An opposition party today urged Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad to ask the police to retract all proceedings against o­nline daily malaysiakini .

DAP chairperson Lim Kit Siang said the police raid o­n malaysiakini last Monday had violated the Multimedia Super Corridor's Bill of Guarantees which Mahathir had pledged to leading IT (information technology) investors.

Lim said the controversial raid had made "nonsense" of the premier's no-Internet-censorship pledge which was part of MSC's Bill of Guarantees.

"...How can the government claim that there is no Internet censorship when the police can remove all 19 computers of malaysiakini which could have no conceivable relationship to the police investigations as to effectively shut down its operation?" he asked.

Last Monday, a 10-member police team raided malaysiakini 's office in Bangsar Utama, Kuala Lumpur, and carted away 15 computers and four servers after the website's editor-in-chief Steven Gan refused to divulge the identity of the writer of a controversial letter.

The police was acting o­n a report made by Umno Youth, which claimed that the letter was seditious as it questioned bumiputra privileges and the special rights accorded to Malay Malaysians.

The next day, the police recorded a statement from Gan while four other editorial staff also had their statements recorded later.

The computers were returned in stages over the next few days.

Chances slim

The DAP leader was reacting to a malaysiakini report that the Prime Minister's Office had requested from the website a copy of the controversial letter.

"Although the chances are very slim, I would still urge Mahathir to intervene ... as at stake is not o­nly his word, which must be his bond, but the very credibility of the entire MSC project and Malaysia's IT programme," said Lim.

"There was ... no need for the police to remove any single computer as malaysiakini had not disputed the fact that it had published the letter," he added.

Launched in 1998, MSC - Malaysia's answer to Silicon Valley - is a 15km by 50km corridor that starts from the Kuala Lumpur City Centre to the Kuala Lumpur International Airport.

It offers extensive infrastructure and other incentives - including a no-Internet-censorship pledge - to entice foreign companies to invest in the project, aimed to turn Malaysia into the region's IT hub.