THE Federal Court today dismissed an application by the Home Ministry to appeal against a lower court decision to revoke a ban on a comic book by ‘Superman’ Hew Kuan Yau on China’s Belt and Road initiative, Free Malaysia Today reported.

A three-member bench led by Justice Nallini Pathmanathan said the court found no novel issues of public importance in the questions posed by the government, the portal reported her as saying.

Nallini sat with Justices Zabariah Yusof and Rhodzariah Bujang in proceedings conducted online.

No award of costs was made in Hew’s favour.

It was reported that the government had raised four questions of law, which it said warranted an appeal. One of the questions was whether the home minister’s finding that the book could bring disharmony and incite racial tensions was the correct yardstick to measure whether its publication would be detrimental to public order.

Lawyers Vince Tan and J. Shamesh represented the former DAP man.

Hew’s book, titled “Belt and Road Initiative for Win-Winism”, was published in Bahasa Melayu, English and Chinese in 2019.

The Home Ministry, in October 2019, banned the book under the Printing Presses and Publications Act 1984, claiming its contents could be detrimental to public order.

Hew then filed an application for the High Court to review the ban.

In April last year, the High Court upheld the ban and gave the ministry the right to keep copies of the book it had seized after the ban.

In June, the Court of Appeal quashed the High Court decision, revoked the ban and ordered the ministry to return all copies of the book. – December 8, 2022.