HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH
Justice in Malaysia
(September 17, 1999)
Imprisonment of Murray Hiebert
- Murray Hiebert, the Malaysian bureau chief of the Far Eastern Economic Review, is a Canadian citizen who was imprisoned in Malaysia on September 11, 1999, after losing an appeal of a contempt of court conviction. Hiebert is now serving a six-week sentence.
- Hiebert's conviction resulted from an article he wrote in January 1997 detailing the growing number of defamation suits in Malaysia. The story described a civil suit brought by the wife of an Appeals Court Judge against their son's school because it dropped him from the debating team. Hiebert attended and reported on several days of public hearings in the case. The article noted that the plaintiff was the wife of a judge and that the case appeared to move through the judicial system with unusual speed. The suit was later settled out of court, but the plaintiff filed contempt charges against Hiebert on January 28, 1997.
- On March 22, 1997, Hiebert swore in an affidavit that he had no desire to scandalize the court; that prior to publication he sought the advice of a senior counsel in the Malaysian bar and a lawyer specializing in media law based on Hong Kong to ensure that the article would not place him in contempt; and that editors in Hong Kong made changes to the article that he did not see before it was published. Several days of contempt hearings followed, during which no evidence was presented contradicting the facts to which Hiebert swore. Neither the High Court Judge nor the plaintiff's counsel sought to question Hiebert.
- On May 30, 1997, the High Court Judge found Hiebert in contempt and on September 4, 1997, sentenced him to three months imprisonment and a fine. On September 11, 1999, the Court of Appeal upheld Hiebert's conviction but reduced his sentence to six weeks.
- Hiebert has been unable to leave Malaysia from the time of his conviction until he completes his sentence (more than two years) because the Malaysian government confiscated his passport during his appeal. The Court of Appeals gave Hiebert leave to appeal to Malaysia's highest court but refused to return his passport for what could have been another extended appeal. In order to retrieve his passport and rejoin his family by Christmas, Hiebert's only alternative was to agree to serve out his sentence. Hiebert plans to pursue an appeal to Malaysia's highest court while in prison.
- Hiebert is the first journalist in Malaysia's history to be jailed for committing contempt in the course of his work and the first journalist in fifty years to be jailed for contempt of court in any of the fifty-four Commonwealth countries.
What You Can Do
Write letters to the Malaysian government arguing:
1. that the use of contempt of court charges in this case is a violation of the freedom of expression. Freedom of expression is defined in Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as the freedom "to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media." The press's ability to report on the judiciary and investigate allegations of bias and corruption is fundamental to a democratic society, and the use of the legal system to imprison a journalist for writing a story based on available evidence directly contravenes the right to freedom of expression.
2. that this case further undermines the appearance of judicial impartiality and constitutes a misuse of law to deter any further investigation into the independence of the judiciary. Note that this is one more case raising deep concerns about the extent of judicial independence in Malaysia. These concerns have also come up in the cases of Dato' Param Cumaraswamy, Anwar Ibrahim, Zainur Zakaria, Manjeet Singh Dhillon, Tommy Thomas, and Raphael Pura.
Urge the Malaysian government to:
1. immediately release Hiebert
2. cease the use of contempt laws to deter freedom of expression.
|