KUALA LUMPUR: The new law on cyberbullying should penalise even a one-off post or communication, says a lawyer.
Nizam Bashir said current legislation requires continuous or repeated communications to qualify as an offence.
He added that private communications and the publication of personal images that are obtained without consent should attract criminal liability, too.
He described the government's decision to have a stricter law on cyberbullying as timely.
Nizam said the law must be thoughtfully designed to effectively tackle the complexities of cyberbullying.
"There is an oft-cited idiom, 'sticks and stones may break my bones, (but words can never hurt me)'. But that idiom has not necessarily held true in all instances.
"This is best seen in the death of 30-year-old social media influencer A. Rajeswary in July and the fact that the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission received 3,199 complaints on cyberbullying last year."
Rajeswary, who was also an activist, was found dead on July 5, a day after filing a police report about sexual threats she received on social media from two individuals.
A United Nations Children's Fund report had said Malaysia ranked second in Asia in 2020 for cyberbullying among youths.
Nizam said Section 233 of the Communications and Multimedia Act 1998 criminalises communications that are done with the intent to annoy, abuse, threaten or harass any person.
Section 114A of the Evidence Act 1950 sidesteps the need to prove that a post came from a person as long as that person's name or photo is associated with an account, he added.
However, he said, these provisions are not comprehensive enough to effectively address cyberbullying.
Yesterday, Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim said the government would introduce a stricter law to tackle cyberbullying.
On July 18, Communications Minister Fahmi Fadzil told the Dewan Rakyat the government would examine the need for a future-proof law to deal with cyberbullying.
The law, he said, would have to focus on changes in communication mediums.