The charge and arrest of Malaysia Today’s Raja Petra Kamarudin, whatever the motivation behind it, is a clear display of an existing and critical threat to our national security.
It is not up to us at this moment to decide if the Altantuya article that he published is seditious or not, but to consider the implications of such an arrest. It is an outward attempt to silence the one medium that the establishment has failed to control.
Charges of sedition comes second only to the Internal Security Act. Not only is it a law that has never been used as representative of the rakyat, it is used to make people perceive that it is, in fact, representative of the voice of the nation.
The security of freedom within this nation is threatened. If such degradation of basic human rights carries on, I have no qualms abandoning my semi-neutral stance here and do my utmost to help PR win more than five states.
At present, we don’t need a foreign invasion to feel threatened.
Leave the internet alone!
Deviant Activity
In fact, I was just teaching my students last week about ‘deviance’. Deviance is basically any disruption of the norm, from things as serious as breaking the law, to lousy things like jaywalking or not saying ‘thank you’.
More importantly, I made it very clear that something is ‘deviant’ only because of people’s reaction to a particular activity. If everyone in a room are chronic farters, it isn’t a deviant activity, because no one reacts negatively to what is a norm.
So here’s a suggestion.
I read Raja Petra’s blog post. While it is not entirely a fun thing to read, it is not seditious. Not to me. It does not incite a feeling of wanting to take to the streets and run amok and create unrest.
What is seditious to me is the current reaction. Do you guys notice that unrest is heightened, and a huge populace are awakened and alarmed (and unrest-ed) because of RPK’s arrest? People are reacting to something that isn’t a norm to us now.
Who is the real deviant among us?
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Malaysiakini articles for your perusal:
Bloggers: Sedition charge politically motivated
