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This page discusses other sedition regimes
It covers -
As
with the preceding page it supplements the discussion
elsewhere on this site of censorship
and hatespeech.
Asia
and Africa
States in Asia and Africa have recurrently deployed sedition
and security legislation that derives from their UK and
French colonial heritage. Those regimes but omits acontemporary
constraints.
Gambian law, for example, chills an independent press
through prison terms for reporters found guilty of sedition
- broadly defined - or libel and a requirement that newspaper
proprietors must sign a US$16,600 bond (with their houses
as guarantees) to be allowed to publish.
In 2008 UK missionaries David and Fiona Fulton were sentenced
to a year's hard labour in a Gambian prison over "seditious"
email to friends in London describing the latest Gambian
President as a madman. They were also fined £6,250
each. They pleaded guilty to charges of "printing,
publishing or reproducing publications with intent to
bring hatred or contempt or to excite disaffection against
the president or the government".
Malaysia and Singapore have both made active use of sedition/anti-terrorism
legislation to silence internal political dissent and
online expression. Chinese law and practice features substantial
restrictions against criticism of the Communist Party
and against statements by/for the Falun Gong sect.
Law in the Hong Kong SAR melds UK and PRC rigour. The
Crimes Ordinance for example deals with "acts done
with a seditious intent, the uttering of seditious words,
dealing with seditious publication or the possession of
such publications". Sedition encompasses an intent
to counsel disobedience to law or to any lawful order,
or to raise discontent or disaffection among Hong Kong
inhabitants. Substantive effects are not required for
prosecution, with courts instead considering the defendant's
words have a tendency to incite disobedience or discontent
rather than an intent to incite violence. A 'seditious
intent' is not required for prosecution of those who deal
with or possess seditious publications.
In Malaysia the 1948 Sedition Act, a relic of that era's
state of emergency, deals with anyone who, does or attempts
to do, or makes any preparation to do, or conspires with
any person to do any act that has or would have a seditious
tendency, who utters any seditious words, or who prints,
publishes or imports any seditious publication. It is
a crime to possess without lawful excuse any seditious
publication. A seditious tendency includes a tendency
to "question any matter, right, status, position,
privilege, sovereignty or prerogative established or protected
by the provisions of part III of the Federal constitution".
Recent perspectives from China and Malaysia are the RSF
report
on Chinese censorship of chat rooms, the 2003 Information
Control and Self-Censorship in the PRC and the Spread
of SARS report (PDF)
by the US Congressional Executive Commission on China,
the 2003 Memorandum on the Malaysian Sedition Act
1948 (PDF)
by Article 19 and Davidson, Friesen & Jackson's 2001
'Lawyers and the Rule of Law on Trial: Sedition Prosecutions
in Malaysia 'in Criminal Law Forum 2001. A perspective
on practice in Singapore is provided by Chris Lydgate's
Lee's Law: How Singapore Crushes Dissent (Melbourne:
Scribe 2003)
Oceania
States in the Pacific have made increasing use of sedition
prosecutions to dampen criticism. In 1997 for example
Taimi 'o Tonga editor Filokalafi 'Akau'ola was
charged with sedition after criticising corruption in
the Tongan establishment. The newspaper subsequently moved
offshore. In 2003 the Tongan Supreme Court twice overturned
a government ban on its import based on claims that it
was seditious. Sedition prosecutions have elsewhere been
used in Fiji (particularly after the Rambuka coup), the
Cook Islands, Papua New Guinea and Solomons.
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