Malaysian authorities have released on bail a graphic designer and activist after questioning him under the Sedition Act for posting satirical images of the newly appointed governor of Sabah in eastern Malaysia.
Fahmi Reza, 47, was released on bail by police in Penampang district on Tuesday evening and has since returned to Kuala Lumpur, local police officials confirmed to the Malaysian press yesterday.
Fahmi was detained on December 30 at the Penampang district police headquarters, outside the state capital of Kota Kinabalu, after voluntarily presenting himself to provide a statement in connection with work that criticized Musa Aman, who was sworn in yesterday as the 11th governor (Yang Di-Pertua Negeri) of Sabah.
BenarNews quoted Sabah Police Commissioner Jauteh Dikun as saying that Fahmi was arrested after police received numerous reports that he and others had pasted caricatures of Musa Aman in several areas, including in Kota Kinabalu. Other matters involving sedition were being investigated.
Fahmi was questioned earlier in December over his social media posts featuring a caricature of Musa Aman, which shows him clutching a 100-ringgit note in his teeth.
But he then flew to Sabah late last week to pose with large paper cutouts of the caricature in various parts of Kota Kinabalu. “The time has come for the people to lose their fear of rulers,” he wrote along with one post on December 30, which appeared with a photo of the caricature at a viral intersection in the state capital. “If you don’t want to be ridiculed by the people, don’t be a corrupt bastard.” In another video, which shows him posting the caricature on a wall in Kota Kinabalu, he said, “Solidarity with the people of Sabah who fight corruption, fight bribery.”
Musa Aman, who served as chief minister of Sabah from 2003 to 2018, has been accused of presiding over massive corruption scandals during his time in office. He was among several senior politicians from the United Malays National Organization who were charged with corruption after the party’s shocking defeat at the general election of 2018. However, in June 2020, four months after the collapse of the Pakatan Harapan coalition that came to power in 2018, he was acquitted of 46 charges of corruption and money laundering. Musa was accused of receiving $63 million in bribes for logging contracts between 2004 and 2008.
The news that Musa had been appointed the state governor was greeted with quizzical and outraged responses on social media, where an old video of Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim’s reaction to the 2020 acquittal has been widely shared.
Musa Aman’s reappointment to the heights of political power in Sabah is exactly the sort of case of outrageous impunity that Fahmi Reza has worked to mock and satirize throughout his career. He became well known in 2016, when he posted on social media a caricature of then Prime Minister Najib Razak, another politician plagued by accusations of grand-scale corruption, as a malevolent clown. As Hadi Azmi of the South China Morning Post noted, this “became a viral symbol of protest against his administration amid corruption allegations,” and later appeared in poster form at rallies calling for Najib’s resignation for his involvement in the 1MDB corruption scandal.
In April 2021, he was arrested for publishing a music playlist on Spotify that poked fun of then Queen Tunku Azizah Aminah Maimunah Iskandariah. Shortly prior to this, he was investigated for sedition over two satirical artworks, including one depicting Dr. Adham Baba, the health minister of the time, dressed as Dracula.
Responding to local complaints about his activism—including calls that he be barred from entering Sabah—Fahmi said in a social media post on December 28 that he was “not your opponent.”
“I stand against the corrupt and corrupt rulers in our country who eat bribe and misuse the power we the people give them,” he wrote.