Five independent editors the
latest to be hauled in
Malaysian authorities have upped their ante on the
use of sedition laws, hauling in five editors in a deepening crackdown on
dissent that critics say is aimed partly at shoring up Premier Najib Tun
Razak’s standing inside his own political party.
The five are from The Malaysian Insider and The
Edge Media Group, which owns the independent news portal, kicking off a storm
of protest from press and human rights organizations that charge the arrests
were aimed at silencing voices critical of the government and particularly its
fiasco over its state-backed investment fund 1Malaysia Development Bhd,
The troubled fund has fallen deep into the red, requiring the government
to supply a RM950 million standby credit facility and to engineer a US$2
billion loan from an UMNO crony. Fitch, the international rating service, has
stated it could possibly issue a credit downgrade for the country’s entire
banking system because of the danger that the debt, estimated at RM5 billion to
the country’s banks, could end in default.
More than 100 people have been arrested in the past week, prompting an
opposition senator, Ariffin Omar, to tell the opposition website Malaysiakini
that the country could be headed for disintegration. The government, Ariffin
said, “behaves as if it is a law unto itself. It has lost its credibility, and
is not even able to control the police force, which is running wild. The police
come under the control of the Home Ministry. The force cannot act on its own.
The police are not supposed to be like the Gestapo during Hitler’s reign, which
could do as it liked.”
The Kuala Lumpur-based Center for Independent Journalism and the
Southeast Asia Press Alliance, among other organizations, called for the
immediate release of Jahabar Sadiq, the chief executive editor of the Malaysian
Insider, Ho Kay Tat, the publisher of the parent company Edge, and three editors
from Malaysian Insider. They were expected to be detained at least overnight.
Anyone found guilty under the country’s sedition act faces the possibility of
five years in prison and a fine of RM5,000.
“Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak’s scandal-ridden government is under
fire on various fronts and is resorting to outdated laws to suppress critical
media coverage of its alleged mismanagement and abuse of power,” said Shawn
Crispin, the Southeast Asia representative of the Committee to Protect
Journalists. “Instead of threatening media critics with an outdated sedition
law, Najib should be working to scrap the legislation as he vowed to do in
mid-2012 but reneged on in November 2014 supposedly to ‘protect the sanctity of
Islam.’ As long as the Sedition Act is on the books, Malaysia’s journalists
will always work in fear of arbitrary arrest and politically charged criminal
accusations.”
The arrests ostensibly stemmed from a March 25 report on the Insider
website that the country’s nine sultans had voted to oppose the imposition of
hudud, harsh Islamic law, in the eastern state of Kelantan. The Conference of
Rulers denied the report, which was quoted at length
in Asia Sentinel the next day. Government MPs demanded that police
reports be filed against Insider.
Crispin
and others charged that the government is using the seemingly incorrect report
as a tool to get back at both Malaysian Insider and The Edge for critical
reporting on the government. The Edge in particular has been at the lead with
penetrating reports on the scandal surrounding 1MDB. The arrests of the five
journalists are the latest in a deepening wave of sedition arrests that began
in midyear 2014. Among those recently arrested were Rafizi Ramli, the secretary
general of the opposition Parti Keadilan Rakyat, who was hauled in barefooted,
handcuffed and wearing a purple jail jumpsuit, and Mohamad Sabu, the deputy
president of Parti Islam se-Malaysia and the head of the party’s moderate wing,
who was accosted in Penang as he got out of his car by 20 policemen wearing
full uniforms and ski masks. Nurul Izzah Anwar, the daughter of the imprisoned
opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim, was arrested in connection with a speech on
the floor of parliament in which she criticized the arrest of her father. Eric
Paulson, head of the human rights NGO Lawyers for Liberty was arrested on March
23. Asia Sentinel
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