Page 2 of 2 Wanted: A voice of one's
own By Ioannis Gatsiounis
most important to be made by a Malaysian
court in some time. But on NNN's website I found
no mention of the case.
Such omissions
leave one to wonder just what the authorities mean
by "a voice of their own". Are the Malaysian and
other governments eagerly participating in NNN
really determined to give more voice to their
countries? Or is it precisely that, the voice of
their countries, one that goes beyond officialdom
to expose
some
unflattering realities and is already emphasized
to an extent by the international media, that they
fear?
The impetus for the Islamic
journalism center also appears to be steeped more
in a concern for image than reality. Zainuddin
said, "Various tactics, including deception, are
used in the onslaught against Muslims to work up
their emotions because these people know full well
that Muslims would respond in full agitation when
their religion is attacked."
Of course the
best way to improve the image of Muslims and Islam
is through substantive change - through tackling
the irascibility and other strains of intolerance.
In Malaysia steps toward this end might include:
not requiring non-Muslim policewomen to wear a
Muslim headscarf at official events; not having a
foreign minister who advocates sending arms to
Hezbollah; not fining non-Muslim couples for
holding hands in the city center of a nation where
Muslims make up only 55% of the population; and
holding ministers accountable who brandish daggers
at political assemblies in not-so-veiled gestures
toward Malaysia's non-Muslim communities.
And while in the meantime journalists of
all stripes should work diligently to give a
fuller picture of the Muslim world, it hardly
stands to reason that starting a center so
journalists will espouse more agreeable "views and
opinions" about Islam is really going to help the
world "know what Islam is really all about".
The Malaysian government is in essence
attempting to "correct" the standards of
international journalism, while Malaysia suffers
as a result of shunning the international standard
that is predicated on the understanding that a
vibrant culture of journalism cannot materialize
without freedom of expression.
Last year,
the government issued 115 show-cause letters and
suspended four media licenses. Malaysia ranked 150
out of 195 nations in Freedom House's 2007
press-freedom rankings.
"At home, the
government has created a very intimidating
environment," said Yap Swee Seng, executive
director of Suaram, a local rights group. "In the
end it has led to a self-censorship of a very
strict kind."
This has ensured that the
average Malaysian often remains ignorant of
realities in his own country. When Razak Baginda
was detained last year as a suspect in connection
with the murder of a Mongolian model, the state
press referred to him vaguely as a political
analyst with ties to the ruling party, omitting
the bit reported online and in the international
media that his connections were, more
specifically, to Najib Razak, the deputy prime
minister. When I asked Malaysians if they were
aware of this connection, most said they were not,
until a few weeks later when the state press
tepidly began to make mention of the relationship.
These official efforts to arrest knowledge
would not be so damaging if Malaysians were a more
civic-minded bunch. Indeed, blogs and independent
websites, which, at least for now, are not subject
to the same stringent laws that govern the print
and broadcast media, are becoming more popular,
but the majority of Malaysians continue to lap up
the government propaganda as their primary if not
sole source of "news".
I must confess that
I have difficulty understanding how someone can
digest state-controlled media in the pursuit of
becoming informed. And I have found that those who
do have an equally difficult time explaining it to
me. Non-censored news can be obtained fairly
easily, at San Francisco Coffee outlets, for
example, which stock the International Herald
Tribune and the Wall Street Journal Asia, or
online, with an estimated 10 million Internet
users in the country.
So I suspect this
habit is partly because the public actually
believes the government when it says its draconian
laws governing information and expression are in
the best interest of the nation and that allowing
the fundamentals of democracy to take root would
threaten social stability.
Zainuddin
recently put it this way: "Press freedom cannot go
beyond the time-tested social contract." In that
agreement, Malaysia's forefathers granted
citizenship to Indians and Chinese and other
non-indigenous people in exchange for offering the
majority Muslim Malays and other "sons of the
soil" special rights and privileges.
Tampering with the contract, he and other
officials say, would disrupt Malaysia's "fragile"
racial unity. It was under that line of reasoning
that the Internal Security Ministry confiscated 10
copies of May 13: Declassified Documents on
Malaysian Riots of 1969 from a bookstore in
the capital last month. The book argues that the
pivotal riots were not the result of spontaneous
racial violence but a coup attempt by an UMNO
faction.
But if the elite are truly
concerned about disruption of Malaysia's social
harmony and not about maintaining their grip on
power, one is left to wonder why they are so prone
to making racially charged comments. Zainuddin
recently accused the ethnic-Chinese community of
building monuments that celebrated communists. The
comments predictably incensed some Chinese groups,
who say the monuments are a tribute to everyone
who fought against Japanese occupation during
World War II, not just Chinese communists.
The minister has refused to retract his
comments. I wanted to ask him if that decision was
made with the national interest in mind, but he
declined through an assistant to be interviewed
for this article, even if just to talk about the
Islamic journalism center.
As it turns
out, there may not be much to talk about. Azman
Ujang, general manager of Bernama, said that
almost a year after it was mooted, "the center
remains just an idea". And if it happens at all,
it will likely be incorporated as a desk under the
nation's press institute, which plans to get a
"new look" in August, Azman said. "But there's
nothing concrete."
Even if it gets up and
running, said Yap, the center, like NNN and other
government media projects intended for export,
"will have to withstand the test of credibility to
be successful".
Ioannis
Gatsiounis, a New York native, is a Kuala
Lumpur-based writer.
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