Tuesday, August 31, 2010

Come and get me in London ( Raja Petra Kamaruddin)

NO HOLDS BARRED
Raja Petra Kamarudin

That’s the problem with some Malays when you take them out of the kampong and send them to school. They think that just because they went to school this means they have also received an education.

Do they know that going to school means just that; that you have gone to school? It does not mean you are educated. After all, you can take the Malay out of thekampong but you can’t always take the kampong out of the Malay.

And this is the problem with those Malays who are still sending me hate-mail and the Malays in Umno and the Malays in Utusan Malaysia and Berita Harian as well as the Umno Bloggers. They are still talking about getting me. Well, stop talking and come get me. But first go get an education and stop embarrassing the entire Malay race with all this stupid talk.

And this includes the IGP and AG and Umno Ministers who are all singing the same stupid tune. They are all demonstrating that they know nothing about the law. And that is pathetic because they are supposed to be the lawmakers and enforcers and upholders of the law. Yet they are ignorant of the law.

What do they plan to get me on? Do they wish to slap me with a new ISA detention order? Detention without trial does not apply in the UK . Furthermore, whatever I wrote since February 2009 was written outside Malaysia .

And Malaysia does not have any jurisdiction on what I do outside the country. My host country would have to arrest and charge me in the event it feels I have committed a crime on its soil.

For example, in the UK , I can enter into a gay marriage (now, even in church) and, like Elton John, can receive a congratulatory message from the British Prime Minister. Malaysia can’t extradite me for sodomy since what I did I did in the UK and not in Malaysia -- where sodomy is a crime. So the crime must have been committed in Malaysia and must be a crime in both Malaysia and the UK -- dual criminality -- before Malaysia can extradite me.

Or do they wish to slap me with new charges? What new charges? A crime under the Official Secrets Act maybe on the PKFZ Cabinet Papers that I published? Sorry, in the UK they have the Freedom of Information Act. So it is not a crime to reveal information of wrongdoing by the government. In fact, it is the opposite. In the UK it is a crime to hide information of wrongdoing. So here in the UK I would be given an award, not an arrest warrant.

Maybe they want to re-charge me on the old charges that have been dropped (discharged not amounting to an acquittal)? Well, there were only two charges. One was for sedition and the other for criminal defamation.

The UK no longer has the Sedition Act. This law was abrogated on 1st January this year. So, under the dual criminality clause, they can’t extradite me for that charge. So that leaves only one charge left, the criminal defamation charge.
Okay, let’s talk about that one remaining charge then.

I am alleged to have defamed Rosmah Mansor. But Rosmah is not a government officer. She is only the one-time mistress of Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak, a home-wrecker who stole another woman’s husband. Just because she is Najib’s sex partner this does not make her a Malaysian government official. So the criminal defamation law does not apply to her. How, then, can I get charged for criminal defamation?

Would this mean if I were to defame half a dozen other women then I would face another six criminal defamation charges just because Najib also had sex with them and therefore they are now officially employed by the Malaysian government?
Bila kata Melayu bodoh, marah. Tapi kalau dah bodoh nak kata apa lagi?
Anyway, never mind. Come get me. Apply to extradite me. Then let’s see what the court has to say about that.

What crime did I commit under the criminal defamation charge? I signed a statutory declaration at the Kuala Lumpur High Court in front of a lawyer and the court registrar. Then the lawyer sent it to the prosecutors in the Altantuya murder trial.
In the UK that is not a crime. That is a duty. If you have information that a crime may have been committed -- even if you are not too sure but there may be a possibility -- then you must report it. And that is exactly what I did; I reported it.

And in the UK those who report a crime are given immunity and cannot be charged for the crime of reporting a crime. But this is what happened to me in Malaysia -- I was arrested and charged for reporting a crime.

This is what the British court said:

The utility of a properly managed system of informers is recognised throughout the common law world. As long as crimes are committed, informers have a role to play in their investigation and prosecution. They may either be professional informers, acting for self-serving purposes, or they may be ordinary citizens, motivated by public-spiritedness. Whatever their reason, it is in the public interest that nothing should be done which is likely to discourage persons of either class from coming forward (R v Rankine [1986] 1 QB 861 at 865).

You need more ‘enlightenment’? Then read the point below which explains the issue:-

A person who reports a crime cannot be charged, like what they did to me in Malaysia . This is something that the IGP and AG (or the Umno Bloggers, Ministers, etc.) do not seem to know. And that is why they need more education on how the law works.
And only after they have received this education should they attempt to extradite me. If not then even a non-lawyer like me is going to run rings around them. And that will buat Melayu lagi malu.

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