In Malaysian Budget 2017, the gov-
ernment took an initiative to in-
crease the internet speed to 100
Gbps in public universities.
Do you know that Malaysia
Internet Freedom Index is ranked
below Singapore? According to a
survey report done by the Freedom
House, Malaysia Internet freedom
status is “partly free” with scores
44 out 100 points, while Singapore
scored 41 out of 100 points. The over-
all index freedom rate from 0 to 100,
with index 0 meaning no restrictions
at all and 100, least free.
Malay Mail Online has re-
ported that “Malaysia was among the
countries that censored the most out of
10 possible topics, with “widespread re-
striction” on criticizing authorities and
corruption, on discussing conflict and
political opposition, on satire and so-
cial commentary, and blasphemy.”
According to Freedom of
The Net 2017 report, Malaysian
government have started to block
and banned a few popular news
sites and critical blogs in 2016 and
some of them still remained block
in 2017.
There were two local news
portal which are Malaysia Chron-
icles that has been blocked in 2015
and The Malaysian Insider also has
been blocked in 2016. Both of the
news portal remain blocked until
now for publishing articles about
1MDB and the Prime Minister.
Prominent blogs such as Din Turtle
and Syed Outsyed The Box also re-
main blocked this year for posting
articles that criticizes the govern-
ment.
Moreover, many government
linked companies and public univer-
sities were restricted from seeing Ma-
laysiakini news website because it con-
tains political sensitive issues. In
2014, Malaysiakini had been sued
by the Prime Minister, Najib Razak
and his party UMNO for defama-
tion charges.
Starting from 2015, the gov-
ernment also blocked websites that
violates our national law and cul-
tures. Many pornography websites
have been blocked as well.
The Freedom on The Net
2017 said on content removal,
there were some blog owners and
Facebook users have been told to
remove contents that touch on sen-
sitive issues involving race, royalty
and religion. The government keep
continuing to charge any social me-
dia users, civil society activist and
politicians for online remarks.
SASARAN JURNAL KRITIKAN MEDIA . 21