An international press freedom watchdog today threw its support behind embattled Malaysian blogger Jeff Ooi whose Screenshots weblog came under attack by the authorities for carrying an allegedly anti-Islam posting by a reader.

Paris-based Reporters Sans Frontires (RSF), or Reporters Without Borders, condemned the attempts by government officials to intimidate the blogger, especially the threat by a deputy minister to jail Ooi under the Internal Security Act, which allows detention without trial.

The international press freedom organisation called on Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi to ensure that no legal action will be taken against Ooi.

"A blogger cannot be responsible for a message posted by an anonymous contributor," said RSF in a press statement.

"The statement by the deputy internal security minister is serious because it will force those running weblogs to use excessive censorship," it added.

Screenshots - which has been dubbed as Malaysia's most influential blog - has come under fire over an allegedly blasphemous comment posted by a person calling himself 'Anwar', which ridiculed the concept of Islam Hadhari.

The issue found its way to the front-pages of Berita Harian for four days in a row after an anonymous source informed the Malay daily that Ooi had failed "to control the forum".

'Anwar' had equated Islam Hadhari and Umno's money politics to "faeces and urine".

Ooi had responded to the posting by rebuking the writer , removing the offending remarks and banning him from further contributing to his weblog's forum on Oct 1, a day before Berita Harian published its report.

Preliminary probe

The e-business consultant, who is also a columnist for a weekly business magazine, has been penning his personal weblog for over a year.

Ooi told RSF that he had "never wanted to insult Islam" and that "the pro-government media have presented this case in a completely biased way".

"I simply wanted to condemn corruption and in that I am singing the same tune as the prime minister himself," he said.

Federal CID director Musa Hassan told malaysiakini yesterday that the police is currently doing a preliminary investigation to determine whether the comment is seditious and identify the parties involved, particularly the author of the contentious comment.

RSF lamented that this was not the first time that the Malaysian government had acted against online publications.

The office of online news daily malaysiakini was raided by the police early last year for publishing an allegedly seditious letter by one of its readers.

Meanwhile, malaysiakini columnist cum social activist Hishamuddin Rais was detained on April 10, 2001 under the ISA for two years.