A Malaysian court fined 12 Muslims yesterday and sentenced one of them to a week in prison for illegally protesting the construction of a Hindu temple and parading a severed cow’s head.
The protest last August stoked tensions among Malaysia’s three main ethnic groups — the Malay Muslim majority and Chinese and Indian minorities, most of them Buddhists, Christians or Hindus who have complained that their religious rights are often sidelined in favor of Islam.
The 12 men were among scores of Muslims who marched with a bloodied cow’s head from a mosque to the central Selangor state chief minister’s office on Aug. 28 last year to denounce the state government’s plan to build a Hindu temple in their largely Muslim neighborhood.
OFFENSIVE BEHAVIOR
Some of the protesters also stomped and spat on the head and made fiery speeches that deeply offended Hindus. The cow is the most sacred animal in Hinduism.
All 12 pleaded guilty in a Selangor district court yesterday to a charge of illegal assembly and were fined 1,000 ringgit (US$320) each, defense lawyer Afifuddin Hafifi said. They faced up to a year in prison and a fine for the charge.
SEDITION
Two of them who brought and stepped on the cow’s head also pleaded guilty to sedition.
Both were fined an additional 3,000 ringgit, and one was sentenced to a week in prison, Afifuddin said.
Sedition, defined as promoting hostility between races, is punishable by up to three years in prison and a fine.
The conflict highlighted frustrations among minorities about strict government guidelines that restrict the number of non-Muslim places of worship, partly based on whether enough non-Muslims live where a church or temple is to be built.
Authorities in Selangor eventually found a new site to build the controversial temple.
A. Vaithilingam, a Malaysian Hindu religious leader, raised concerns that the penalties imposed by the court yesterday might appear inadequate to some Hindus.
“The sentences seem to be very light after the huge commotion and the insult,” he said. The men’s actions “stirred up the emotions throughout the country. This could have caused a riot.”
VENEZUELAN ACTION: Marco Rubio said that previous US interdiction efforts have not stemmed the flow of illicit drugs into the US and that ‘blowing them up’ would US President Donald Trump on Wednesday justified a lethal military strike that his administration said was carried out a day earlier against a Venezuelan gang as a necessary effort by the US to send a message to Latin American cartels. Asked why the military did not instead interdict the vessel and capture those on board, Trump said that the operation would cause drug smugglers to think twice about trying to move drugs into the US. “There was massive amounts of drugs coming into our country to kill a lot of people and everybody fully understands that,” Trump said while hosting Polish President
Japan yesterday heralded the coming-of-age of Japanese Prince Hisahito with an elaborate ceremony at the Imperial Palace, where a succession crisis is brewing. The nephew of Japanese Emperor Naruhito, Hisahito received a black silk-and-lacquer crown at the ceremony, which marks the beginning of his royal adult life. “Thank you very much for bestowing the crown today at the coming-of-age ceremony,” Hisahito said. “I will fulfill my duties, being aware of my responsibilities as an adult member of the imperial family.” Although the emperor has a daughter — Princess Aiko — the 23-year-old has been sidelined by the royal family’s male-only
A French couple kept Louise, a playful black panther, in an apartment in northern France, triggering panic when she was spotted roaming nearby rooftops. The pair were were handed suspended jail sentences on Thursday for illegally keeping a wild animal, despite protesting that they saw Louise as their baby. The ruling follows a September 2019 incident when the months-old feline was seen roaming a rooftop in Armentieres after slipping out of the couple’s window. Authorities captured the panther by sedating her with anesthetic darts after she entered a home. No injuries were reported during the animal’s time on the loose. The court in the
Another tanker carrying liquefied natural gas from Russia’s sanctioned Arctic LNG (liquefied natural gas) 2 project has docked in a Chinese port, ship-tracking data showed, days after Russian President Vladimir Putin met Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) in Beijing. The London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG) tracking data indicated the Russian Voskhod LNG tanker was anchored at an LNG terminal in the port of Tieshan in Guangxi, China. The Russian flagged tanker, with a cargo of 150,000 cubic meters of LNG, was loaded up at the Arctic LNG 2 facility in Gydan in northern Siberia on July 19, LSEG data showed.
RSS