Some of you might have already seen the interview where our Information minister gets questioned by Al-Jazeera about the demonstrations going on in our country.

If you haven’t, watch the interview first. It is truly embarrassing to see our politicians speak like that.

The next video is a spot-on impersonation of the interview:

Where is your journalistic integrity?

Yesterday’s Views section(page N34, 10 December 2007), in which you accept letters from the public show a blatant bias towards towards a certain perspective. In this case, it’s showing only letters that agree with the Sultan. 4 out of 4 of these letters agree with the Sultan that the recent demonstrations were disturbing the peace. What about the unpublished letters that disagreed with it?

A demonstration is called a demonstration. You use words such as ‘illegal gathering’ and ‘illegal march’ which are clearly biased. If I wanted to be biased, I’d call the demonstrations a “rally for freedom and democracy”.

How can we get a balanced perspective if you only publish the views of ministers within the ruling party? Why do the opposition leaders get silenced? Why is it that during election period, only BN advertisements are shown and never the opposition ? Then again, you never did promise to be impartial and objective, did you?

Maybe its the fact that you are owned by Huaren Holdings Sdn Bhd, which is the investment arm of MCA (The “chinese” front of the ruling party,Barisan Nasional). That sure says something about your editorial policy.

I’d like to end by saying I’ve stopped reading your newspaper.

Thank you for nothing,

Jason Phoon

Is Malaysia a totalitarian country? Seems that the price of peace is freedom, as a friendly demonstration of 40,000 people was stopped by police with the use of tear gas and water cannons. 245 people were arrested.^[3]

This ‘illegal assembly’ was calling for a ‘free and fair’ election.^[2]

“If Malaysia wants to count itself a democracy, it can begin by upholding constitutional guarantees of free speech and assembly. The way the system works now, only the ruling coalition can get its messages out,”^[3]

-Human Rights Watch

Links:

1. Bersih - Coalition for Clean & Fair Elections
   (Organizer of the rally)
2. The Star
   ( “illegal assembly”, counts 4000 people)
3. CNN
   ( comment by Human Rights Watch, counts 30,000 to 40,000 people)
4. Join the Facebook Group
5. Youtube video of PM giving a speech
   (”Malaysia has never had peaceful gatherings”)