FORMER DAP member Hew Kuan Yau can challenge the Home Minister’s ban on his pro-China comic book, the Kuala Lumpur High Court ruled today.

Free Malaysia Today reported that judge Mariana Yahaya allowed Hew’s leave application for a judicial review of the ban on his book, Belt and Road Initiative for Win Winism.

The judge fixed Jan 20 for case management.

About 2,500 copies of the book in Bahasa Melayu had already been distributed to schools last year when it was proscribed for  allegedly encouraging support and sympathy for communist ideology.

Hew has defended his book as reference material for schoolchildren to better understand China’s Belt and Road Initiative and the superpower’s bilateral ties with Malaysia.

The Home Ministry seized over 2,000 copies of the book on grounds that its contents could be “detrimental to public order and safety”.

Hew filed for a judicial review last November.

He also wants the court to quash the ban under the Printing Presses and Publications Act (PPPA), a court declaration that Section 7(1) of the PPPA is unconstitutional, and the return of all his books seized.

His lawyer J. Shamesh said today that the Attorney-General’s Chambers would be filing an affidavit in response.

Hew, nicknamed “Superman”, was formerly a popular speaker on DAP’s election ceramah circuit. But his fiery rhetoric and overtly pro-China stance has also seen him accused of racism. – January 6, 2020.