NOTABLE Muslim leaders in Pakatan Harapan are being defamed with pork this Chinese New Year.

Yesterday, a Kedah DAP leader lodged a police report over a doctored Facebook photo that showed a roast suckling pig on the table where Bersatu deputy president Mukhriz Mahathir and Amanah president Mohamad Sabu were eating.

Today, DAP parliamentary opposition leader Lim Kit Siang highlighted another similar case. This time, the victim was DAP’s women wing leader Young Syefura Othman, who is better known as Rara.

Rara was identified as one of the women in a photo posted on Facebook of a group of people carving a roast pig.

The woman in the photo was actually Selangor executive councillor Elizabeth Wong of PKR.

“(Rara) was the target of cybertroopers, and was accused of partaking in a Chinese festivity to chop up a suckling pig when she was not in the photo or the event at all.

“It was a PKR event. In the photo was Selangor exco Elizabeth Wong, a Selangor PKR rep, Chua Yee Ling, and Selayang councillor, Fok Wai Mun, also from PKR.

“Rara was not there but she was defamed. Even Fok was falsely identified as her husband,” Lim told a press conference in Penang as held up a printout of the photo.

The Gelang Patah MP said such lies, fake news and false information must be condemned, and accused Barisan Nasional and Umno of using them as weapons for the next general election.

He also said a new law purportedly to fight fake news was actually to suppress dissent.

“The real purpose is to harass and persecute PH leaders and supporters with fake news allegations, while giving BN and Umno leaders and supporters immunity and impunity for the fake news they concoct and spread against PH.

“I must ask whether the Azalina committee on fake news is the latest Umno BN strategem to accuse and charge PH of fake news, camouflaging the mass fake news Umno and BN cybertroopers are peddling ahead of the general election,” he said, referring to a government task force, announced by Minister in the Prime Minister’s Departmen Azalina Othman Said, that is drafting a fake news law.

Azalina said the task force would seek expert opinions on the media, constitutional issues and the Internet.

She said it was unfair for anyone to prejudge the fake news law before the bill was even finalised. – February 23, 2018.