Former Malaysian deputy prime minister and opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim vowed yesterday to go down “fighting a corrupt government” as Malaysia’s top court began hearing his appeal against a sodomy conviction that would send him back to jail and out of active politics.
Anwar was cleared in 2012 of charges he sodomized a young former male aide, but that acquittal was controversially reversed in March by an appeals court which convicted him and handed down a five-year jail sentence.
“I do not want to go jail, but if I am forced to, I will go fighting a corrupt government,” Anwar, 67, tweeted as the hearings got under way at the Federal Court, which was ringed by about 200 armed police and security barricades.
Photo: AFP
“If this is my last service to Malaysians, to the young, then this is my small sacrifice,” Anwar said.
The session had been expected to end today with a ruling by a panel of judges, but Chief Justice Arifin Zakaria told the packed court it would be extended to tomorrow.
If jailed, Anwar would also lose his parliament seat — a blow for an opposition movement that rallied around his star power and now threatens to topple Malaysia’s decades-old regime, yet is grappling with divisions in its own ranks.
Anwar calls the case a long-running government conspiracy to destroy his career — and the opposition’s momentum — by repeatedly tarring him with false charges of sodomy, which is illegal in Muslim-majority Malaysia.
The International Federation for Human Rights, which groups 178 member organizations, labeled the hearings “a decisive test for Malaysia’s judiciary” and called for an unbiased ruling.
The popular Anwar was sensationally ousted from the ruling United Malays National Organization (UMNO) in a 1998 power struggle, beaten by police, and jailed on a previous sodomy and corruption conviction widely seen as trumped up.
He was released six years later when the sodomy conviction was overturned.
Anwar’s downfall sparked massive anti-government demonstrations, invigorating an opposition that UMNO had long kept in check.
Promising to end corruption, crony capitalism and UMNO’s divisive racial politics, the three-party opposition alliance won the majority of votes in elections last year, but UMNO’s coalition retained parliament thanks to decades of gerrymandering.
UMNO has governed racially diverse Malaysia since independence in 1957, bringing decades of stability and rapid economic development under an authoritarian formula that reserves political primacy for the Muslim ethnic-Malay majority.
However, a multiracial new generation of voters has increasingly rebelled.
Large anti-government demonstrations have been held in recent years, some ending in violent police crackdowns, but Anwar has not directly called for protests if jailed.
About 200 pro-Anwar and pro-government demonstrators gathered outside the court yesterday, but the situation was calm.
Political tensions have soared since last year’s elections, with Muslim conservatives ratcheting up rhetoric against a perceived threat posed by the multi-faith opposition to Islam’s leading role.
Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak’s government is also using Malaysia’s sedition law in an ongoing crackdown on the opposition and other critics, drawing criticism from international rights groups, UN human rights experts and the US embassy.
The Federal Court will also hear a government bid to lengthen Anwar’s sentence. Sodomy is punishable by up to 20 years.
The US Department of State said in March that Anwar’s conviction raised concerns over rule of law and judicial independence.
Najib has admitted meeting Anwar’s sodomy accuser, Mohamad Saiful Bukhari Azlan, in 2008 shortly before the charges emerged, but denies the government orchestrated the case.
However, Amnesty International on Monday said the case was “clearly politically motivated” and that Anwar would be a “prisoner of conscience” if jailed.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not