One of Malaysia’s most prominent independent news outlets has been convicted of contempt of court for comments posted by readers, a verdict condemned as a serious setback for freedom of expression in the country.
The attorney general filed the charges against Malaysiakini and his editor-in-chief Steven Gan last year, due to five comments from readers who criticized the judiciary.
Gan and the media said they could not be held responsible and that the moderators had removed the offending comments as soon as they were contacted by the police. However, a federal court ruled that the site was fully responsible and fined it 500,000 ringit ($ 123,000) on Friday.
Gan, who faced a possible prison sentence for the charges, was found not guilty.
Gan said Malaysiakini was very disappointed with the decision and that it will “have a tremendous scary impact on discussions of issues of public interest”.
The verdict, said Gan, “is a death blow to our ongoing campaign to combat corruption, among others,” Malaysiakini reported.
“I think that the decision made against us and the heavy fine that was imposed may be an attempt to not only punish us, but also to shut us down,” he said.
The agency has since launched a crowdfunding appeal to cover the fine.
Malaysiakini, described as the country’s first independent news site, was founded in 1999 by Gan and Premesh Chandran, who were frustrated by widespread censorship in the mainstream media. For the next two decades, journalists on the site were harassed by authorities, arrested, accused of behaving like traitors and forbidden to participate in press conferences.
Media freedom began to improve after the 2018 elections, when the United Malays National Organization (UMNO), which ruled Malaysia for 61 years, was replaced by a reformist coalition.
However, the collapse of the reformist government last February was followed by a crackdown on media freedoms. Last year, criminal investigations were launched against journalists and activists who criticized the government, including Al Jazeera, which was investigated for sedition after it published a documentary on the country’s treatment of migrant workers.
Phil Robertson, deputy director of Human Rights Watch’s Asian division, said the verdict was a sign that the country had returned “to the bad old days of Malaysian governments trying to censor and control what the media is reporting about them”.
The case against Malaysiakini was even more striking, he added, because the vehicle had not been the author of the offensive comments: “What you have now is an online publisher being held responsible for the comments of readers with which they basically have nothing to do and they took it down as soon as they were notified by the police. It is extremely dangerous for freedom of expression. “
Amnesty International Malaysia said the verdict was “yet another example of reducing the space for people to express themselves freely in the country”.
“The RM500,000 conviction and fine are a serious setback for freedom of expression in the country,” said Katrina Jorene Maliamauv, executive director of Amnesty International Malaysia.