To Steven Gan and colleagues at malaysiakini ,

I am sorry to hear that you have lost a number of computers. Anyone who writes for a living would be cross at having the apparatus swallow up o­ne's words and work. Now that you are o­nline again, it appears that your data were backed up. Unlike most of us, you are evidently a responsible user of computers. Congratulations!

In an era when a public forum such as your website can easily be run from abroad, out of reach of national police, your decision to operate within Malaysian borders is itself proof of your commitment to the Malaysian public and its laws.

You have now taken that commitment a step further by assuming responsibility for your reader Petrof's right to free speech, at great cost and risk to yourself. For that, you have the admiration and support of all fair-minded persons the world over.

If it turns out that the cost you pay for putting your body where your mouth is is excessive, the logical result will be a migration abroad of Malaysian public debate. That will be a sorry thing for the country; voting with your feet cannot be in the interest of national development by any textbook. It is unlikely that those who run servers from the outside will be as responsible and civil as yourself.

Your actions echo those of another great Malaysian: o­nn Jaafar who returned from abroad so that the voice of the people might be heard in the country itself. The crowd he gathered o­n April 1, 1946, against the Malayan Union and the abrogation of the Malay Sultans' sovereignty, was the first time native public opinion was voiced.

That voice was resounding, the government heard it, and Umno was allowed into being. That, and the history which followed, would not have been possible had free speech been curtailed o­n April Fool's Day in 1946. The alternative path would have run under a darker shadow. Sharp as they may be, humour and satire are weapons we lament o­nly after they have been lost, and others found, for the pursuit of politics.

Onn Jaafar reversed an old Malay adage, to instruct and brandish as a motto for the future: biar mati adat, jangan mati anak . By this, he meant that in modern political life, it is crucial that the voice of the people be heard, even if construed as disloyalty by the custom of the times. The long run proved him right.

It would be a crying shame if the anak (child) and the youth were to now forget the lesson of his founding genius, which was to think with the times, even a little ahead, and carry the day with style. Hidup Malaysia! (Long live Malaysia!)

My best wishes for the continued success of your valuable work.

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Note: The writer is an assistant professor of anthropology and of social studies at Harvard University and an academy scholar at the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies.