NO HOLDS BARRED

By Raja Petra Kamarudin

If I have learned one thing from my previous interrogations (of course, they call it ‘recording my statement’ and not ‘interrogation’) it is that the police will say one thing and then will do the opposite.

NO HOLDS BARRED

Raja Petra Kamarudin

The government has blocked Malaysia Today. And I mean www.malaysia-today.net, of course. Well, never mind, the server had been shut down and sold off way before the block anyway. So, in that sense, Malaysia Today no longer existed at the time they blocked it. Therefore they could not harm Malaysia Today much since it had already ‘died’ prior to that.

But all is not lost. ‘Friends of Malaysia Today’ in Singapore, Indonesia and the United States had earlier backed up the data from the old Malaysia Today server and have created a few mirror sites all over the world. It is unique the way they have linked all these various servers running on different urls so that when one site is updated all the others get updated as well, although the intervals vary between five to 15 minutes depending on the server.

The ‘Friends of Malaysia Today’ thought that the site is too crucial to be allowed to operate under an individual. So, just before the 8 March 2008 general election, they decided to band together and ‘corporatise’ Malaysia Today. This was of course on condition that the old ‘management’ of Malaysia Today was prepared to relinquish control of the site. Then, said the ‘Friends of Malaysia Today’, they will ensure that the site continues to operate even in the eventuality that I get sent to jail.

Today, I was summoned to Bukit Aman because of Dr Mohamed Osman Abdul Hamid of Pusrawi’s medical report and Statutory Declaration that were published in Malaysia Today. It seems Malaysia Today has committed an act of sedition under Malaysia’s Sedition Act and the police wanted me to admit that I own Malaysia Today, I was in control of the site at all times, and that I was instrumental in publishing both the medical report and the SD.

The police were actually quite upset with my responses. DSP Lee exasperatingly said that he used to have great respect and high regards for me but now has changed his opinion about me due to my wishy-washy and evasive responses. My replies to all their questions were: ‘don’t ask me, ask the owners of Malaysia Today’, ‘that question is not relevant to the issue’, ‘you have no jurisdiction over Malaysia Today since it is outside Malaysia’, ‘prove to me that those documents came from Malaysia Today’, ‘those documents are not from Malaysia Today, they are from another site’, ‘charge me and I will reply in court’, ‘why should I bother to reply since you are determined to charge me anyway’, and so on and so forth. I must admit that even I was irritated by my own cocky and neither here nor there replies.

If I have learned one thing from my previous interrogations (of course, they call it ‘recording my statement’ and not ‘interrogation’) it is that the police will say one thing and then will do the opposite. For example, they interrogated me about the Statutory Declaration that I signed on 18 June 2008 and said that the investigation was about me signing a false declaration. Basically, the police wanted me to prove that what I signed was no lie and that I really did have information from reliable sources. But when I managed to satisfy them with the answers and more or less proved that I had not lied, they turn around and charge me for Criminal Defamation instead. The issue of signing a false declaration never cropped up at all.

And this was in spite of the Section 112 statement clearly stating that my statement was being recorded under the section that covers the crime of making a false declaration. The police trick is simple. Accuse you of lying. Get you to prove you are not lying. And then, after you have offered the proof, they charge you for something else and use this proof to nail your balls to the wall. In other words, your cooperation in satisfying the police with all the right answers becomes the albatross around your neck. You prove you are innocent of one crime and this proof hangs you on another crime. Heads I win, tails you lose. Both ways they win in the end.

The MCMC said that Malaysia Today will remain blocked indefinitely. I really hope so. I would certainly not want them to unblock it for reasons I will not reveal at this stage. Nevertheless, they said that they blocked Malaysia Today because it has insulted Islam and the Prophet.

Actually, there are thousands of sites that more than just insult Islam and the Prophet. But none of these sites are being blocked. Why? Allow me to demonstrate what I mean. I will show you a handful of these sites that have done much worse than what Malaysia Today has been accused of.

Critical Analysis of Islam! (http://debate.org.uk/topics/coolcalm/ )

Samples of Quranic Contradictions, Inconsistencies and Errors. (http://www.faithfreedom.org/Articles/SKM/contradictions.htm )

An Imperfection in the Perfect Quran (http://www.faithfreedom.org/Articles/KimbleSmith.htm )

Qur’anic Language and Grammatical Mistakes (http://answering-islam.org/BehindVeil/btv8.html )

The Contradictions of the Qur’an (http://answering-islam.org/BehindVeil/btv11.html )

Faith Freedom (http://www.faithfreedom.org/index.htm )

The complete list of sites offering an Alternative View on Islam (http://www.primechoice.com/philosophy/listIslam.htm )

As I said, there are thousands of sites that demolish Islam totally. Basically, these sites call Islam, Prophet Muhammad and the Quran fakes. But these sites are not blocked. And although they run down Islam and totally demolish Islam, they are not blocked because they are not anti-Umno or anti-Barisan Nasional. That is the issue.

MCMC and the police will probably argue that these sites are all overseas so there is nothing they can do about them. Well, so is Malaysia Today, but that did not stop them.

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