Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak said any calls for Sabah and Sarawak to leave Malaysia were non-negotiable under the soon-to-be fortified Sedition Act 1948.
He said that if pro-secession groups felt they had certain rights, the government was willing to hear them out but he was drawing the line at demands that the Borneo states be separated from Malaysia.
"If they think they have certain rights, we can negotiate this," he told a press conference after the Umno general assembly.
"For instance, the issues of (oil) royalty, of power. But the issue of leaving Malaysia is non-negotiable."
The Sedition Act is expected to be tabled at the next Dewan Rakyat sitting.
Sarawak leaders from both sides of the divide have reacted negatively to Najib's announcement that the Sedition Act would criminalise secession calls.
They said the act should not be used to silence those who expressed nationalistic sentiments.
The state's Land Development Minister Tan Sri Dr James Masing said calls for secession were made by a small group of people and “we, however, shouldn't ignore their grouses”.
“Engage them and find out what are the causes of their unhappiness. As I have said before, don't kill the messenger or we may miss the message," Masing said on Thursday.
State DAP chief Chong Chien Jen, too, disagreed that the act should be used against people advocating a breakaway.
Sharing Masing's view, Chong, who is also Bandar Kuching MP, said he had told Deputy Home Minister Datuk Wan Junaidi Tuanku Jaafar that the government “should engage and address the concerns of this group of people rather than use suppression”.
“The reason behind this call for secession is mainly because of the general sentiment that Sabah and Sarawak have been unfairly treated and marginalised in the federation.
“This must be addressed by the government,” said Chong on Thursday.
On Facebook, some Sarawak social media users reacted by drawing on history to show that secessionists thoughts were nothing new in Malaysia's history.
“If Singapore was free to leave Malaysia for independence, so can we (Sarawak)," the administrator of a blog, Borneo Wiki, posted in Facebook in reacting to Najib's U-turn on the Sedition Act.
The Straits Times had reported that “extremists in the Alliance, particularly Umno”, wanted to have then People's Action Party leader Lee Kuan Yew arrested for advocating that Singapore leave the fledgling federation.
The Alliance is the forerunner of Barisan Nasional and Lee was Singapore's first prime minister. –TMI
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