Malaysia Today - Your Source of Independent News
Malaysia Today - Your Source of Independent News |
| WIKILEAKS: Cartoons prompted media clampdown Posted: 28 Jun 2011 03:40 PM PDT
According to Wikileaks, former premier Abullah Ahmad Badawi tightened the government's grip on the media following the controversy surrounding the caricatures of Prophet Muhammad. According to whistleblower website Wikileaks, Abdullah tightened the government's grip on media sources when the images appeared in the New Straits Times, the Chinese-language Berita Petang Sarawak, Guang Ming Daily, the Sarawak Tribune, and TV channels RTM1, RTM2, and Umno-controlled TV3 and NTV7 in 2006. Tashny Sukumaran, Free Malaysia Today Caricatures of Prophet Muhammad published in two dailies and aired on two free-to-air TV channels as well as the ensuing protests led former premier Abdullah Ahmad Badawi to clampdown on the media. According to whistleblower website Wikileaks, Abdullah tightened the government's grip on media sources when the images appeared in the New Straits Times, the Chinese-language Berita Petang Sarawak, Guang Ming Daily, the Sarawak Tribune, and TV channels RTM1, RTM2, and Umno-controlled TV3 and NTV7 in 2006. Of these, Berita Petang Sarawak, Guang Ming Daily and the Sarawak Tribune had their publishing permits suspended – a fate which the NST avoided by publishing a full-page apology on its front page. As a result of the seditious cartoon, the Sarawak Tribune was suspended for four years, only returning to the stands in May last year under the banner of the New Sarawak Tribune. Opposition PAS and several religious leaders also fanned the cartoon flames despite efforts by the government and mainstream media to put the controversy behind them, with about 500 protesters gathering outside NST's office here. Supporters of PAS and of Anwar Ibrahim's PKR waved signs and shouted slogans that referred to the NST editors as "bastards" and agents of Israel and Singapore, it added. PAS also tried to organise similar protests at mosques in every state capital, while the Perak government-funded religious council website posted an online poll asking readers whether Muslims should "hunt and kill, or launch war" against those who "insulted Prophet Muhammad."
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