Malaysiakini invites Umno Youth to respond to letter
Press Statement
Umno Youth, which has made a police report that a letter posted on the Malaysiakini web site on Jan 9 was "seditious" in nature, is invited to respond to the issues raised by the writer.
As an open forum for all Malaysians to freely express their views, the site remains open to any reply that Umno Youth may choose to send.
Malaysiakini
Editor-in-Chief Steven Gan's invitation follows Umno Youth's own call in an Utusan Malaysia report today for citizens to use "proper channels to openly express their views without hiding behind pseudonyms in cowardly fashion".Gan, who was intensively questioned by Dang Wang police yesterday over the decision to publish the letter, has refused to disclose the identity of the writer on journalistic principle. He has taken responsibility for uploading the letter.
Police seized 15 CPUs and four servers from the malaysiakini office during a raid two days ago, after a 90-minute meeting with senior staff. This disabled editorial operations for 10 hours, but the site has since resumed publication of news reports and letters.
He also rebutted IGP Norian Mai's comment yesterday, quoted by national news agency Bernama , that seizure of the equipment was necessary because he (Gan) had "refused to co-operate" with police.
"I specifically told Supt Mohd Kamaruddin Md Din and other senior officers during the meeting on Monday that we were willing to co-operate. We asked them not to take away all the hardware as that would cripple our editorial operations. When they rejected our request, we did not obstruct them from removing the equipment," he said.
"Our lawyers, who were also present during the exercise, intervened on our behalf. The police rejected our offer of a written undertaking that there would be no alteration of any information stored in the computers."
The incident and related issues have received widespread media coverage locally and internationally. Several human rights and media advocacy groupings have expressed outrage over the police action.
Comments from public-interest groups have echoed calls to the Malaysian government to uphold its commitment to keep Internet content free of official control, and to expand press freedom, access to information and the right to free expression.
Malaysiakini
will continue to uphold its convictions on the freedom of expression and press freedom, given the government's repeated pledge that there will be no censorship of Internet content in line with the creation of the Multimedia Super Corridor, Malaysia's answer to Silicon Valley.For further information, contact:
Steven Gan
Editor-in-Chief
Malaysiakini
www.malaysiakini.com
Tel: (603) 2283 5567
Fax: (603) 2289 2579
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