UUM lecturer to appeal RM400,000 defamation ruling
rahmat@nst.com.my
KUALA LUMPUR: Dr Kamarul Zaman Yusoff will appeal the High Court's ruling ordering him to pay RM400,000 in damages to Hannah Yeoh for defamation.
In a statement, Kamarul, a Universiti Utara Malaysia lecturer, said he respected the court's ruling but disagreed with its findings and the reasoning behind the decision.
"Therefore, I will be filing an appeal in the near future to challenge the decision based on both facts and legal grounds," he said.
"This process is far from over, and I urge everyone to allow the courts to reassess the matter thoroughly at the appellate stage," he added.
Earlier, Judge Datuk Aliza Sulaiman said Kamarul, who served as a special officer to the prime minister from 2021 to 2022, had defamed Yeoh, the Segambut member of parliament, in two Facebook posts in 2017.
The court said Yeoh, who is the Youth and Sports Minister, had proven, on a balance of probabilities, that both publications were defamatory in portraying her as a threat to Islam and as having abused her position to promote Christianity in Malaysia.
The court said that if Kamarul truly believed Yeoh had committed an offence, filing a police report would have sufficed. Instead, he published the report on Facebook.
The court also granted an injunction to restrain the defendant, his servants, or agents from republishing the impugned words or similar statements.
In 2022, Yeoh filed a defamation suit against Kamarul over two Facebook posts uploaded by him in May 2017.
The suit was filed for the two posts, including one in which Kamarul cited Yeoh's biography, Becoming Hannah: A Personal Journey, as evidence of her advancing a "Christian agenda."
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