Several Malaysian bloggers are reporting that blogger Nat (Nathaniel) Tan of jelas.info [1] was detained earlier today (July 13) by Malaysian police . KTEmoc writes [2]
Police took Nathaniel Tan of PKR away for questioning, without providing any reason at all. They entered his office at about 4.45 pm today, and told Tan to follow them to the Bukit Aman police headquarters. The policemen also requested that Tan bring his notebook computer with him. It is believed that he is being questioned on matters relating to certain postings on the Internet.
Nathaniel works for a political party called Parti Keadilan Rakyat [3] or PKR. Tian Chua, the information chief of PKR offers some background information on Nathaniel Tan [4].
Nathaniel is a 27 year old graduate from Harvard University. We began to know each other last year and became good friend. Early this year, I recruited him to work under KeADILan’s Information Bureau.
[5]
Image from Mob's Crib [6]
Police initially denied having taken Nathaniel but later at night they admitted to it. Malaysian bloggers find the action puzzling. Maverick SM commenting [7] on a post at Mob's Crib [6] says
This is truly a sad day for democracy in Malaysia. Nat had never being subversive nor acted in anyway that would have threatened the security of the nation. How could the authorities be so misinformed? Democracy is dead!
Detained blogger's colleague John thinks that the establishment is trying to make an example out of Nathaniel [8] for “those who dare to make a difference”.
There is also some speculation [9] that one of Nathanial's post earlier this week [10] (about an ongoing spat between the deputy internal security minister and the inspector general of police) might have caused the detention.
UPDATE: It seems that the police is looking for information on a comment that was left on Nathaniel's post [11] on mentioned above. 4896 has an update on his blog .
Nathaniel's younger sister Cheryl is logging the latest developments [12] on her own blog.
Links to bloggers talking about Nathaniel:
Elizabeth Wong
The Sensintrovert [13]
Reduced and Recycled [14]
Lucia Lai [15]
Rocky's Bru [16]
S.K.Thew [17]
Susan Loone [18]
Jeff Ooi [19]
Politics 101 Malaysia [20]
Bullets of Quills and Ink [21]