Malaysian Bloggers Muted - An Update

January 25, 2007 | By Gobala Krishnan |

In my previous post about Malaysian Bloggers United campaign, here’s what I managed to read-up on after a busy day preparing my business plan for submission by 31 Jan:

The Prime Minister’s official comment via The Star:

The Prime Minister said these laws were enforceable and bloggers must bear in mind that they could not hide or take advantage of the Internet to do something that was against the law.

“They cannot hope to cover themselves or hide from the laws,” he told Malaysian journalists at the end of his three-day working visit here yesterday.

He said bloggers, just like newspaper journalists, must be responsible for what they wrote or risk facing legal action from others.

“Me hiding?” says Jeff:

Am I a “law-hider”? I thought I had published my picture, my name, my email and my phone number when I first started blogging on January 2, 2003! My server is parked right in the heart of MSC!

Responsible journalism must draw a clear line between someone being incriminated over alleged offence, and someone being persecuted after all avenues for recourse are exhausted. That separates an innocent from a convict.

Anti-NST feelings flare up [via MalaysiaKini]:

I believe no one should have unrestricted freedom and one shall be punished if he has abused his freedom and harmed others. But what caught me surprise was NST suspending its column by lawyer Malik Imtiaz Sarwar indefinitely. Simply because Malik is the defence counsel for Jeff Ooi in the suit.

[…]

I do recognise that the NST has the right to decide who shall be its columnists. However, this right should not be abused. The NST owes a moral obligation to the society at large.

We shall say a big ‘No’ to The New Straits Times. At least we have all the own freedom and right to choose which newspaper to subscribe to.

Well…

Things are starting to get in motion. I subscribed to MalaysiaKini today to stay abreast of the situation.