Muhammad Safwan Anang (pic), the former chairperson of Solidariti Mahasiswa Malaysia (SMM), was today found guilty of sedition and sentenced to 10 months’ jail.
Bernama reported that Sessions Court judge Norsharisah Awang found Safwan guilty in a speech delivered on May 13 last year.
Norsharisah said the court was satisfied that words uttered by Safwan had a seditious tendency.
The 24-year-old Safwan has been granted a stay of execution pending an appeal and was released after posting bail of RM15,000.
In his speech at the Kuala Lumpur-Selangor Chinese Assembly Hall in Kuala Lumpur, Safwan was accused of inciting the public to topple a legitimate government through illegal means.
The guilty verdict against Safwan follows a recent wave of charges under the Sedition Act, including three opposition politicians in the past two weeks and a university lecturer on Tuesday, reports AFP.
Rights group Amnesty International has called on Malysia to end its "alarming use" of the law, which Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak had pledged to repeal in 2012.
Najib's coalition – Barisan Nasional – which has ruled the country since independence in 1957, lost the popular vote for the first time in a general election last year but managed to retain control of Parliament through what critics described as gerrymandering.
Amnesty International said at least 15 people had been charged with or investigated under the Sedition Act this year.
Government officials have dismissed accusations of launching a crackdown.
Yesterday, Malaysiakini journalist Susan Loone was qestioned for nine hours over an article she had written based on an interview with an opposition politician who complained about police treatment in detention.
Amnesty International has said the government is "fostering a climate of repression".
"The use of the law – increasingly against individuals simply expressing political, religious and other views – is creating a chilling effect on freedom of expression in the country," the rights group said in a statement today.
Malaysia's opposition said on Wednesday that it had planned a series of protests to urge the government to drop all sedition charges and repeal the law. – September 5, 2014.
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