Catholic Bishop Dr Paul Tan Chee Ing has urged the enactment of a new law against hate speech which should replace the existing law on sedition which he said was obsolete and tainted by repeated misuse.

“Episodes such as the incident at Low Yat Plaza and cases such as allegedly telling non-Muslim pupils to drink their own urine if they are thirsty during Ramadan must be dealt under a new category called hate speech which should be prohibited,” said the vocal head of the Catholic Church in the Malacca-Johor diocese.

He defined hate speech as incitements to ill-will and hatred through exhortations to hatred and calls to violence against individuals or groups, and also the dissemination what is not fact or what are outright lies for the purpose of spawning hatred at targetted groups.

Bishop Paul admitted that the policing of a law thus defined would be difficult because of grey areas that such a law would necessarily generate.

But he maintained that punitive prohibitions against hate speech will serve the salutary purpose of checking the spread of what is toxic for peaceful coexistence between peoples of diverse races and religions in  a country.

The Jesuit-trained prelate recognised that the prohibition of hate speech would entail action against the perpetrators of such historical claims as that which holds the Portuguese arrival in Malacca in 1511 to have been motivated not by the search for spices, as the settled historiography on subject has it, but instead was due to a resumption of medieval Europe’s crusades against Islam.

“I admit that a law against hate speech in a multi-religious society such as ours would have to take careful note of such claims because of its inherent capacity to incite sectarian furies, though some would say that this type of thing falls under the category of historical revisionism and therefore allowable on scholarly grounds.

“But in a multi-religious society where nerves are often on edge from the the presence of agents provocateur, these kinds of claims which depart from the settled historiography should be prohibited,” argued the bishop.

He said that a meticulously defined law against hate speech would be a more effective way of checking the spread of religious and racial hatred than the existing Sedition Act, which he said had become obsolete from repeated misuse against legitimate forms of dissent and against people who were merely propagating unconventional views.

“Sedition is old hat in these times of widespread national independence and global democracy,” he opined.

“The law should be got rid off but then how to deal with racial and religious provocateurs?

“I suggest  specific prohibition against hate speech that would be of more utility than the present Sedition Act against people out to inflame racial and religious passions,” asserted Bishop Paul.

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