The Kuala Lumpur High Court has denied Youth and Sports Minister Hannah Yeoh's bid to make the entire testimonies of Universiti Utara Malaysia (UUM) lecturer Kamarul Zaman Yusoff's witnesses inadmissible in court.
The court has instead Kamarul’s witnesses to keep their testimonies to their alleged response Yeoh's memoir “Becoming Hannah”.
Judge Aliza Sulaiman made the ruling today following Yeoh's legal team's yesterday seeking to make inadmissible the testimonies of the academic's witnesses against the minister's defamation suit.
In effect, the civil court this afternoon confined the witnesses' evidence to a single paragraph of Kamarul’s statement of defence.
The paragraph in question is the defendant's claim that he did not defame the plaintiff when he made a statement about his friends' response of dissatisfaction with the book. The academic contended he would be calling these friends to testify on his behalf.
Yeoh is suing over allegations linking her to a movement to turn Malaysia into a Christian nation.
The Segambut MP maintained that her book is a personal biography of her journey into politics with no agenda to convert Muslims to Christianity.
Earlier today, Kamarul’s counsel Khairul Azam Abdul Aziz presented oral submissions against Yeoh's bid to render inadmissible the defendant's witnesses’ testimonies
Following the court ruling on the scope of testimonies, the defendant would be calling former senator Ibrahim Abu Shah to testify tomorrow on behalf of the academic's defence.
Another witness set to testify for Kamarul tomorrow is former Institut Kajian Strategik Islam Malaysia executive Harizal Hassan.
Defamation suit
Filed in February 2022, Yeoh’s suit is over Kamarul’s two Facebook posts dated May 10 and 17, 2017.
Incidentally, on May 17, 2017, Kamarul also lodged a police report against Yeoh over her book.
He accused Yeoh, who was then the Selangor speaker, of alleged proselytisation, claiming she was driving a “Christian agenda”.
The first Facebook post was titled “Hannah Yeoh contoh hipokrasi terbesar DAP”, while the second one was “Laporan polis saya terhadap Hannah Yeoh”.
Yeoh claimed that the two Facebook posts were very irresponsible, scandalous, vile and intentionally published by Kamarul to inflame hatred and anger against her.
She contended that he had abused his position as an academic to issue politically driven statements against her.
Through the writ of summons against Kamarul, Yeoh is seeking general, aggravated, and exemplary damages.
She seeks for the lecturer to make an unconditional public retraction of the alleged defamatory statements and an apology.
She also wants a court injunction to prevent him from further publishing any defamatory statements against her.
However, in his statement of defence, Kamarul raised the defence of justification.
Under Malaysian law for civil action, justification is a defence that the statements or allegations are true, and if proven successful in court, this would act as an absolute defence against the related lawsuit.
Kamarul also denied his two Facebook posts were defamatory against Yeoh, further dismissing her claim that they were politically motivated.
Previously, Kamarul also sued Yeoh for defamation over her Facebook post. However, he withdrew the civil action.
Lawyer Sangeet Kaur Deo acted for Yeoh. - Mkini
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