Lu Cakap Lu Kena: Why it’s dangerous to whistleblow in Msia

UPDATE(05/06/2024): The female student who made the social media posting has won the defamation case filed against her by MRSM Tumpat teacher. 

Most of y’all reading will be working adults, but just take a moment to imagine. Imagine that you’re studying in a secondary boarding school in the middle of nowhere in Malaysia. You get to see your parents once maybe every few weeks, which of course leads you to rely on the only adults around – that being teachers and other school staff – as role models and guardians.

Now, imagine being a female student in that situation, and one of your male teachers saunters out of a cubicle while you’re changing your clothes in the toilet.

That, allegedly, was the experience of a student at MRSM Tumpat, a boarding school in Kelantan relayed to an alumni, @naylisabirawr_, who in turn put it up on X/Twitter. But that’s not all…

The teacher (allegedly) has a track record of creepy behavior

In a post calling out the teacher for being a pedophile, @naylisabirawr_ claimed that when they were 13 and studying at MRSM Tumpat, seniors would warn them about this one teacher who would send dirty texts to whomever he found attractive.

From screenshots they’ve posted, it does seem that the stuff he texts his students are odd at best…

…and criminal at worst.

Apparently, the teacher once entered a female student’s dorm room for an ‘inspection’, and allegedly took pictures of some laundry – which included underwear – that’s put out to dry.

Whether all the allegations against the teacher are true or not, this whole saga highlights something important…

Certain Malaysian laws make it hard to call out sexual harassment (or other wrongdoings)

Y’all might not know this, but if you tell people in person, post on social media, or WhatsApp someone talking about how you’ve been sexually harassed, you can get in legal trouble. Without getting into the nitty gritty, you can, for one, be sued for defamation. If you’ve said, written, posted, emailed, WhatsApped, etc anything that:

• Lowers someone’s reputation in the eyes of the public
• Identifies the person or refers to the person, either explicitly or implicitly
• Spoken, published or sent the material to a third party (anyone that’s not the person you’re referring to)

…you could very well be held liable for defamation. If the person you’re talking or posting about doesn’t sue you, the government can prosecute you for defamation under section 499 of the Penal Code instead.

And then, there’s section 233 of the Communications and Multimedia Act 1998 (CMA 1998). This piece of legislation makes it an offence if you make ‘improper use of network facilities or services’.

Communications & Multimedia Act 1998 – Section 233 in part

(1) A person who—

(a) by means of any network facilities or network service or applications service knowingly—

(i) makes, creates or solicits; and

(ii) initiates the transmission of,

any comment, request, suggestion or other communication which is obscene, indecent, false, menacing or offensive in character with intent to annoy, abuse, threaten or harass another person; ……

commits an offence.

This, of course, includes posting defamatory remarks on social media, and as it happens, @naylisabirawr_ is under investigation by the police under both the Penal Code and CMA 1998 because the teacher made a police report on 31 March. According to one of their posts on X, they’re also being sued for RM3 million at the same time.

If you think you’re not doing anything illegal by whistleblowing to the public, and you’re protected under the Whistleblowers Protection Act 2010, you’re wrong. The Act only protects whistleblowers that report wrongdoings to the relevant government agencies and does not cover your butt if you spread information to the public.

So, yes, it’s incredibly hard to call out any wrongdoings, whether legal or moral, without getting into trouble, and that’s not for a lack of trying, since…

Many Malaysians have been prosecuted for whistleblowing in the past

Hey, remember Ain Husniza? TL;DR: Ain (and her dad) was also sued for defamation after she criticized her teacher who allegedly made a rape joke in class back in 2021.

Eventually, the family had to move from Puncak Alam to Cheras, cuz the backlash they faced from the school, other students and the neighborhood was that atrocious, while the Education Ministry remained weirdly silent throughout the whole saga.

Pastu, ada pulak the case of Lalitha Kunaratnam, an activist who wrote about the business interests of Azam Baki, the Chief Commissioner of the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) in 2021. In a two-part series, she indicated Azam’s connection with two publicly listed companies alongside supporting documents that are publicly available.

Lalitha was later investigated by the police under section 233 of CMA 1998 and section 505 of the Penal Code, and Azam Baki sued her for defamation, claiming that the articles portrayed him as a ‘corrupt civil servant who abused his position as a senior MACC officer’.

These are just two of the many instances of whistleblowers getting into trouble in Malaysia – even Al Jazeera, a generally respected Qatari news outlet – pernah kena with CMA 1998 and the Sedition Act.

So what should I do if I wanna report any wrongdoings?

Listen, if you or someone you know have been sexually harrased by a pedophile or been legally wronged in some way, your best bet is going to the relevant authorities, be it the police, MACC, MCMC, whichever. It’s perfectly understandable that you want to name and shame someone who has legitimately done something wrong to you, but:

1. The law in currently not on the side of whistleblowers who want to make things public; and
2. The law is what it is in an attempt to strike a balance and discourage people from defaming other people

And we get that being a victim of sexual harrassment and feeling like you don’t have a voice is an incredibly terrible situation to be in, and we wish that weren’t the case, but it’s important to keep yourself from being punished by the law for no good reason.

Going back to the situation regarding MRSM Tumpat and the case concerning @naylisabirawr_’s and the unnamed teacher, we’ll update y’all whenever we get more news. Sekian.