Majority and minority judgments in Malaysiakini's contempt case
This morning, the Federal Court ruled that Malaysiakini is liable for contempt of court over its readers’ comments and fined the company RM500,000.
The hefty sentence, however, does not extend to its editor-in-chief Steven Gan who was found not guilty of the same charge.
The seven-person bench chaired by Court of Appeal president Rohana Yusuf delivered the 6-1 majority decision with dissenting judgment by Federal Court judge P Nallini.
Besides Rohana, the other panel members who form the majority ruling are chief judge of the High Court of Malaya Azahar Mohamed; chief judge of Sabah and Sarawak Abang Iskandar Abang Hashim; and Federal Court judges Mohd Zawawi Salleh, Vernon Ong Lam Kiat and Abdul Rahman Sebli.
This marked the first time Malaysiakini is being cited for contempt of court in its 21-year history.
Read the press summary of the majority and minority judgments.
(Editor's note: This article has been amended to change the word full judgment to press summary)
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COMMENT | Is today the beginning of the real emergency?
Malaysiakini exceeds RM500k fundraising target for hefty court fine
The courts (or the AG) felt that five readers' comments were offensive to them, and managed to get mkini to pulled it down as soon as it was made known to mkini. They should have left it at that since most casual users (like me) would not have seen such comments and would not have been been able to "dig" the comments out again after the deletion. But no... the AG decided to bring up this case (to the highest court even!) and while all this hoo-hah was going on, I was wondering to myself ... what were these five comments that got them so riled up? Searched I did, but I could not find the offensive five comments.....until now, after the verdict. The summary judgment is now published with the five comments resurrected for the whole world to see again! Here is the irony of it all: You get offended by some words, got them deleted, but you copied it, kept it, and now even published it back to the internet for all to see AGAIN! Why bothered to ask mkini to take it down earlier?!! After seeing the five comments .... it was such an anti climax. I was expecting some really really nasty comments to have invoked such a response from the courts. But it pales in comparison to some other comments I have seen on mkini!
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