The Sedition Act is a poorly worded law that is affront to our dignity as human beings endowed with rights, and it needs to be repealed. Malaysia is a country that has been at peace since 1989, when the accords were signed with the Communist Party. It is not the subject of a major insurgency, and it has not seen a credible attempt at the overthrow of the government or democracy since the 1960s. It is wealthier than most of its neighbours. And even if none of these were true, we still would not need a Sedition Act.
First, as the Centre for Independent Journalism has repeatedly pointed out, the Sedition Act is a colonial remnant, to the extent that all the countries that criminalise sedition have been ruled by Westminster. No African nation has a Sedition Act, and, of our neighbours, only Singapore has one. Sedition laws do not correlate with wealth, education or income. Countries that have experienced terrorism and war are no more likely to have sedition laws than those that have not – the only similarity between all the countries is their colonial history.
Which makes the discerning reader ask, why did the British choose to put forward Sedition laws? England’s sedition laws were brought in during the Elizabethan times, and were designed to clamp down on freedom of thought as well as freedom of speech, almost explicitly.