Zunar Wins High Court Victory On Originally Disputed Books

There are a few wire stories that started to pop up yesterday about the Malaysian cartoonist and international free-speech person of extreme interest Zunar winning a court decision related to the long-ago seizure of his book and claims of their being a threat to public order. The books in question are ordered returned, which is always a fairly dramatic step worthy of a headline or two.

Zunar eventually won that case, now affirmed. This was immediately by a doubling-down of authority pressure on the cartoonist, including more book seizures and eventually sedition charges. Zunar makes a very good claim that these charges are all of a type that this court decision should weigh heavily on future ones, if not caused them to be dropped. I hope they'll listen, but the whole second wave of harassment Zunar's enjoyed indicates something beyond rational application of law. If they won't listen, I hope that we're all reminded of how standard and relatively benign an expression of dissent is embodied within those cartoons.

Still, it's hard not to be glad for Zunar's victory, and hope that it's of a type that indicates future decisions will go his way as well. My understanding of where the sedition charges are right now is that the next hearing was moved back to mid-December while a general legal challenge was made to the law in question due to how it was folded into the Malaysian legal system.
 
posted 10:55 pm PST | Permalink
 

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