Asia Times. 10th March 2001

By Anil Netto

It's a sign of the times. A Malaysian opposition activist has been released after spending a day in jail, but his computer has now been taken into custody.

It is the latest in a series of incidents over the past week that illustrates just how much the Internet is influencing public opinion and unnerving the authorities.

When Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad mooted the futuristic-sounding Multimedia Super Corridor in the mid-1990s, he could scarcely have imagined that information and communications technology would be used by the likes of Raja Petra Kamaruddin to mold critical public opinion.

Raja Petra heads an effort to mobilize public opinion, both domestic and international, in a bid to free jailed former deputy premier Anwar Ibrahim. He runs the Free Anwar Campaign (FAC) website, reporting on new campaign initiatives and reformasi protests both locally and internationally. His FAC website, the only "official" campaign site, unlike the hugely popular but anonymous reformasi websites, draws about 20,000 hits daily, he says.

Given the sustained reformasi protests and the high stakes involved, Raja Petra's detention was perhaps not unexpected. But it was telling that the authorities released him less than 24 hours later and then confiscated his computer's central processing unit (CPU) - surely a recognition of the Internet's ability to sidestep Malaysia's tight media controls.

"It [the CPU] will probably be in custody for a long time," Raja Petra told Asia Times Online. "They are trying to establish that I am the one behind the FAC. They need to link me to the website."

Even while Raja Petra was in custody, the Free Anwar Campaign website was still being updated, informing visitors of Raja Petra's arrest. "So they [the police] know that I'm not alone," he says. "They want to know who else is in the network." He says the police are probably also trying to put names and faces to the other anonymous reformasi webmasters.

Raja Petra, now out on a bail guarantee of 5,000 ringgit (US$1,317) has to report back to the police on March 21 to find out whether he will be charged. He believes he is being investigated for possible "sedition" for the postings on the FAC website. He was among eight others, including his wife, who were detained on March 6 after a group of about 50 people held a candlelight vigil outside the Dang Wangi police station in Kuala Lumpur in support of a colleague, Ezam Mohammad Nor, who was arrested a day earlier.

The FAC is not the only website to have drawn unwelcome attention in the past few days. On the same day the nine were detained, two threatening e-mails were received by the chief executive of another website, the independent news portal Malaysiakini. A Malaysiakini report said the e-mails to Premesh Chandran were "believed to be linked to the recent allegations that the news website was funded by controversial currency speculator George Soros".

In recent weeks, Malaysiakini has been singled out for attacks from sections of the mainstream media and from several government officials for allegedly obtaining financing from Soros, a charge the website refutes. Mahathir has blamed Soros for triggering the regional economic crisis in 1997.

Even postings on discussion groups are monitored. A Universiti Malaya lecturer, associate professor Chia Oai Peng, found herself in trouble when she was ordered by the vice chancellor on February 6 to explain her Internet postings on the controversy surrounding a Chinese vernacular school in central Selangor state. Some 70 pupils at the Damansara Chinese school are holding out against an Education Ministry directive closing down the school and relocating its pupils to another Chinese vernacular school farther away.

Chia, who was once a PTA member of Damansara school, was reported as saying she posted her messages to correct some erroneous information on the school controversy. On March 8, about a dozen Internet discussion groups threw their support behind her.

Meanwhile, a leader of the Youth wing of the United Malays National Organization (Umnno) has lodged a police report against a posting on the Laman (Website) Reformasi, which he said threatened his safety. Umno Youth assistant secretary Zulkifli Mohd Alwi made the police report in Kuala Lumpur on March 7, claiming that the opposition National Justice Party (Keadilan) had "threatened" him by posting his house address and car registration numbers on the Laman Reformasi website.

Laman Reformasi is the standard-bearer of a host of anonymous reformasi websites clamoring for political and economic reforms. The website has even criticized certain Keadilan leaders in the past. Zulkifli claimed that the threat in the website had warned him "to beware and not to regret if anything bad happened in his house".

Laman Reformasi has been critical of an earlier police report by Zulkifli which led to Ezam's arrest on March 5. Zulkifli made that report claiming that a pro-government Malay daily on Sunday had reported that Ezam was planning demonstrations to "topple" the government, a charge Ezam denies.

The heightened scrutiny of the Internet is a fairly new development and an implicit recognition of the medium's effectiveness in shaping public opinion. Only last year, the authorities cracked down on critical Malay print publications. But this time the focus appears to have shifted towards critical websites and discussion groups, which have come under intense scrutiny. Though only some 10-15 percent of Malaysians have access to the Internet, its reach is wider given that news from the Web invariably spreads by word-of-mouth to other Malaysians.

In the 1999 general elections, the ruling coalition won a clutch of parliamentary seats with razor-thin majorities in Malaysia's first-past-the-post system. If hundreds of Malaysians in each of the country's 193 parliamentary seat are exposed to more critical Internet news exposing abuse of power, the political equation could easily tilt away from the ruling coalition. If the computer in custody is any indication, that is a possibility that has not been lost on the ruling coalition.