By Kavita Menon and A. Lin NeumannMuch of Asia remained hostile to a free, independent media, despite the growing consensus that Asian political and economic stability depends in great measure on governments’ willingness to improve transparency and lift restrictions on the press. In China, Burma, Vietnam, and even Malaysia, government suppression of the media is…
Each year on World Press Freedom Day (May 3), CPJ announces its list of the ten worst enemies of the press. Those who made the list this year, as in the past, earned the dubious distinction by exhibiting particular zeal in the ruthless suppression of press freedom. They were singled out for their unrelenting and…
At the heart of Malaysia’s authoritarian reputation is its Printing Presses and Publications Act of 1984, which requires all publications to obtain licenses that can be revoked at will by the Minister for Home Affairs. The minister’s decisions are final, and there is no judicial review. A holdover from British rule, when a communist insurgency…
Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is deeply concerned by today’s arrests of Zulkifli Sulong, the editor of Harakah, the biweekly newspaper of the opposition Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party (PAS), and Chia Lim Thye, the owner of the company that prints Harakah and formally holds the newspaper’s publishing license.
October 12, 1999 — Murray Hiebert, the Far Eastern Economic Reviewcorrespondent imprisoned in Kuala Lumpur on September 11, was released yesterday morning, according to a spokesman for Reviewpublisher Dow Jones. “My spirits are in good shape and I managed to come out in one piece,” Hiebert told Canadian TV from Hong Kong (as quoted by Reuters).
Mahathir wins election, stifles media Also in this report: A. Lin Neumann discusses the Malaysian press on the eve of elections in a news analysis. In an exclusive essay for CPJ, Far Eastern Economic Review correspondent Murray Hiebert recounts his ordeal at the hands of the Malaysian legal system.