Punishing the Press

There's been a dust-up in Malaysia about police abuses of people in custody. I've been following the story in Malaysiakini, of course (story, 24 Nov 2005).

Now two newspaper editors have resigned, essentially to appease the Malaysian government. And why? Because they reported the police abuse? No, no, that is incorrrect -- they were fired because they got a fact wrong.

Which fact was that? Some detail about the brutal treatment by the police?

No. The fact they got wrong was that one of the women so abused was an ethnic Malay, but the newspaper said she was an ethnic Chinese.

For that error, two top editors at a Chinese-language newspaper, China Press, were required to resign. And the Deputy Prime Minister, Najib Abdul Razak, said race is not at issue in their resignations.

The summary is that women who had been arrested were forced to strip naked and then perform "squats" -- which (as best as I can tell from the reports) means deep knee bends -- while naked, in front of police officers. Reportedly, at least one woman who really is an ethnic Chinese (and reportedly also a citizen of China) filed a complaint that she suffered this treatment after being stopped at a roadblock by police in a suburb of the capital city.

I think we can all agree that constitutes a mistreatment of a prisoner. It's not even clear to me that these women had been charged with a crime at the time of their humiliating treatment. Perhaps they had been charged. One of the first reports said the police believed the woman's Chinese passport was a fake. Later, it was shown that her passport was legitimate. In any case, it's not a proper way to treat people in police custody.

But now the spotlight that should be shining on the police and their improper practices has been grabbed and swung -- by the Malaysian government -- to a racial issue instead.

According to Najib, it's not a racial issue. Rather, the issue is that the press needs to be "more responsible."

I am going to go out on a limb and say that this seems to me to be a typical and long-honored tactic of the Malaysian government. That is, the government likes to make use of -- and even exploit -- a real racial tension in the country and slant it toward other purposes. Those purposes support an authoritarian style of government in a nominally democratic country.

In this case, as in some well-known past cases, a newspaper's mention of race is grasped firmly and twisted very deliberately to enforce fear among all journalists in Malaysia. The idea that the reporter made an error in fact is not the true foundation of the required "resignations" of two top editors. The real foundation that the government of Malaysia builds on is that the press must be kept on a short leash at all times.

The real problems of the country may not be discussed openly in its many newspapers.

If a newspaper becomes too enterprising, too bold, too honest ... then that newspaper will feel the firm grip of the government's hand.

I don't know what else the China Press has been writing about lately that has ruffled the feathers of the government of Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, but that is not the main issue here.

What we can all see is yet another case where the Malaysian government exerts power over the press to keep it cowed and subservient.