Sarawak Report editor starts fundraising campaign after told to pay damages
Published on: Thursday, December 14, 2023
By:
FMT, Sean Augustin
Two days ago, Sarawak Report editor Clare Rewcastle Brown was ordered to pay RM300,000 in damages to Terengganu’s Sultanah Nur Zahirah for defamation.
PETALING JAYA: Clare Rewcastle Brown has started a fundraising campaign to pay the damages awarded by the appellate court to Terengganu’s Sultanah Nur Zahirah, even as the Sarawak Report editor plans to appeal the decision.
Rewcastle Brown said the RM300,000 in damages and RM120,000 for costs set by the Court of Appeal after finding her and two others liable for defamation was a “thousand times less” than the original sum demanded.
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However, she said it was still a “ruinous sum” for the trio.
Rewcastle Brown also said that Sarawak Report was already preparing its appeal to the Federal Court “against this shocking reversal of a clear acquittal”.
“We strongly maintain there was no insult and no libel uttered against the litigant in this book,” she wrote on gofundme.com.
When contacted, Rewcastle Brown said in the event that the apex court ruled in their favour, the money collected from the fundraiser would be donated to charity.
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“We will put it to our charity to help the indigenous folk engage in reforestation projects in East Malaysia,” she said, referring to Forest South East Asia.
She added that the legal battle had been a nightmare.
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Two days ago, the Court of Appeal awarded the damages and costs to Sultanah Nur Zahirah after finding Rewcastle Brown, publisher Chong Ton Sin and printer Vinlin Press Sdn Bhd liable for defamation.
Justice Azhahari Kamal Ramli, who delivered the unanimous decision allowing the sultanah’s appeal, said the trial judge had erred in dismissing the suit last year.
On Nov 7 last year, the High Court ruled that a statement in Rewcastle Brown’s book, The Sarawak Report: The Inside Story of the 1MDB Expose, was not defamatory of the sultanah.
The sultanah initiated the RM300 million defamation suit in 2018, claiming that Rewcastle Brown had disparaged her in the book, which tells the story behind Sarawak Report’s investigations into the 1MDB scandal.
She claimed the statement suggested that she was involved in corrupt practices, had interfered in Terengganu’s administration and used her status to influence the establishment of the Terengganu Investment Authority (TIA), as 1MDB was previously known.
She further alleged that the statement could be construed to mean that she had helped Low Taek Jho secure his position as adviser to TIA.
In her defence, Rewcastle Brown claimed that she had made an “honest mistake” when identifying the “key player” in the impugned statement as the “wife of the sultan”. She claimed that she should have referred to the sultan’s sister instead.
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