Raid on Malaysiakini gets local, international coverage

comments     Yap Mun Ching     Published     Updated

The police raid on malaysiakini yesterday received both local and international media coverage.

Among the first to highlight the incident was CNN.com . Its report under the heading 'Raid silences Malaysian news website' cited authorities here as saying they were taking action due to a letter that made "false accusations and questioned special rights accorded to ethnic Malays."

BBC also reported the raid on its online edition

and quoted malaysiakini editor-in-chief Steven Gan as saying the police seized 15 central processing units and four servers after he refused to reveal the name of a letter writer, in order to protect the person's anonymity.

Yesterday's raid was in response to a report lodged by Umno Youth last week regarding the letter which it claimed was seditious and could cause racial tension.

The letter equated the movement with the white supremacist group Klu Klux Klan of the United States.

Responding to this Gan said the three-year-old website encouraged contestation of ideas, including those related to controversial topics.

The Washington-based Voice of America reported that "police in Malaysia have raided the office of a popular internet news website after ruling party activists accused it of publishing a seditious letter".

Violation of press freedom

In its online report , the Australian Broadcasting Corporation said the Bangkok-based South-East Asian Press Alliance or Seapa had sent a protest letter concerning the raid to Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad.

Seapa a group of independent media advocates from Indonesia, Philippines and Thailand described the incident as a violation of press freedom.

"The raid was a grave violation of press freedom. It was totally unjustified and should be viewed as nothing but a crude attempt to muzzle malaysiakini , which for the past three years has been a major source of unsanctioned news and information about Malaysia," the organisation was quoted as saying.

Two Singapore-based news organisations the Singapore Straits Times and Channel News Asia also reported about the raid.

Local dailes

On the local front, the raid was featured in all the major dailies, with some choosing to downplay the incident.

In its front-page report titled ' Malaysiakini suspends operations after police raid', the New Straits Times said the online daily temporarily suspended its operations after police seized the computers along with software worth RM150,000 from its office.

The newspaper quoted city police chief Dell Akbar Khan as saying the seizure, which included several documents, was to help investigations under the Sedition Act 1948 in connection with the report lodged by Umno Youth.

The Star , in its page 14 report, quoted an unnamed Home Ministry official as saying the police "had to confiscate" the machines as Gan had "refused to cooperate."

The official also dismissed the claim that the raid was intended to shut down malaysiakini .

The Malay Mail and the <i>Sun</i> gave prominent coverage to the raid and also published photographs showing police personnel removing computer hardware from malaysiakini 's office.

Utusan Malaysia provided a short account of the incident on page 9 while Berita Harian 's page 5 report quoted Gan as saying the seizure was intended to shut down the online daily.

"Umno Youth could have acted as such out of their concern that we could be a threat in the upcoming general elections," the editor-in-chief was reported as saying

Meanwhile, the raid was also reported in Chinese newspapers together with photographs.

The incident was featured in Chinese media websites as well, such as thefreemedia.com and mytianwang.com



Malaysiakini
news and views that matter


Sign In