Najib's credentials shaken by journalist's deportation - Canadian paper

Since his bodyguards murdered the jilted mistress of his chief political adviser in 2006, Malaysia’s Prime Minister Najib Razak has been aware that his human rights record is the weak link in his political CV.

Attempting to burnish his image as a champion of reform has therefore been a central theme of Najib’s initiatives since he took over the premiership in 2009.

This drive has been spurred by the prospect that in the next election – due in March next year, but likely much sooner – Najib’s United Malays National Organization-led coalition government will face an increasingly popular opposition led by Anwar Ibrahim, whose reformist credentials are well-established.

So over the past two years Najib has promised to repeal dozens of repressive laws (some relics of Malaysia’s British colonial heritage which ended in 1957), to dismantle some of the affirmative action laws which have tended to reinforce economic and political divisions between the ethnic Malay, Chinese and South Asian communities, and to usher in an age of transparency, true democracy and judicial independence.

But Najib’s desire to be a fresh breeze in the regatta of Malaysian politics has yet to catch the sails of his followers in UMNO.

When a high court in January threw out the latest in a series of trumped up and manufactured charges of sodomy against Anwar, Najib claimed it as a victory showing that the country’s courts are not longer as biddable as everyone knew them to be.

That fell flat when the attorney-general announced two weeks later he plans to appeal Anwar’s acquittal.

And despite Najib’s promise last year to repeal the egregious Internal Security Act, which allows indefinite detention without trial, and replace it with laws guaranteeing greater freedoms of dissent, speech and assembly, 16 people were convicted last week of taking part in an illegal protest against the Act.

Perhaps most reprehensible of all is the case of Hamza Kashgari.

Hamza, 23, is a Saudi Arabian journalist working for the daily newspaper Al-Bilad.

On Feb. 4, Hamza tweeted an imaginary conversation between himself and the Prophet Mohammed on the Prophet’s birthday.

It was pretty innocuous stuff by any measure, except those of Saudi Arabia.

Hamza tweeted: “On your birthday, I will say that I have loved the rebel in you, that you’ve always been a source of inspiration to me, and that I do not like the halos of divinity around you. I shall not pray for you.

“On your birthday, I find you wherever I turn. I will say that I have loved aspects of you, hated others, and could not understand many more.”

Doubtless the authorities were watching Hamza because he had previously tweeted that “Saudi women won’t go to hell, because it’s impossible to go there twice.”

The next day a leading Saudi cleric called for apostasy charges against Hamza, which means he would be given three days in prison to repent, and if he didn’t he’d be executed.

A warrant for Hamza’s arrest was issued on Feb. 8.

Hamza, sensibly, decided it was time to visit New Zealand, which, unlike Saudi Arabia, is at least not stuck in the Middle Ages. His mistake, though, was to get a cheap deal and not take a direct flight. The flight Hamza took involved a change of planes in Malaysia.

When he arrived in Kuala Lumpur on Feb. 9, Hamza was detained by the Malaysian authorities with the kind of judicial efficiency that only Saudi Arabia seems to be able to demand and receive from predominantly Muslim countries that benefit from its largesse.

Hamza’s friends swung into action.

On Feb. 13, lawyers acting for Hamza’s friends went to court in Kuala Lumpur seeking a writ of habeas corpus and naming government officials and a minister as respondents.

The case was finally heard last Thursday and Malaysia’s High Court struck down the application to have Hamza produced from detention and the extradition charges against him heard in court. The reason was simple. On Feb. 12, the day before lawyers went to court applying for a writ of habeas corpus, he was put on a plane back to Saudi Arabia.

The application, the court said, is now purely academic.

-The Vancouver Sun