Putrajaya has cause to be afraid as the sedition case against Universiti Malaya academician Azmi Sharom is inspiring other academicians to fight back, Malaysian Academic Movement (Move) said.

"Now they have to be worried and afraid that we are reacting over the suppression and oppression on us," Move chairperson Wan Manan Wan Muda said.

Wan Manan said this after the first day of the trial against the law lecturer in the Sessions Court in Kuala Lumpur today.

Azmi is charged with sedition for his views on the Perak constitutional crisis that was published by the Malay Malil Online.

"Azmi's case has activated and raised consciousness within the academia, on the importance of knowledge, teaching and research," the Universiti Sains Malaysia Health Science professor said.

Previously, he said, the academic community was allowed to speak up on issues related to their expertise. This was under the university’s staff disciplinary, rules governed by the University and University Colleges Act (UUCA).

“I don’t know since when the Sedition Act has overwritten all this,” Wan Manan said, referring to Azmi’s comment made to the Malay Mail Online that brought on the sedition charge.

"If you cannot even carry out simple university work... as an intellectual, scholar and student but you cannot voice out (in the university), then where else can you do it?

“(We) have to fight, first within the university, then fight within the country to make things better for the future, so that our students can compete at the international level," Wan Manan ( photo ) said.

"This is a good jerk and wake up call to the academicians," he said.

Members of profession will voice out and write more about their struggle to achieve academic freedom, he said, and may also join forces with student groups, who made half a million in population.

'We have more faith in the students'

“As academicians, of course we are not going to take crazy actions... We are going to use our knowledge and intelligence to overcome the threats and violations to rights,” Wan Manan said, adding that the academic community can change the world.

“We have to overcome these obnoxious rules,” he said, adding the group may come up with a manifesto for all candidates in the next general election.

Quoting scholars worldwide, he said, there would not be progress without deviation and change could only be brought about by revolutionary science.

"We have more faith in the students. The academicians of public universities are in a comfort zone," Wan Manan said, adding that the academicians have been dormant the past 30 years because of the good wages at public universities.

He also said that they have no problem with the government monitoring the academic community for possible "wrongdoing".

"That is not a problem, they have been watching us all this while. What more can they do? It is time for us to act, not for them to watch," he said, defiantly.

Wan Manan said this when asked an Umno general assembly delegate who last week accused half of the public university lecturers of spreading deviated ideology to students and called on the government to pay attention to this.

“We should be happy today as we are celebrating the rejunevation of academic conscience,” he added.