Courting controversy
By Peter Goff Posted Sat, Jan 1 2000
Last September, veteran Canadian journalist Murray Hiebert began serving a month-long sentence in a Malaysian prison under an antiquated piece of colonial legislation for “scandalizing the court.” The 50-year-old father of two and bureau chief for the Far Eastern Economic Review was sentenced on September 11 to a six-week prison term. He was released two weeks early for good behavior.
The conviction stems from a January 1997 article entitled “See You in Court,” which discussed the growing number of lawsuits filed in Malaysia. The piece focused on a suit brought by the wife of a prominent judge against the Kuala Lumpur International School after it had dropped her son off the school debate team. In the article, Hiebert mentioned that legal observers thought that the case had moved surprisingly quickly through the court system. Although the school later apologized and the judge’s wife withdrew the suit, she brought contempt proceedings against Hiebert as she felt his Review piece undermined the judiciary.
Hiebert had been free on approximately US$66,000 bail pending appeal, but his passport had been held by authorities since 1997. In September 1999, a three-judge panel upheld an earlier high court conviction and ordered Hiebert to be jailed for six weeks. The court pronounced that the article was penned to incite prejudice against the plaintiff and exert pressure on the court. Hiebert decided to take the quickest route to retrieving his passport by refusing bail and serving his sentence immediately rather than face a long period of further separation from his family members, who live in the United States. After his release, he went to Washington, D.C. to join his family and take a job as the Washington bureau chief for Far Eastern Economic Review. According to his lawyers, he is the first journalist to be jailed for contempt in a Commonwealth country in 50 years.
U.S. President Bill Clinton and Canadian Foreign Minister Lloyd Axworthy both spoke out against the jailing. This prompted Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammad to go on the offensive and talk of double standards and the West’s “touching concern” on human rights issues. “I think American habits of arresting other citizens in other countries and bringing them back to trial in America is contrary to international law,” he said. “I also dislike the continuous bombing of Iraq.” He accused Canada of long discriminating against its own indigenous people.
Mahathir told the U.N. General Assembly that Western nations had granted themselves the right to interfere anywhere and were determined to crush countries that did not share their liberal democratic values. Shortly after Hiebert began serving his sentence, the prime minister defended Malaysia’s judiciary at a gathering in Kuala Lumpur of more than 1,400 Commonwealth jurists. He launched a scathing attack on the World Trade Organization, the United Nations, Western media, currency traders and human rights groups, claiming there is a “very distorted picture of right and wrong.”
Four Commonwealth lawyers were permitted to visit the veteran journalist in prison. Hiebert sees his prison term as the price he had to pay for early reunification with his family. “Far more important than my case is the importance for Malaysian and foreign journalists that this thing be exposed,” he told the lawyers. “They have set a precedent. They shouldn’t get away with this.”