Congratulations, Malaysia. Your crackdown on the internet (see here and here) now allows you to join an exclusive list of progressive countries which includes as North Korea, China, Syria and Iran.To celebrate go and read Amnesty International's Irrepressible Information website and sign the pledge.
11 comments:
Bib, it also includes the UK (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_in_the_United_Kingdom for details) and Singapore of course.
Dear Sharon,
This is a great site that you have here - and I really mean it when using that over-used adjective.
I had known about this site in March, through a friend - David Ritchie, the "American Asian" in Seoul, Korea. But this is the first time that I'm writing any comments here.
About this "Cyberspace Crackdown", you might not be referring directly to it, but I believe it also includes Malaysia Today,(?) which is synonymous with Raja Petra Kamarudin (RPK).
Now this is indeed a very controversial guy, to put it mildly. I have to say that there are some aspects of him and his `news reporting' style and content that I'm not too happy with. However, I'm dead against this effort of blanking him out; i.e in having the ISPs blocking access to his site.
As such, as a way to voice out my opposition towards blanking out someone's voice, I'm going to be a bit subversive and provide an alternate link to Malaysia Today. It's here at:
http://mt.harapanmalaysia.com/2008/
anon - yes it certainly does.
cendana - (and nice to hear from you) my subversive link is pointing there too. oh yes, raja petra has something of a death wish but shouldn't be silenced. if he's defamatory - sue him. there are laws in place.
but this is not about RP. it's a point of principle.
what troubles me is that this could be the thin end of the wedge with other bloggers getting silenced if they express any anti-govt opinion.
correct, korek, korek....
rock on rpk & sharon.
At least we can still access porn websites! Three cheers for Malaysian censorship!
That's the thing isn't it? different countries censor different things :) how weird that is. Anyway you know who's not on it? India, South America, most of Russia, Indonesia, the Phillipines. Pretty much any country that's generally considered to be "first world" has Internet controls.
Why is that ? is there a relation between the prosperity of a country's citizens and Internet censorship? if the no-censorship countries are information-rich, how is it that they are still cash poor ?
censorship is a delicate thing isn't it? Whoever controls censorship controls people's minds...
Not that I'm for censorship, but I do appreciate the difficult situation the government is in, trying to find a balance between freedom of speech and total anarchy...
Given the current political climate of this time, it does pay to be careful...
Having said that, I do believe people are entitled to their say, and it is up to the individual to monitor what is being said.
The reason for the block is said to be:
Request for action under section 263(2) of the Communication and
Multimedia Act 1998
In exercising your duties under section 263 (1) of the CMA98 act in
preventing the commission or attempted commission of an offence under any written law of Malaysia or otherwise in enforcing the laws of Malaysia, including, but not limited to, the protection of the public revenue and preservation of national security as provided under
section 263(2) of the same act , the commission hereby requests to
undertake the actions under section 263(2) of the CMA 98 with respect to the following url/web reference:
http//www.malaysia-today.net/2008/content/view/1252/46 .
To request all internet service providers in Malaysia to block access to the website.
The abovementioned url address has been found to be in contravention of section 211 and 233 of the act. (Letter from MCMC to all ISPs, 26 August 2008)
But my friend pointed out that if you go to this link, using the new address
http://mt.harapanmalaysia.com/2008/content/view/1252/46
it refers to something published 16 January 2008 !
The offensive item is called
"Malays, the enemy of Islam"
Liz,
I'm not saying they did this at all, but it would not be impossible to switch articles. Infact, it would be quite trivial.
s3 of the same Act states that "nothing in this Act shall be construed as permitting censorship of the Internet" (From memory, but the essence is right). Has the MCMC violated their own Act?
Apparently. They really screwed up on this one.
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