The Malaysian government should drop its order to Malaysiakini to remove videos of a recent protest in Shah Alam and of Home Minister Hishamuddin Hussein's reaction, HRW said on Tuesday.

"The government wants to make the problem disappear by taking the videos off the Internet," said Elaine Pearson, deputy Asia director at HRW. "But Malaysians have a right to see for themselves what happened and hear what was said -- the government shouldn't be suppressing this information."

Hishamuddin had stated that the actions were legal but later reversed himself.

This is not the first time that Malaysiakini reporting has resulted in a heavy-handed response by government officials. In 2003, the government carried out a 10-month investigation of the news site for posting a letter to the editor criticizing the government.

The government began investigating Malaysiakini for posting a letter on Jan 9 that criticized government policies favouring Malays.

On Oct 7, 2003 in response to an announcement the day before that the government had forwarded its investigation to the Attorney-General for a decision on whether to prosecute, HRW had urged the authorities to drop its case against the popular online news outlet.

“Malaysiakini is one of the few independent media voices in Malaysia,??? said Brad Adams, executive director of the Asia division of HRW. “The government has been investigating Malaysiakini for almost 10 months for simply posting a political letter. It’s time to close the case and move on.???

An Umno official called the letter ‘seditious’ and claimed that Malaysiakini’s decision to publish it was “very dangerous to the harmony of this country.??? Another Umno official called for prosecution of the website’s publishers under the Sedition Act in order to “teach them a lesson.???

The police raided Malaysiakini’s offices on Jan 20, 2003 and confiscated 15 computers and four servers.

Malaysiakini is one of a handful of print and online publications that offer an alternative view to the country’s largely pro-government mainstream media, much of which is owned by large corporations affiliated with Umno.

HRW had previously expressed its concern over the growing restrictions on freedom of expression in the wake of Anwar Ibrahim’s arrest for sodomy.

In its press statement on Nov 1, 1998, HRW noted that international journalists who interviewed the ex-deputy premier’s wife were visited in Singapore by Malaysian police as part of an investigation of Dr Wan Azizah Wan Ismail on possible sedition charges. Malaysian authorities had also announced surveillance of all Internet communications regarding the arrest of Anwar.

HRW had cautioned that the Malaysian government was responsible for a wide range of human rights violations, including suppressing the media, in its efforts to remove Anwar from political power in 1998. Newspapers in which the ruling party, Umno, is a major shareholder, such as Utusan Malaysia, had pressured editors and journalists to follow the party line on Anwar or face dismissal, the rights group reported.

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Editor’s note:

(Updated 15:50) The letter to Malaysiakini editor that incurred the ire of Umno Youth and subsequent police report was penned by a pseudonymous reader ‘Petrof’ and headlined ‘Similarities between ‘new Americans and bumiputera'. Malaysiakini had its office raided when editor Steven Gan refused to divulge Petrof’s identity. Police officially closed its investigation into the case on July 12, 2005, two and half years after it confiscated the Malaysiakini computers.

 

 

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