Raja Petra defiant after eight-hour grilling
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Raja Petra defiant after eight-hour grilling
By: Charles Ramendran (Thu, 26 Jul 2007)
KUALA LUMPUR (July 26, 2007): Malaysia-today.net webmaster Raja Petra
Kamarudin (pix left), who is being investigated for alleged sedition,
emerged defiant as ever yesterday after spending eight hours at the
Dang Wangi district police headquarters.
He was summoned for questioning following a report lodged by Umno on
Monday alleging the blogger had insulted the King and Islam in his
website.
The 57-year-old blogger arrived about 11am, accompanied by his wife
Marina Abdullah, 50, and friends. He was believed to have given a
statement and met district police chief ACP Mohd Zulkarnian Abdul
Rahman.
He emerged at 7.15pm to be greeted by about 30 reporters.
Mohd Zulkarnian said earlier that Raja Petra was being investigated
under the Sedition Act.
Marina said it was the second time her husband had been called in for
questioning over postings in his weblog. Last year, he was questioned
over a posting which alleged the sale of state titles in Negri
Sembilan. No action was taken against him.
In 2001, Raja Petra was detained under the Internal Security Act.
Umno information chief Tan Sri Muhammad Muhd Taib lodged a police
report against Raja Petra over postings which allegedly condemned the
King and Islam. Raja Petra responded via a long posting criticising
Muhammad and also made certain allegations against the former
Selangor mentri besar.
He told reporters waiting outside the Dang Wangi station: "I came
here to defend myself of the allegations and brought my Quran with me
and asked them where I went wrong. I demanded they tell me where I
had insulted the King and Islam in the website. They made me sign
about 30 or 40 papers and I protested when they asked me to reveal
the bloggers who posted comments on Malaysia-Today.net.
"How am I to know who? We have 20,000 news items and five million
comments from bloggers coming from 146 countries. Although 70% of
these are comments from Malaysians, how are we to know who they are.
I don't know who they are and neither do I want to know." He alleged
that Umno was behind such postings in his website.
"These people are Umno 'cybertroopers', there are about 25 of them
paid RM2,750 a month to raid and invade malaysia-today.net. They
flood my website with about 500 to 600 unwanted and sensitive
comments daily and I lose sleep every night cleaning this mess up by
deleting them from my site," he said.
However, he admitted that such comments were open to viewing for
hours until they were removed.
Raja Petra said there was an agenda to clamp down on blogs before the
coming general election in a move to black out news.
When asked about the allegations made by Muhammad that malaysia-
today.net had carried comments which insulted the King, Raja Petra said:
"Where, where is that particular posting he is referring to? If I
smoke a cigar with the Sultan of Selangor (Raja Petra's cousin), does
that mean I disrespect him? The police asked me about a comment on my
website which read 'Why fight, we are Malaysians, let us live
peacefully and be happy'. This is a positive comment but I was
questioned about what it meant."
He said finally the police asked him what was the purpose of the
website and he said he told them "malaysia-today.net was to teach
Malaysians to debate in an intelligent and mature manner. Whether it
be agreed upon or not, it must be allowed".
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