Censorship by another name...

From the New Straits Times today, an interview with Malaysian Federal Deputy Information Minister Datuk Seri Chia Kwang Chye

Q: What about laws to control Internet content?
A: The government has said it will not censor the Internet. However, this does not mean people can abuse it. There is no need for any form of censorship so long as the material does not contravene any civil or criminal laws, and moral and social values. The same applies to all other mediums of communication, not just the Internet.
ENDQUOTE

The Minister was talking about the Malaysian government recent focus on blogs that are critical of the government, for example Raja Petra's as I referred to in an earlier post.

Lets look at the logic of the Minister's statement. The government under Former PM Tun Mahathir promised (no doubt in order to get foreign investment in his multimedia super corridor) that the government would not attempt to censor the internet. Largely, until this point, the government has kept this promise. In a country where there are laws preventing people questioning the constitution, in particular the Malay rights and those of the rulers, and where criticizing the existence, fairness of or even the efficacy of economic privileges extended to even already wealthy Malays on the basis of race is considered worthy of keris-waving and potentially arrest under the Internal Security Act, illegal is a pretty extensive term. This has meant the internet has become a haven for people to express what they really think without fear of reprisals. More importantly, criticism of government officials of the kind that would end the career of a mainstream journalist, the type one reads everyday in most of the world's newspapers, has become a major focus of Malaysian blogs. The inability to shut down dissent and to sweep high-level misdoings under the carpet has caused the government to look for ways to shut down the blogs without calling it censorship.

Just about everywhere in the world that censorship is used, the reason given for it would be nothing other than the argument that certain information may "contravene any civil or criminal laws, and moral and social values." For instance, pornography is restricted in many countries for just that reason, and no one calls the restrictions placed on it anything other than censorship.

In reality, current Malaysian politicians have found Tun Mahathir's promise very inconvenient, and probably wish he had never made it. The tame mainstream press which declined to report on their indiscretions may still be controlled, but they are increasingly aware that more and more Malaysians are discovering the truth about their politicians online. They will know that this is only going to get worse for them as internet penetration in Malaysia continues to grow. So this newspeak (thanks George Orwell) by the Minister is designed to fool people that they are adhering to Tun Mahathir's promise while in fact making it irrelevant by introducing censorship but calling it something else.

The thing is, I think the people will see through it. Eventually these politicians will realize they need to shape up their behavior, or ship out to retirement. Fooling the people is going to have to be done in more sophisticated ways from now on rather than just coercing the messenger to shut up.