Faizah Jamaludin J:

A. Introduction

[1] This is an action by the 1st and 2nd Plaintiffs against the Defendant for the tort of defamation in respect of three separate posts on Facebook made by the Defendant under the profile name " Alan Ling".

[2] The posts were made on Facebook on 23 October 2018 ("FB Post 1"), 14 March 2019 ("FB Post No 2") and 7 July 2019 ("FB Post No 3"). The posts were in the Mandarin language. The Bahasa Malaysia translation of the said posts are reproduced in section B of this Judgment.

[3] The holy trinity of any defamation action are defamatory statement, identification of plaintiff and publication to third parties: the three elements that a plaintiff has to prove in order to establish his cause of action in the tort of defamation are (i) the statement refers to the plaintiff or reflects his reputation, (ii) the statement is defamatory of the plaintiff, and (iii) the statement was published to a third person by the defendant.

[4] In this instant action, the crux of the Defendant's case was that the Facebook posts published by him did not refer to the Plaintiffs; hence, the impugned statements in the said posts were not defamatory of the Plaintiffs. Howev