MALAYSIA: Crackdown on Civil Rights, Media Feared

By Baradan Kuppusamy

KUALA LUMPUR, Aug 19 (IPS) - A series of tough measures in recent weeks has raised fears of a major crackdown against tolerance and dissent as rival political forces battle for state power in a society made fragile by economic uncertainties and decades of autocratic rule.

An influential Catholic newsletter faces closure, an inter-ethnic forum on religious freedom gets forcibly disrupted, a popular book on Islam by a respected Malaysian academic is banned and a senior judge has ordered a prominent blogger to reveal his sources as well as the identities of hundreds of thousands of net users who wrote comments to his postings.

"Taken together there is a growing climate of fear and intolerance,’’ said Yap Swee Seng, executive director of Suaram, a leading human rights organisation.

"Tolerance for dissent and freedom of media is narrowing," he told IPS. "What little media freedom existed is now under severe threat."

A Catholic journal ‘The Herald’ faces closure because it plans to publish political commentaries and other current affairs issues that the authorities say are outside its scope -- religion. 

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