All major newspapers will black out news of the Bukit Pelanduk pig farmers visit to the MCA headquarters in Kuala Lumpur today, DAP secretary-general Kerk Kim Hock claimed.

Its an all-round directive affecting all the newspapers, he told malaysiakini.

Kerk and a group of 35 people, mostly pig farmers and widows of Nipah victims, went to Wisma MCA to get the full list of recipients of the MCA JE Humanitarian Fund, but were disappointed when the party that claims to represent Chinese Malaysians refused to accede to their demand.

MCA recently disbursed RM21,000 each to 25 people in Bukit Pelanduk. The farmers claimed that some of the recipients were not entitled to the support.

Kerk later held a press conference which was attended by a dozen reporters from various dailies. Broadcast journalists from a private TV station were also present.

Kerk informed malaysiakini that he was very sure the news will be censored as he had been told so by reliable sources within the industry.

The DAP leader said he learnt of the blackout this morning but had thought it to be limited to the Chinese dailies. However, he discovered later that other newspapers had also been given the same directive.

Letter to Abdullah

Kerk, who is also the member of parliament for Kota Melaka, claimed that an officer from the Home Ministry instructed the newspapers not to publish the news.

To get the directive rescinded, Kerk wrote to Deputy Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi.

I am very concerned with such instruction which is clearly undemocratic, unfair and unacceptable especially when it tried to prevent media coverage [of an] issue which involved public interest and jeopardised the livelihood of the pig farmers who were affected by the Nipah outbreak in 1998, he said in the letter which was obtained by malaysiakini this evening.

The DAP leader urged Abdullah, who is also the Home Minister, to clarify if his ministry had indeed issued the press the instruction to censor the news.

However, Kerk realised this evening that the deputy prime minister was not in Malaysia because he is attending the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Australia.

So who could have issued the directive? he asked.

Meanwhile, malaysiakini learnt that the news was reported on private broadcast company NTV7's Mandarin edition in the evening.