Appeal Court to hear Herald seizure in Sabah

Activist wants Home Ministry to apologize for the seizure of his newspaper and promise never to repeat it again.

KOTA KINABALU: The Court of Appeal will sit again on Jan 22, this time with at least one non-Muslim Judge from Borneo, to hear the case of a Sabahan who had his Judicial Review bid on the Herald, the Catholic weekly, dismissed in July by the High Court in Kota Kinabalu.

The new date had to be set after Judge Mohd Zawawi Salleh had to recuse himself on Fri from the case following an objection by lawyer Tengku Fuad Ahmad.

The lawyer pointed out that Judge Mohd Zawawi appeared in the case of Titular Roman Archbishop of Kuala Lumpur vs Home Ministry in Oct last year and there was a possibility of bias on his part.

Fuad also complained the quorum was entirely Muslim with none from Sabah or Sarawak. He wanted at least one non-Muslim Judge on the panel from either Sabah or Sarawak.

Besides Judge Mohd Zawawi the two other Court of Appeal panel members were Judge Zaharah Ibrahim and Judge Alizatul Khair Osman Khairuddin.

Daniel John Jambun, the president of the UK-based Borneo’s Plight in Malaysia Foundation (Bopim), wants the Court to tell the Home Ministry that they were wrong in seizing 2,000 copies of the Herald in Oct last year.

Further, he wants them to apologize for the seizure and promise never to repeat it again.

Daniel’s judicial review against the seizure cites a breach of the Federal Constitution and the 10-point solution by Putrajaya to allow Christian materials, with the term Allah, in Sabah and Sarawak.

The Home Ministry released the seized Herald copies a week later on Oct 27 but the net effect was the newspaper was not available to the faithful on the Sunday when it was due to appear at churches all over Sabah.

Daniel, as a Herald reader for many years, has taken the position that the issue had not been rendered academic by the subsequent release of the newspaper and that the Court needs to hear that “the arbitrary action by the authorities prevented the paper’s subscribers from receiving their copies on time” and was a dangerous precedent.

Fuad said the Home Minister’s decision to release the seized copies was separate from their decision to seize it, which he said was unlawful and should be quashed by the court.