Saturday, February 21, 2015

Could Malaysia's new wave of bold student activists be on the verge of an uprising?

Clutching a copy of Molotov Cocktail, the collection of political essays he published last year, 25-year-old law undergraduate Adam Adli sweeps away a mop of hair and skips across the road to join the student protesters milling about outside the University of Malaya. Watched on one side by campus security and on the other by not-so-secret secret police, they've gathered in support of the so-called "UM8", an octet of students recently disciplined by university authorities.

Their misdemeanour was simply to invite Anwar Ibrahim – leader of the opposition coalition (Pakatan Rakyat) and a UM alumnus – to give a talk on campus, forbidden under Malaysia's University and University Colleges Act (UUCA), which bars students from being members of – or even expressing support or opposition to – political parties. Two of the UM8 were suspended from study – Fahmi Zainol being forced to pay back twice the amount of his scholarship (around £20,000) – while seven received fines and warnings about their conduct.

Meanwhile, last week Anwar Ibrahim was sentenced to five years in prison for "sodomy" (illegal in predominantly Muslim Malaysia), despite originally being acquitted by the High Court. He had previously been imprisoned for six years for the same offence, later overturned by the Supreme Court. Amnesty called it a "deplorable judgement", while Human Rights Watch, in little doubt the conviction was politically motivated, called it "a travesty of justice".

If, as Marx suggested, history repeats itself first as tragedy, then as farce, then the absurd, this Kafkaesque imprisonment of Anwar – the most high-profile opponent of the Barisan Nasional (National Front) coalition that's ruled Malaysia since independence in 1957 – might light the touch paper in a country where progressive forces grow ever more impatient with the government's increasingly desperate and capricious cling to power. Full story...

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  2. Acrimonious split rattles Malaysian premier’s family...
  3. Malaysia's Anwar jailed for five years after losing appeal in sodomy trial...
  4. Malaysia Anwar sodomy case flawed from day one...
  5. Anwar Ibrahim gives Malaysian govt. the finger...
  6. Malaysia elections: the dark forces of corruption...
  7. Sedition axe falls on Malaysian press...

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