Friday, December 24, 2021

Having ‘critical’ tweets deleted a sign of intolerance, govt told



Having ‘critical’ tweets deleted a sign of intolerance, govt told


Syahredzan Johan says the government should accept criticism and use it to avoid repeating the same mistakes in its handling of the flood crisis.

PETALING JAYA: In forcing netizens to delete tweets critical of the government’s handling of the flood crisis, the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) proves Putrajaya are intolerant of criticisms, says Syahredzan Johan.

The political secretary to DAP veteran Lim Kit Siang said that the government should instead do a “self-reflection” with all the feedback they received, be it good or bad.

“This will help them fix the flaws over their level of preparedness during the disastrous floods, so they could avoid repeating the same mistakes in the future.

“They should not be committing acts that infringe the people’s freedom of expression which is protected under the Federal Constitution,” he said in a statement.

Syahredzan stressed that Malaysia is a democracy and the people have a right to voice out their opinions and their criticisms of the government.

“The government and the MCMC should be reminded that the people’s freedom of expression should not be curtailed under any circumstances.”

Syahredzan also chided MCMC for resorting to the “playbook” from previous Barisan Nasional (BN) administrations in trying to silence government critics.

He urged the government to immediately instruct the regulatory body to stop any action that aims to remove citizens’ tweets that were deemed critical of its handling of the flood crisis.

“The people’s rights should be respected and upheld. Without the people, who is the government?”

Earlier, Malaysiakini reported that MCMC failed in its attempt to get Twitter to remove some posts and hashtags that were critical of the government’s handling of last weekend’s floods.

The regulatory body claimed it had to take such action to “uphold Malaysia’s laws”. However, Twitter did not take any action against the tweets despite MCMC’s request.

In a legal notification to one of its users, Twitter informed that they had “received a request from the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission regarding your Twitter account that claims the following content violates the law(s) of Malaysia.”

“We have not taken any action on the reported content at this time as a result of this request,” it added.

Twitter said that as it strongly believed in defending and respecting users, it was notifying users upon receiving such requests from MCMC.

However, one user told Malaysiakini she was issued a warning from MCMC to delete her tweet, which she did as her parents had feared for her welfare.


2 comments:

  1. Not surprising.
    Malaysia Government is fast sliding towards an "authoritarian system is superior" mentality.

    And the majority among the population is clearly supporting them electorally.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Wakakakakaka…

    "Malaysia Government is fast sliding towards an "authoritarian system is superior" mentality"

    Is the m'sia govt knows what's an authoritarian system?

    Or r u?

    Perhaps u do know fart about what's an authoritarian system.

    Don't used yr anmokausai definition to configured a NATURAL human societal behaviourism.

    There r leaders & followers - with the later in majority. In order to exercise functional societal cohesions, authoritarianism IS a must in that governing system.

    Current anmokausai social structures have leaned more & more towards personal individualism - in the proliferation of a twisted & deviant individual freedom idealism. This could be linked strongly to that Unitarianism in their monotheistic religions.

    This will eventually lead to an ultimate chaotic & decaying humanity evolution deadend. BCOZ that journey defies the natural humanity urge in seeking an authoritative leadership amongst themselves to lead & guide them!

    Too many chefs, spoils the soup - especially those spurious incompetent & yet flowery oratorical kinds.

    Of course humanity isn't perfect. Thus human greeds would eventually lead to corrupted human ideologies of whatsoever forms.

    Yet, there r mfers, especially those indoctrinated anmokausai acolytes, strictly upholding the concept that only democracy is the salvation of human evolution! They don't understand that, like everything that utopian idea has already evolved into demoNcracy of the worst kind!

    Enuff said!

    ReplyDelete