Can a Malaysian Court Order Someone to Apologise?

The answer may surprise you: No.

Many people think that winning a defamation case means the court can make the other party apologise in public. Under Malaysian law, however, the court does not have that power.

The Court of Appeal confirmed this in Tan Sing How & Ors v Ng Ze Xuan [2026] 5 MLRA 158. It held that the court has no jurisdiction to compel a defendant to issue an apology.

The High Court had ordered the defendants to publish an apology. The defendants appealed, and the Court of Appeal set aside that part of the order because a Malaysian court cannot compel a person to apologise.

Why Can’t the Court Force an Apology?

The Court explained that judges should not decide the exact words a person must use or whether an apology is sincere enough. A genuine apology must be given freely. For that reason, a court cannot force someone to express real regret.

There is also a practical problem. If the court ordered an apology “on terms acceptable to the plaintiff”, it would then have to decide whether the apology was good enough. Different plaintiffs may expect different things, making such an order unclear and difficult to enforce.

The Court also referred to earlier cases, including Credit Guarantee Corporation Malaysia Berhad v SSN Medical Products Sdn Bhd [2017] 1 MLRA 541 and Lim Guan Eng v Datuk Tan Teik Cheng & Anor [2024] 1 MLRH 217. Those cases said that a court should not order an apology when the defendant has not agreed or shown a willingness to apologise.

What Can the Court Order Instead?

This does not mean the court is powerless. It can still make orders that protect the plaintiff’s reputation without forcing the defendant to express personal regret.

Depending on the case, the court may:

• grant an injunction restraining the defendant from repeating the defamatory statements;
• order the defendant to publish corrective statements; or
• require the defendant to withdraw the defamatory statements.

These orders deal with the false or harmful statement itself. Unlike an apology, they do not require the defendant to show personal regret.

The Defamation Act 1957 also does not give the High Court any power to force a defendant to apologise. This supports the Court’s conclusion that a compulsory apology is not a remedy available under Malaysian law.

Not every judge on the panel took the same view on this point. Muniandy Kannyappan JCA agreed with the rest of the decision but disagreed that the court has no jurisdiction at all in relation to apologies. In his view, an apology can be recorded in a consent order where the parties settle willingly, and the silence of the Defamation Act 1957 does not remove the court’s inherent jurisdiction to craft suitable remedies. He added that where online defamation causes harm that damages cannot repair, the court could order the defendant to state the true facts and withdraw the false statements, without requiring any expression of regret.

Key Takeaway

For a person bringing a defamation claim, this affects what they should ask the court to do. They may ask for the statement to be corrected, withdrawn or stopped from being repeated, but they cannot ask the court to force an apology.

In simple terms, the decision in Tan Sing How & Ors v Ng Ze Xuan draws a clear line. A court can protect a person’s reputation through damages, an injunction or another suitable order. It cannot, however, make someone say they are sorry. An apology must be a personal choice.

As Muniandy Kannyappan JCA put it in his separate view:

“The court will not force a party to say they are ‘sorry’, but they can be legally compelled to declare what is true.”