Author Kim Quek says the banning of his book 'The March to Putrajaya – Malaysia’s New Era' has propelled it onto “the world stage” by way of the Internet, where it is now freely available.

The political analyst and commentator said his book - banned by the Home Ministry for containing "baseless" accusations against national leaders and inciting public hatred and anger against the federal constitution - can now be downloaded free from the Internet.  

kim quek new book where to malaysia forum 100708 03 “This is as it should be. Citizens of a country should not be deprived of free access to information by the government simply because such information is deemed unfavourable to the regime,” said Quek ( left ) in a statement.

“A country where its citizens are habitually fed with state-controlled information – and nothing else – is a backward country which is bound to fail in this information and globalised age.

“The reason is simple.  No government likes to churn out information that puts it in bad light, and no society that is starved of open and balanced information can thrive and prosper in this fiercely competitive IT age,” he added.

Comparing the home ministry’s clampdown on the media and publications to the totalitarian repression by Nazi Germany against dissent, Quek said such systems of thought control are “long gone.”

NONE The Internet and the various IT gadgets available these days have made that system of rule obsolete as the attempt to bury knowledge and views through repressive laws are rendered irrelevant by information-hungry citizens with “only a click of his finger”.  

“If BN is sincere to bring happiness to the people, it will never throw a blanket on free dissemination of information, because that would cause mass ignorance and degradation of the mind, which would in turn retard social advancement.  

“The inevitable end result in the long run is mass poverty and misery.

“Genuine reforms mean eradicating corruption and abuse of power, and the substitution of bad values with good ones.  

“And what better way to achieve that than by allowing a free media to act as watchdog as well as conduit and nursery of creative ideas?  

“Unless, of course, there is the absence of political will to leave the existing comfort zone of corruption and decay.”