Malaysia must stop saying one thing and doing another

In his first year in office as foreign secretary, David Lammy has made an astonishing 47 trips abroad. One of the most recent stamps on his diplomatic passport is from Malaysia, where he attended the 58th ASEAN Foreign Ministers’ Meeting on 12 July.

Opened by prime minister Anwar Ibrahim, in the official communique, Anwar underlined the principle of “centrality” as ASEAN’s guiding message, emphasising the need to ensure that, as one international scholar put it, the southeast Asian organisation should be the engine which empowers “the evolving regional architecture of the Asia Pacific”.

While in Malaysia, Mr Lammy paid a separate courtesy call to the prime minister. Pleasantries and gifts were exchanged, while the prime minister tweeted his delight at the meeting, lauding the upgrade in relations between Malaysia and the UK. In the tweet, Anwar also commended the fact that the UK and Malaysia now benefit from a “strategic partnership”, and that the relationship was “increasingly mature and strategic, grounded in shared values – justice, the rule of law, and universal humanity”. Honourable and self-congratulatory those sentiments may be, but they are some way removed from the reality of Malaysia’s current politics.

There has been a bundle of oppressive legislation tabled in Malaysia, the main aim of which appears to be to curtail freedom of expression and media freedom. Anwar’s government plans to introduce amendments to the Printing Presses and Publications Act, which, if introduced, will enable the Government to widen the scope of so-called “undesirable publications” to include those which alight on sensitive issues related to religion, race, and royalty, already a tricolon of controversy in Malaysia.

Commentators have noted that the new legislation would be just one of many steps taken to restrict freedom of speech and the media by Anwar’s coalition. Promises first made in his party’s manifesto to repeal draconian legislation, including the Sedition Act and Multimedia Act, remain on Anwar’s campaign website, but somehow appear to be missing at the cabinet table.

This chipping away at the rule of law and curbing of media freedom and freedom of expression can find no greater epitomisation than in UK journalist Clare Rewcastle Brown, who uncovered the 1MDB scandal, exposing corruption in her famed Sarawak Report. While she has been the target of abusive lawsuits in Malaysia since she first exposed corruption there, under Anwar’s aegis, Clare has been sentenced, in absentia, to two years imprisonment on a bogus defamation charge without being told she was to be put on trial. Anxious to appeal, she cannot clear her name as she must attend the court in Malaysia in person. While journalists in many countries have been the target of SLAPPS (strategic lawsuits designed to muzzle them), Clare’s case takes this to a new level.

Anwar’s election was an attempt by Malaysia’s electorate to shed light on the long shadow cast by former premier Najib Razak. The hope was that Anwar would oversee an executive who abided by the rule of law, shunned corruption, and lived by the values of a democracy. Yet, within the last three years, Anwar has placed a satirical cartoonist under a travel ban, allowed a British journalist to be tried and found guilty in absentia (with a prison sentence tacked on) for exposing the corruption of the previous government, and promoted a raft of censorious legislation which tightens his grip on civil society and weakens the checks and balances that freedom of speech, the rule of law and media freedom all provide for a flourishing western democracy.

It has been said that politicians campaign in poetry and govern in prose. Anwar Ibrahim has campaigned on the promise of reform and governed in breach of that promise. Clare is another on the list of British citizens, like Jimmy Lai and Alaa Abd El Fattah, who are being punished by foreign Governments simply because they do not like their journalism. The Foreign Secretary should be using every opportunity to press their case. That need is even greater when it comes to a “strategic partner” and Commonwealth country like Malaysia.

Mere months before he took office, David Lammy spoke of how easy it is to take the rule of law for granted when it remains a foreign concept in many parts of the world. He can now use the influence of his office to translate that foreign concept to the government of Malaysia and help its citizens enjoy the freedom of expression that we here in the UK take for granted.

Sir John Whittingdale is Chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group for Media Freedom and Conservative MP for Maldon