Shame on You :Revisited.

Malaysian legal team had used a plagiarised weblog to support her sovereignty claim against Singapore at the International Court of Justices raising the anger of international judges.

We know that in the last three weeks, among others, Foreign Affairs Minister Syed Hamid Albar and Attorney-General Abdul Gani Patail -- and the AG's son, junior Federal Counsel Faezul Adzra Tan Sri Gani Patail graduated from UiTM, September 2005) -- have been setting camp in The Hague arguing Malaysia's case to lay claim on Pulau Batu Putih, or what Singapore calls Pedra Branca.

Is this a subliminal yet hypocritical reflection of the Abdullah Administration that hates blogs and bloggers?

Lo and behold, last week, Malaysia referred to an anonymous blog, anchored against plagiarised content and depth-of-field-suspicious photo, to present its case at all places, the International Court of Justice.

And here's the nightmare for Syed Hamid and Gani. It took ( 1 ) none other than Singapore’s Deputy Prime Minister Professor S. Jayakumar to call Malaysia's bluff, ( 2 ) none other than Singapore’s Attorney-General Chao Hick Tin to contextualise the photographic evidence, and ( 3 ) none other than blogger Simply Jean to put paid to the plagiarist's blog that Malaysia relied on in its arguments in the CIJ.

Singapore's rebuttal, its final arguments in the Pedra Branca case, was published in today's edition of the Straits Times, titled: Now you see it, now you don't. Quote:

Malaysia's photo on top and Singapore's photo at the bottom.
SOURCE: Singapore Straits Times Nov 20, 2007

AT A glance, the two pictures look alike. Both have Horsburgh Lighthouse and Pedra Branca in the foreground.

But look again - at the background which shows the Johor mainland, with Point Romania and a hill named Mount Berbukit. In one picture the hill is highly visible; in the other, it is hardly visible.

Therein lies the photographic illusion that Malaysia had created to exaggerate the closeness of Pedra Branca to Johor, Singapore said yesterday at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague.

The first photograph, which Malaysia had shown the court last week, was taken by a camera using a telephoto lens.

The second photograph was taken by Singapore, using a camera lens that approximates what the human eye sees. As a result, the Malaysian photograph exaggerated the height of Mount Berbukit by about seven times, Singapore’s Attorney-General Chao Hick Tin said when he presented the two photos before the court.

He described it as ‘an attempt to convey a subliminal message of proximity between Pedra Branca and the coast of Johor’.But it was not an accurate reflection of what visitors to Pedra Branca would see if they were looking towards the Johor mainland, he said.

Malaysia's referred blog

Yesterday was the first day of Singapore’s rebuttals against Malaysia’s oral arguments made last week.

The hearing over the Pedra Branca at the ICJ dispute entered the third week yesterday.

Last week, Malaysia had claimed the photo in question was taken from a weblog on Blogspot.com: http://leuchtturm3.blogspot.com. Leuchtturm means lighthouse in German.

Malaysia's lawyers had implied that the photo it uses came from an independent source. (Yes! An anonymous blog on Blogspot is an independent source!)

But yesterday, Singapore's AG, Chao, raised questions about the blog.

SOURCE: ICJ transcript, Nov 19, 2007 (Page 21 of 67)

Quote from Singapore Straits Times:

‘This blog site is a most unusual one. It was created only last month.

There is no information on the identity of the blogger and the photograph used by Malaysia was only put on the website on Nov 2 2007, four days before the start of these oral proceedings,’ he said.

True enough, there are only 12 blog entries in the blog from which Malaysia retrieved the photo -- enlarged picture available here -- and presented in the ICJ.

Strangely too, all pictures used in the blog are resized to thumbnails, while the two particular pictures of the lighthouse on Pedra Branca -- one of which was tendered by Malaysia -- are against the norm. They were planted at higher resolution at 280k and 309k, respectively.

That sparks the inquisitive mind of a Singapore blogger, Simply Jean -- no relation to PM Abdullah's second wife -- and she sensed plagiarist at work.

Singapore Blogger exposes plagiarist blogger

Simply Jean said: "In view of such discrepancies, Simply Jean decided to do some investigative work. So, she searched the Internet for sentences located in the middle of a paragraph for plagarism. Heh heh… people who plagarise usually change the fronts and ends of a paragraph of *insignificant* portions - and this is where the evidence lies!!!

Precisely, that's one of my methodologies when I read of Mitch Albom's (plagiarised) article last November! (But that's another story by itself.)

With internet search engine and by employing the plagiarist-uncovering methodologies, Simply Jean discovered the original text in Wikipedia, and the plagiarist's work on leuchtturm3.blogspot.com.

It was the same way how Mitch Albom was plagiarised.

Simply Jean discovered that the author of the blog had changed the name of Cape May Lighthouse to Pulau Batu Puteh Lighthouse.

"Actually, if you click on the link at Pulau Batu Puteh Lightouse, it goes to Cape May Lighthouse at Wikipedia. That’s where the cat is out of the bag," she said.

"There’s nothing wrong with copying from Wikipedia, but when you decide to copy from Wikipedia, and don’t credit it, and changed the wordings, then that’s… not very right," she added.

Why did Simply Jean have to expose it? She said: "Well, I actually have not much interest in this court case, but, when they decided to bring the blogosphere into the news, then I felt that I had to do some justification for the community."

On the larger picture, Simply Jean has a question for us in Malaysia that I feel too ashamed to answer:

I was somewhat wondering - how can Malaysia - such a big country with so much resources (including good photographers), rely on a photograph from a blog to present their case to the courts?

But what actually hurts our maruah bangsa is that we had allowed Jayakumar to rub it in for us.

'Persuasive legal arguments' VS 'Unfounded political statements'

When Singapore started its rebuttals against Malaysia's claims yesterday, they were launched by Deputy Prime Minister S. Jayakumar.

He highlighted five ‘baseless allegations and insinuations’ that Malaysia had lobbed against Singapore and rebutted each in turn, so said the Straits Times. Quote:

Among them was Malaysia’s charge that Singapore wished to ’subvert’ long-established arrangements in the Singapore Strait.

On the contrary, he said, it was Kuala Lumpur that tried to alter the status quo through the publication of a map in 1979 that altered its maritime boundaries with seven of its neighbours.

That was also the map that sparked the current dispute.

Prof Jayakumar said he was disappointed that Malaysia had resorted to such allegations in its bid to win the case. ‘We should seek to win by stating objective facts and submitting persuasive legal arguments, and not by resorting to unfounded political statements and making insinuations damaging to the integrity of the opposite party,’ he said.

Straits Times has a recap of yesterday's Singapore rebuttal: S'pore calls Malaysia's claims 'baseless and unnecessary', in which Jayakumar debunked Malaysia's insinuation that Singapore had hidden two letters from the ICJ, a charge he described as 'the most disturbing' of the lot.

The verbatim transcript of the November 19 Singapore rebuttal is available in PDF on CIJ's website.

Thanks reader Hanim for the heads-up. But gua manyak malu woh.

From Singapore Straits Times

Now you see it, now you don't
by Lydia Lim, Senior Political Correspondent
November 20, 2007

IN THE HAGUE - AT A glance, the two pictures look alike. Both have Horsburgh Lighthouse and Pedra Branca in the foreground.

But look again - at the background which shows the Johor mainland, with Point Romania and a hill named Mount Berbukit. In one picture the hill is highly visible; in the other, it is hardly visible.

Therein lies the photographic illusion that Malaysia had created to exaggerate the closeness of Pedra Branca to Johor, Singapore said yesterday at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague.

The first photograph, which Malaysia had shown the court last week, was taken by a camera using a telephoto lens.

The second photograph was taken by Singapore, using a camera lens that approximates what the human eye sees. As a result, the Malaysian photograph exaggerated the height of Mount Berbukit by about seven times, Singapore’s Attorney-General Chao Hick Tin said when he presented the two photos before the court.

He described it as ‘an attempt to convey a subliminal message of proximity between Pedra Branca and the coast of Johor’.But it was not an accurate reflection of what visitors to Pedra Branca would see if they were looking towardsthe Johor mainland, he said.

Mr Chao was speaking before the ICJ as the hearing over the Pedra Branca dispute enters the third week. Yesterday was the first day of Singapore’s rebuttals against Malaysia’s oral arguments made last week.

Both countries are appearing at the ICJ to resolve their dispute over the sovereignty of the island 40km east of Singapore and which stands at the eastern entrance of the Singapore Strait.

Last week, Malaysia had also claimed the photo in question was taken from an online blog or weblog. The implication was the photo came from an independent source.

But yesterday, Mr Chao raised questions about the blog.

‘This blog site is a most unusual one. It was created only last month. There is no information on the identity of the blogger and the photograph used by Malaysia was only put on the website on Nov 2 2007, four days before the start of these oral proceedings,’ he said.

Mr Chao also sought to debunk Malaysia’s claim that Pedra Branca was near Point Romania in Johor. The phrase ‘near Point Romania’ was used in an 1844 letter from the Temenggong of Johor to Governor Butterworth in Singapore.

In that letter, the Temenggong gave permission for the British to build a lighthouse on any island near Point Romania.

Malaysia claimed the phrase included Pedra Branca, and that the letter showed Britain acknowledged Johor’s sovereignty over the island.

Mr Chao said the letter did not refer to Pedra Branca but to Peak Rock which, in 1844, was where the British planned to build a lighthouse.

He pointed out the distance between Pedra Branca and Point Romania was six times that between the latter and Peak Rock.

In an 1846 letter, Governor Butterworth explained his original preference for Peak Rock as the site of a lighthouse because Pedra Branca was ‘at so great a distance from the main land’.

Singapore’s rebuttals yesterday were launched by Deputy Prime Minister S. Jayakumar. He highlighted five ‘baseless allegations and insinuations’ that Malaysia had lobbed against Singapore and rebutted each in turn.

Among them was Malaysia’s charge that Singapore wished to ’subvert’ long-established arrangements in the Singapore Strait.

On the contrary, he said, it was Kuala Lumpur that tried to alter the status quo through the publication of a map in 1979 that altered its maritime boundaries with seven of its neighbours.

That was also the map that sparked the current dispute.

Prof Jayakumar said he was disappointed that Malaysia had resorted to such allegations in its bid to win the case. ‘We should seek to win by stating objective facts and submitting persuasive legal arguments, and not by resorting to unfounded political statements and making insinuations damaging to the integrity of the opposite party,’ he said.

lydia@sph.com.sg

Note.

Malaysia is still searching for the letter from the Governor of Straits Settlement seeking permission to build the lighthouse on top of the Pedra Branca.Why proceeded to ICJ when we were then still searching for that letter?What's the hurry about....a really mysterious sovereignty case.A hasty move is a devil's move.