HEADS THEY WIN, TAILS I LOSE

Raja Petra Kamarudin

Today is my eighth day of detention under the Internal Security Act (“ISA”). When I was detailed on Friday, 12th September 2008, it was supposed to be in respect of articles I wrote in Malaysia Today about our leaders, which was supposed to have confused the public and articles which insult Islam.

It was since Wednesday afternoon, that the Special Branch officers (“SB”) produced the articles and went through all those articles with me. They found that none of the articles insulted Islam. The SB officers told me that it is not so much that my articles insult Islam but, that my style of writing is too sophisticated and thereby Malaysians who might not be of the same intellectual level as myself, could possibly misinterpret what I was trying to say and mistook which I wrote as an attempt to insult Islam.

This morning, I had another session with the SB officers, and pointed out, what they told me yesterday, which is, ISA detention is about intention to commit chaos which would then be detrimental to public order. I argued that if the SB is of the opinion that the problem lies in my style of writing and how it can be misinterpreted by the public, then this would rule out any possibility of mala fide on my part when I wrote those articles.

I also told the SB officers that it appears that they are looking for something to pin on me, but thus far they have not found anything.... selanjutnya.