Malaysia: Human rights lawyer probed for tweet criticising Prime Minister
Event- Country
- Malaysia
- Initial Date
- Jun 15, 2015
- Event Description
Police are probing human rights lawyer Eric Paulsen for a third time, now for allegedly insulting the prime minister on Twitter. "Tomorrow, June 16, Eric Paulsen, human rights lawyer and executive director and co-founder of Lawyers for Liberty (LFL) will be investigated by police in relation to tweets criticising Prime Minister Najib Razak that were made last week. Paulsen will be investigated under section 504 and 505 of the Penal Code, intentional insult with intent to provoke a breach of peace and statements conducing to public mischief. "This will be the third time Paulsen has been hauled up by police for a tweet," said LFL in a mesage today. The NGO said lawyer Latheefa Koya will accompany him to Bukit Aman police headquarters tomorrow afternoon. Prior to this, he was arrested in March for sedition related to his tweets on Islamic opposition party PAS and the hudud issue. In January he was probed for commenting that Islamic authority Jakim encouraged "extremism" in some of its Friday sermons. He was subsequently charged at the Kuala Lumpur Sessions Court under Section 4(1)(c) of the Sedition Act and was released on bail of RM2,000 with one surety, after spending two nights in the police lockup.
- Impact of Event
- 1
- Gender of HRD
- Man
- Violation
- Intimidation and Threats
- Rights Concerned
- Online
- HRD
- Lawyer
- Perpetrator-State
- Police
- Source
- Monitoring Status
- Pending
- Event Location
Latitude: 3.1390029999999847
Longitude: 101.686855
- Event Location
- Summary for Publications
On 16 June 2015, human rights lawyer and executive director of Lawyers for Liberty, Mr Eric Paulsen was investigated by police in relation to a tweet criticising Prime Minister Najib Razak. Police also confiscated his smartphone for further investigation.