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.
Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) condemns the December 31 murder of Vasthian Anthony Mariyadas, a free-lance radio reporter who was on assignment for the state-run Sri Lankan Broadcasting Corporation when he was shot dead in the northern town of Vavuniya.
New York, December 21, 1999 — Two Sri Lankan broadcast journalists were among 22 people killed in an assassination attempt against President Chandrika Kumaratunga at an election rally on Saturday, December 18. Five other journalists were injured by the blast, which also injured Kumaratunga and scores of onlookers. According to reports, a suicide bomber detonated…
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.
The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is deeply concerned over your administration’s decision to impose draconian regulations governing all media coverage of the ethnic tensions there. On June 28, the Governor General issued an amendment to the Emergency Powers Act of 1999 (see below) that threatens journalists who violate state–imposed reporting restrictions with up to two years imprisonment or a fine of up to SI$5,000 (US$1,050), or both. The regulations prohibit any reporting that “may incite violence,” “is likely to cause racial disharmony,” or that is “likely to be prejudicial to the safety or interests of the state.” There are also provisions in the amendment that criminalize the possession of an official document by anyone “who has no right to retain it.”