a particular group to discredit you. This is most evident in cyberspace. Why is this happening?

A: Seems that these people are captivated by these tools, the SMS, electronic media.

They feel they are free, they cannot be disturbed and they can say whatever they wish to say. They do it (post comments) anonymously.

This sort of freedom had made them resort to such action (of spreading lies and making unfounded allegations).

Even bloggers or those who maintain websites use this opportunity to create stories. Lies after lies are being told. To them, everything is not right, everything is not good.

If I allow myself to be distracted by all this, I will not be able to do any work. That is what they want, that I not focus on my work.

The Malay version of the interview with Abdullah was carried in the January 28 edition of Berita Minggu, the Sunday edition of Berita Harian published by The NSTP. In theinterview, Abdullah colossally accused bloggers as liars (Full version elsewhere in Berita Harian website):

Beliau berkata, pengendali blog atau laman web menggunakan kesempatan mereka membuat pelbagai cerita.

“Bohong demi bohong dilakukan. Pada mereka, semuanya tak betul, semuanya tak baik. Kalau saya membenarkan diri saya diganggu sepanjang masa, saya tak akan dapat buat kerja. Itulah sebenarnya yang mereka mahu lakukan, supaya saya tak dapat tumpukan pada kerja,” katanya.

Perdana Menteri berkata, ada segelintir yang kini ghairah dengan perantaraan moden seperti khidmat pesanan ringkas (SMS), media elektronik, pengendali blog atau laman web kerana tidak perlu mendedahkan nama dan berasa mereka bebas.

Is The NSTP and the individual plaintiffs suing Rocky and Jeff Ooi so desperate? Why the rush to print the subjudice piece on January 28?

WE KNOW, the next day on January 29, Rocky has to inform the court his decision to the new issues that Shearn Delamore, who represents The NST et.al., raised on January 25. The NSTP had wanted to cite Rocky for prejudice since it had failed to obtain an ex-parte injunction against him, and failed to apply for ad interim after Rocky had applied to have the suit struck off.

WE KNOW, on January 30, Jeff Ooi will begin court hearing to set aside the ex-parte injunction The NSTP et.al took against him, and to strike out the entire case brought against him.

WE KNOW that Shearn Delamore is citing prejudice against Rocky, and had cautioned subjudice against Jeff Ooi by slapping him with the ex-parte injunction. But is Shearn Delamore risking its reputation — yes, Cecil Abraham leads the suits though he has retired from the firm — by ‘closing an eye’ to The NST for using its own Press and Monsterblog.com.my to consciously commit contempt of court?

And WE KNOW that The NSTP is using Abdullah in a perilous posturing to influence the Judiciary using Executive power to silent the dissent, an act that Abdullah has willingly allowed himself to be enslaved by.

And verily, WE KNOW that, by using the PM for its evil posturing, The NSTP is desparate to fight the suits OUTSIDE the courtroom, not inside!

The cyber Operasi Lalang has begun!