Police raided the home of blogger Chan Lilian in Penang and carted away her 27-inch iMac and a modem yesterday as part of their investigations into a tweet she sent last month.
Chan, a videographer, is being investigated under Section 4 (1) of the Sedition Act for her tweet message, as well as Section 27 (5) of the Police Act for allegedly participating in the July 9 Bersih 2.0 rally in Kuala Lumpur.
If convicted, Chan faces a jail term of up to three years, a fine of not more than RM5,000, or both.
Yesterday, four police officers from the cyber crime unit in Brickfields, Kuala Lumpur, questioned Chan for about an hour at the Jalan Pattani (northeast district) police headquarters in Penang.
They then went to her house in Tanjung Bungah and spent two hours searching for "evidence".
They also combed through eight files on her computer, took snapshots of her Twitter account and drew a diagram of her work area.
The police team, led by investigating officer ASP Ridzuan Ibrahim left about 8.30pm with Chan's iMac and a modem.
Asked by journalists about the seizure of Chan's prized iMac, Ridzuan replied, "No comment!" before slipping into the police car.
Chan was accompanied by lawyer Tham Shien Shyong during her three-hour ordeal.
"This is the price I have to
pay for expressing my thoughts," a calm Chan told reporters later outside her house.
"I maintain that I have no intention of inciting anyone - my tweet is restricted (to 900 members) but its privacy has been abused," added the mother of four.
Chan, who is a temporary staff with a Penang government unit, vowed that she would not give up tweeting as she has the right to freedom of expression.
"It is regrettable that this has happened. I tweeted as an individual and a blogger, and this has nothing to do with where I work (or my employer)," she said.
900 members in Twitter account
On June 29 night, 10 days before the Bersih rally, Chan had sent out a tweet suggesting that Christians march to protest their "persecution".
This resulted in a police report being lodged against her by Blog House secretary Tony Yew.
In his report, Yew alleged that Chan's tweet contained seditious elements, which directly incited Christians to go against the government.
Yew, who was one of Chan's 900 members in her Twitter
account, said that as a Christian, he believed the tweet message has "the ability to threaten the security of the nation".
He had also wrote in his blog that Chan's tweet was re-tweeted and he was disappointed there were people out there happy to spread the word.
Chan, a former Malaysiakini citizen journalist, said her Twitteraccount was restricted to her followers, but she had unknowingly added Yew.
No comments:
Post a Comment