Dec 8 hearing for govt bid to restore ban on Superman Hew’s book

 

Hew Kuan Yew’s book on China’s Belt and Road Initiative was banned in 2019 for being detrimental to public order.

PUTRAJAYA: The Federal Court has set Dec 8 to hear a government application to restore a ban on a comic book by “Superman” Hew Kuan Yew about China’s Belt and Road Initiative.

The date was decided following a case management before deputy registrar Noor Fadzlin Abd Zawawi, according to lawyer Vince Tan, who represented Hew, a former DAP activist popularly known as “Superman Hew”.

Tan said the government had asked the Federal Court to determine four questions of law regarding the case.

One question was whether the home minister’s finding – that disharmony and racial tensions being caused by the publication of the book – could be used as a yardstick to measure whether Hew’s book was detrimental to public order.

The book, entitled “Belt and Road Initiative for Win-Winism”, was published in Malay, English and Chinese in 2019. It was alleged to have painted a glowing picture of China and its Belt and Road Initiative, while putting the western world in a negative light.

In October 2019, the home ministry banned the book under the Printing Presses and Publications Act on grounds that its contents could be detrimental to public order.

Hew filed an application for the High Court to review the ban.

In April last year, the High Court upheld the ban and the right of the home ministry to keep copies of the book it had seized after the book was banned.

Hew filed an appeal and in June, the Court of Appeal quashed the High Court decision, removing the ban and ordering the ministry to return all copies of the book.

However, the appeal court rejected Hew’s application for a declaration to strike down Section 7 (1) of the Printing Presses and Publications Act as being unconstitutional. The court held that his application had no merit.

The government then filed an appeal to the Federal Court, with three questions of law which they contended were of public importance and which merited a full hearing by the Federal Court.

The Federal Court will hear an appeal in a civil matter only if a question of law arises on which the court has not previously ruled, or which involves an important question for which a decision would be to the public’s advantage.

Federal counsel Ng Wee Li appeared for the home minister, the ministry, the Attorney-General’s Chambers and the federal government, the four applicants named in the appeal. - FMT