How did the educational become the sensational? This is what the Internal Security Ministry wants to know after a news report implied that a 'secret DVD' recorded six prisoners being whipped.

Malay-language tabloid Harian Metro today front-paged the existence of the DVD, with its report attempting to draw a link between the whipping and the infamous nude ear-squat scandal video clip which outraged the country last year.

Describing the process explicitly, its report said copies of the DVD entitled Rotan 18SG are being sold at RM10 per copy.

Deputy Minister Fu Ah Kiow, who saw red over the report, has reprimanded the newspaper for "negative reporting".

"We will issue a written warning. (The tabloid) shouldn't have given the picture that the Prisons Department is carrying out the whipping on its own (whims) and as if the government is hiding something," he said, while offering a prosaic insight into the footage.

He told a press conference at the Parliament lobby this afternoon that the footage was taken from a DVD used by the prison authorities as an educational tool to deter crime.

"The so-called secret recording used about half of the footage from the DVD recorded by the Prisons Department in 2004 at the request of a committee to curb social ills in Negri Sembilan," he explained.

He said similar footage had been showed at numerous public exhibitions or meetings in the past, for educational purposes.

Viewers included members of the parliamentary select committee tasked with amending the Criminal Procedure Code and Penal Code, and a Youth council meeting.

"The whipping, as shown in the DVD, was carried out on prisoners (who received this sentence) and the number of times they were whipped also followed the court order," he added.

Checks underway

Fu noted that the prisoners' faces were not shown in the original footage in order to protect their identity.

"I regret to see that the Harian Metro report contains paragraphs implying that the government has something to hide, and that it has tried to link the DVD with the nude ear-squat scandal - this is not the same situation," Fu said.

The report quoted a customer who bought a copy of the DVD as saying that the "whipping (done) openly is not much different from the nude ear-squats performed in a police lock-up".

The one-minute video clip on the nude ear-squats, secretly recorded on a mobile phone, had sparked an outroar and prompted the government to form a royal commission to probe the scandal.

Elaborating, Fu said he was upset Harian Metro did not make any attempt to seek the ministry's comments before publishing the story and that the government wants newspapers to provide balanced reporting.

On the circulation of the DVD, he said he would contact the Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs Ministry to confiscate the copies, while his ministry will try to ascertain the culprit.

Asked if this could be the work of insiders in the Prisons Department, Fu said it was hard to determine because the DVD has been shown on numerous occasions, although the department holds the original copy.

Last week, the ministry slapped an indefinite suspension order on the weekend edition of tabloid Malay Mail after it published sex-related stories and pictures that provoked a furore.