| GERAKAN REFORMASI RAKYAT |
PRESS FREEDOM ALERT
Malaysia: Two private publications closed
In a letter sent today to home affairs minister Datuk Seri Ahmad Badawi,
Reporters Sans Frontièères (RSF) protested against the decision not to renew
the licences of two private magazines Exclusif and Al-Wasilah. RSF asked the
minister to "change his decision" which, it said "constituted a
violation of press freedom" and to "permit to the two newspapers to
resume publication".
Robert Méénard, the general secretary of RSF, urged the authorities to
"liberalise the press laws." Since the beginning of 2000, two others
publications have been sanctioned by the government due to the Printing Press
and Publications Act, a repressive press law which gags opposition media.
According to our information the government decided not to renew the licences of
the political weekly Exclusif and the monthly Al-Wasilah. According to Malaysian
press law, all the printed media must request the renewal of their publishing
permits every year. Exclusif stopped publishing last April when its licence
expired. The editor was informed in August by the authorities that its licence
would not be renewed.
The press group that owns the weekly and another twenty publications did not
released this news, fearing that other titles might suffer the same fate. The
editor appealed at least three times to the minister who accused the weekly of
not respecting the terms of its licence and of publishing "imbalanced
articles".
Moreover, the magazine Al-Wasilah, a monthly for young Muslims, whose editor
is a member of the Islamist opposition party PAS, has not had a licence since 31
August 2000.
According to the online daily Malaysiakini, the authorities accused the
magazine of publishing articles with an "opposition slant". The final
decision has not yet been released by the government but several sources
affirmed that the ministry would sanction Al-Wasilah as it did with Exclusif.
ENDS...