The Prison Fellowship Malaysia is afraid that if left unabated, prisoners across Malaysia will be deprived of their religious books at the hands of the authorities.
This is in spite of the Cabinet’s 2011 10-point resolution, which allows the Bumiputera Christian population in Sabah and Sarawak to bring in and use their bibles in Malay as well as in indigenous languages.
“These past two weeks, [prison authorities] kept taking away the Malay and Iban-language bible from the prisoners because they have the word Allah in it,” PFM executive director Prem Kumar told FMT.
“So now these prisoners have got nothing to read, and they really need help,” he added.
Prem said authorities began seizing the religious books after the Sibu Prison director wrote a letter to the prison headquarters in Kajang, questioning the use of “Allah” bibles by inmates.
The Kajang headquarters then replied: “…For your information, the Malaysian Prison Department through memo JP/PML/Kp/2 (58) dated July 25, 2011 titled ‘Use of Illegal Publication As Teaching Tools’ clearly mentions [guidelines on the use of books or articles containing the word Allah in Sarawak prisons].
“As such, you are required to take appropriate action over this,” reads the Feb 22 memo, which is signed by Prisoner Management Director Jamaludin Saad.
“So the [Sibu Prison] director took appropriate action and that action was to confiscate the bibles,” said Prem although he added that the English and Chinese language bibles, which do not contain the word ‘Allah’, were not seized.
He also said as of now, only “Allah” bibles in the Sibu Prison were confiscated, although he feared that authorities would soon do the same to other prisons if their actions were left unchallenged.
“We talked to [Sibu prison officers], they said they received the information from the headquarters so [because of that] they were taking the bibles.
“We cannot challenge them, we are just volunteers registered with the prisons department with no political clout,” he added.
Prem has since turned to the Council of Churches of Malaysia (CCM) to help in the matter, but they, too, appear to have hit a brick wall.
CCM executive council member Chrisanne Chin told FMT that the council wrote a letter to the prime minister as well as the Prime Minister’s Office two weeks ago, but have yet to receive a reply.
“Obviously the prison authorities’ actions contravene the 10 point resolution sent out in 2011 by the prime minister,” Chin stressed.
But when contacted, the National Prison Secretariat member Shukri Hashim told FMT he knew nothing about the memo sent to the Sibu Prison.
“I don’t know about this Al-Kitab and received no report on this,” he insisted.
Shukri also declined to state whether such a memo was in line with prison rules.
Meanwhile, neither Jamaludin nor the Sibu Prison director were available for comment despite numerous attempts.
The Christian community, which comprise about 9% of the country’s 28 million population, have for years been locked in a tussle with the BN-lead government over the use of the word “Allah” by non-Muslims.
In 2009, the High Court allowed the use of the word “Allah” in the Catholic weekly newspaper Herald. But the government has appealed against the decision.
The Court of Appeal has fixed May 30 for case management of the appeal.
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