Release of blogger welcome but more needed

Amnesty International welcomed the release today of Malaysia blogger Raja Petra but called on the government to stop using the Internal Security Act (ISA) to control dissent.

A Malaysian high court ordered the release of blogger Raja Petra Kamarudin on the grounds that his arrest, under the Internal Security Act (ISA), was unconstitutional.

A social commentator and the editor of news blog Malaysia Today, Raja Petra was arrested on 12 September for threatening national security and potentially “causing tension among the country’s multi-racial and multi-religious society”.

Articles published online by Raja Petra were deemed insulting to Muslims and to the Prophet Muhammad and were thought defamatory of Malaysia’s leaders. The articles in question were ‘Malays, the Enemy of Islam’, ‘Let’s send the Altantuya murderers to hell’, ‘I promise to be a good, non-hypocritical Muslim’ and ‘Not all Arabs are descendents of the Prophet’.

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