Raja Petra update

Raja Petra, a Malaysian on-line magazine editor, has been charged with sedition as well as under the Internal Security Act for a piece that he wrote back in April alleging the involvement of the deputy prime minister in a murder case. He is currently detained under the ISA.A habeas corpus application asking for his release will be decided on November 7, but even if he is freed then his sedition trial is set to continue November 10. In a piece that he wrote in another online publication, Access Malaysia, he describes this as the government taking out a double insurance policy to make sure he is kept behind lock and key.

A group of media defense lawyers from the region are cooperating in his defence. Malik Imtiaz is acting for Raja Petra (see here for his blog report on the hearing of 22nd October). The IBA sent observers to his habeas corpus hearing - George Hwang, from Singapore, was one of them. H.R. Dipendra, another Malaysian lawyer, was instructed by the Media Legal Defence Initiative (the new organisation set up to support media defence litigation) and SEAPA to also attend as 'watching brief' counsel and submitted a statement international human rights standards on administrative detention.