Bar Council: SIB case is different

The Sun Daily
by Lee Choon Fai

PETALING JAYA: The High Court should not have used an earlier Court of Appeal ruling as a precedent in rejecting Sidang Injil Borneo's (SIB) leave application for a judicial review against a Home Ministry ban on importing Christian books containing the word "Allah", a human rights lawyer said today.

Bar Council Human Rights Committee chairman Andrew Khoo said the court should have treated SIB's judicial review as a separate issue instead of relying on the appellate court's ruling in the Herald case.

"The ruling by the Court of Appeal clearly stated that this was a decision that was based on the particular situation of Herald. Therefore, it is based on different facts.

"SIB's case have been viewed as a different case as the decision in the Herald case is not immediately applicable (to it)," Khoo told theSun today.

SIB filed the judicial review in 2007 against the Home Ministry to challenge the Customs Department's seizure of its books brought in from Surabaya, Indonesia at the Low-Cost Carrier Terminal in Sepang the same year.

In 2009, the High Court gave the green light to an application by Catholic Church Archbishop Murphy Pakiam to use the word "Allah" to refer to God in Herald, following a ban made by the Home Ministry.

The decision was later unanimously overturned by a bench of three judges in the Court of Appeal, which ruled that "Allah" was not an integral part of Christianity.

Khoo explained that in Herald's case, they were dealing with ministerial discretion on newspapers but the SIB case does not involve any publications.

"This (SIB) has nothing to do with a newspaper, so the facts are very different.

"If the courts are going to apply what they think is precedence, it would be unhelpful in any review in similar situations in the future," he said.

Khoo also pointed out that several sweeping statements were made in the judgement by the Court of Appeal to not allow Herald to use the word "Allah".