Journalist facing Court a friend of Minister

Press, 14 October 1985, Page 4

Journalist facing Court a friend of Minister

The New Zealand journalist who appears for sentence in Malaysia today on a charge of breaching Malaysia’s Official Secrets Act is an old friend of New Zealand’s Minister of Trade and Industry, Mr Caygill.

James Clad, a correspondent of the “Far Eastern Economic Review,” was at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch studying law about the same time as Mr Caygill, in the early 19705. Mr Clad has pleaded guilty to the charge and faces a fine of about $7OOO and/or imprisonment for up to seven years. Mr Caygill said in Christchurch yesterday that he had met Mr Clad in his student days and remembered him well. "I would count him as a friend still,” he said.

Mr Clad had his first taste of journalism as editor

of the university law society’s magazine, “Obiter,” in the early 19705. His younger sister, Michelle, was also a student at the university at the time, and helped with the publication of the university newspaper, “Craccum.” Mr Caygill said that Mr Clad went overseas in the 1970 s and when he came back he met him in Wellington. Mr Clad, who is a former American, became a diplomat in the New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and left the service only about a year ago to take the job as Malaysian correspondent for the “Far Eastern Economic Review.”

Mr Caygill recalled that Mr Clad had once worked as a Peace Corps volunteer in Ethiopia and that he had a wife who was of a different nationality from Mr Clad.

Mr Clad’s report was pub-

lished in the “Far Eastern Economic Review” of July 4. It concerned information about Malaysia’s relations with China.

Reform groups in Kuala Lumpur expected the action against Mr Clad to spark international criticism against Malaysia’s civil rights policies, the “Asian Wall Street Journal” reported in its week-end edition.

His detention was seen by many as the latest example of a new, stern attitude on the part of the Government of the Prime Minister, Dr Mahathir Muhammad, towards the press. The arrest was believed to be the first of a foreign journalist since Malaysia became a nation in 1957, and was the first time the Official Secrets Act had been used against a journalist, foreign or local, said legal scholars.