Selangor exco Nik Nazmi Nik Ahmad today expressed puzzlement at a police report against former Bar Council president Ambiga Sreenevasan for her supposedly seditious remark on the National Civics Bureau (BTN).

Nik Nazmi (below, right) , who is also Seri Setia state assemblyperson, said he too had made similar criticism against BTN, where he urged the Selangor government against sending its civil servants to attend the agency's courses.

"I fail to see what she said - as reported by the media - that is seditious or threatens national security," he said in a statement today.

NGO Persatuan Pertubuhan Merah Terengganu had lodged a police report against Ambiga for sedition after she said BTN was brainwashing Malay participants to become racists and bigots.

Meanwhile, a lawyer's group said Putrajaya's move in defending pro-government personalities while being trigger-happy with sedition charges against dissenters is blatant double standard.

Lawyers for Liberty (LFL) executive director Eric Paulsen said that it is shocking to see such excuses being used to defend Perkasa chief Ibrahim Ali and Petaling Jaya Umno deputy division chief Mohamad Azli Mohamed Saad.

“It is an offence to act, speak or publish statements with seditious tendencies,” Paulsen (below) said, pointing out the inaction against Ibrahim and Mohamad Azli, yet the crackdown against dissidents and opposition politicians for anything that is remotely controversial or offensive.

On Oct 8, de facto Law Minister Nancy Shukri gave a written reply to DAP’s Bagan parliamentarian Lim Guan Eng, who asked why Ibrahim was not charged for threatening to burn the Bible.

“His statement was not meant to cause religious disharmony ( kekecohan agama ) but was only meant to defend the sanctity of Islam ,” she said the reply to Lim.

Earlier this week, Mohamad Azli called for the abolition of Chinese vernacular schools, which according to him, promotes racism and anti-establishment sentiments.

Sepang police chief Mohd Yusoff Awang brushed off calls to charge the Umno man with sedition, saying that Mohamad Azli’s statement was merely a “ suggestion ” as it was not made in public.

Incredible defence

Paulsen, in the LFL statement yesterday, also said both Nancy and Mohd Yusoff made up new defences not even found in the Sedition Act or case laws.

“The incredible excuses of ‘defending Islam’ or merely a ‘suggestion’ do not exist in sedition law and is therefore unacceptable,” Paulsen said.

He added that both Nancy and Mohd Yusoff ( right ) cannot be so “ignorant” as not know that the “intention” of the maker is irrelevant in sedition cases.

Criticisms that the two are practising “selective persecution” have been ignored and brushed aside by the government.

“We reiterate our call for the Sedition Act to be abolished, for a moratorium to be imposed and all prosecutions to be dropped, pending the repeal of the Act, as promised repeatedly by the prime minister,” Paulsen added.

Echoing this, DAP parliamentary leader Lim Kit Siang urged Attorney-General Abdul Gani Patail to come clean on the double standards.

Lim said that it now appeared that the colonial era law is used to target people making legitimate and patriotic criticism.

"It would appear that one test today on whether one is a patriot is whether one is persecuted under the obnoxious Sedition Act, which is not being used against sedition but on legitimate and patriotic criticism and dissent.

"This is a sad sign of the times and reflection of the grave deterioration and  degeneration of (Prime Minister) Najib Abdul Razak's promise to make Malaysia the 'best democracy in the world'," Lim said.