CAUGHT LYING BY THE UN: From Utusan to NST to the Star, Najib shames M'sia

CAUGHT LYING BY THE UN: From Utusan to NST to the Star, Najib shames M'sia Written by Lin Mui Kiang The United Nations in Malaysia would like to refer to the article published in The Star newspaper on May 7, 2012 titled “Police: Tear gas used at rally safe, UN-approved’.

 We very much regret that the UN in Malaysia was not consulted before the publication of this article as it contains serious inaccuracies. The UN has consistently condemned the excessive use of force, including through the use of tear gas.

 Please also note that the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) and Special Procedures of the Human Rights Council have on various occasions publicly expressed concerns about reliable reports indicating that civilians who died from tear gas suffered complications from gas inhalation, and that security forces have been firing metal tear gas canisters from grenade launchers into crowds.

 The UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression after his mission to the Israel and Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) in December 2011 noted that "while the use of tear gas to disperse a crowd may be legitimate under certain circumstances, tear gas canisters should never be fired directly at demonstrators."

 Moreover, unlike what is alleged in the article, the UN does not set international standards on different kinds of irritants, nor has the UN approved ‘CS Gas’ as a ‘riot control’ agent. Journalists AND public officials should be professional As far as the use of force is concerned, the relevant UN instrument is the Basic Principles on the use of Force and Firearms by Law Enforcement Officials, which was adopted by the Eighth United Nations Congress on the Prevention of Crime and the Treatment of Offenders in 1990, not the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) of 1993. I provide its general provisions below: 1. Governments and law enforcement agencies shall adopt and implement rules and regulations on the use of force and firearms against persons by law enforcement officials.

In developing such rules and regulations, Governments and law enforcement agencies shall keep the ethical issues associated with the use of force and firearms constantly under review.

 2. Governments and law enforcement agencies should develop a range of means as broad as possible and equip law enforcement officials with various types of weapons and ammunition that would allow for a differentiated use of force and firearms. These should include the development of non-lethal incapacitating weapons for use in appropriate situations, with a view to increasingly restraining the application of means capable of causing death or injury to persons. For the same purpose, it should also be possible for law enforcement officials to be equipped with self-defensive equipment such as shields, helmets, bullet-proof vests and bullet-proof means of transportation, in order to decrease the need to use weapons of any kind.

 3. The development and deployment of non-lethal incapacitating weapons should be carefully evaluated in order to minimize the risk of endangering uninvolved persons, and the use of such weapons should be carefully controlled.

 4. Law enforcement officials, in carrying out their duty, shall, as far as possible, apply non-violent means before resorting to the use of force and firearms. They may use force and firearms only if other means remain ineffective or without any promise of achieving the intended result.

 5. Whenever the lawful use of force and firearms is unavoidable, law enforcement officials shall: ( a ) Exercise restraint in such use and act in proportion to the seriousness of the offence and the legitimate objective to be achieved; ( b ) Minimize damage and injury, and respect and preserve human life; ( c ) Ensure that assistance and medical aid are rendered to any injured or affected persons at the earliest possible moment; ( d ) Ensure that relatives or close friends of the injured or affected person are notified at the earliest possible moment.

 6. Where injury or death is caused by the use of force and firearms by law enforcement officials, they shall report the incident promptly to their superiors, in accordance with principle 22.

 7. Governments shall ensure that arbitrary or abusive use of force and firearms by law enforcement officials is punished as a criminal offence under their law.

 8. Exceptional circumstances such as internal political instability or any other public emergency may not be invoked to justify any departure from these basic principles. We at the United Nations appeal to all journalists to correctly and accurately research and report all matters and procedures related to the UN. We believe that such professionalism should also extend to all public officials.

 Dr Lin Mui Kiang is the United Nations Coordination Specialist, Malaysia

If it is TRUE, Malaysia & Malaysian are in DEEP SHIT. Inbox x

If it is TRUE, Malaysia & Malaysian are in DEEP SHIT.

 According to what Najib’s people are claiming, Abdullah Badawi received almost RM500 million in ‘donations’ to approve this project, a project that so many countries such as China rejected. Even the Latin American and African countries rejected this project. No one wanted it. But Malaysia agreed to accept it for the RM500 million in donation that was paid.

 THE CORRIDORS OF POWER Raja Petra Kamarudin Any turn-around manager will tell you that to turn around an organisation in dire straits or an organisation in distress you must attack the top three problems plaguing that organisation. In most cases the top three problems result in 80% or 90% of an organisation’s problems. And the remaining problems can sometimes solve themselves once the top three are resolved. So what are the top three problems facing Umno and Barisan Nasional? These can change from time-to-time. However, if Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak were to hold the 13th General Election today, I would say that the top three problems facing Umno and Barisan Nasional are Bersih, Lynas and the NFC.


If Najib can resolve these three issue then he can dissolve Parliament this month and hold the general elections within 30 days of that. Lynas is actually a more serious problem than many people realise. And I am not talking about the ecological or potential health problem but the political fallout to Umno and Barisan Barisan. Lynas is a project in Najib’s home state of Pahang. Pahang, like Johor, has always been regarded as Umno’s fortress (Kubu Umno, as the Malays would say).

But because of the Lynas project, that is about to change. Pahang may no longer be that fortress that it used to be. And this is worrying Najib like hell. Najib can easily solve this problem by killing the Lynas project. That would, of course, be in theory. Just kill Lynas and the problem would go away. But they can’t do that. And they can’t do that for many reasons.

Hence Najib is caught between rock and a hard place. He knows that Lynas is bad news but he can’t do anything about it. Actually, Lynas is not Najib’s project. It is Tun Abdullah Ahmad Badawi’s project. And what Najib can’t seem to understand is why was Lynas given this licence to print money? And if Najib wants to close down Lynas to make the problem go away then he would be opening a whole can of worms that can actually work against Umno and Barisan Nasional rather than save them.

 According to what Najib’s people are claiming, Abdullah Badawi received almost RM500 million in ‘donations’ to approve this project, a project that so many countries such as China rejected. Even the Latin American and African countries rejected this project. No one wanted it. But Malaysia agreed to accept it for the RM500 million in donation that was paid. RM500 million sounds like a lot of money. But RM500 million is actually pittance if you consider that the company is expected to make RM1 billion a year and has been given a tax holiday of 12 years. That would mean RM12 billion tax-free profits for a mere RM500 million in kickback.

 If Najib wants to kill the project he can always get Umno to refund the RM500 million that was paid. Surely RM500 million is not that big a sum for Umno, which can easily get its hands on billions of Ringgit. Okay, the project has been completed at a cost of RM1.2 billion and is ready to run. So the government must also compensate Lynas for the RM1.2 billion it already spent. That comes to only RM1.7 billion in total, not too great a sum to make sure that Pahang does not fall to the opposition.

And if Pahang falls to the opposition, like Penang did in 2008, then just like what happened to Abdullah Badawi, Najib too would be ousted from office. But this is not just about the RM1.7 billion. What about the ‘loss of profits’ amounting to another RM12 billion over 12 years? Can the government also compensate Lynas that RM12 billion loss of profits as well? That is something that the government can ill afford. Furthermore, this is not only about the money.

The Royal Family is also involved. And how much would the government have to pay the Royal Family as compensation as well? How many billions would they also want? Sure, kill the project and the problem would go away. It only needs money to achieve that. But the money we are talking about may finally come to RM20 billion or RM30 billion. And Malaysia does not have RM20 billion or RM30 billion to pay out as compensation to kill the project.

 What will happen if Pakatan Rakyat takes over the federal government and Anwar Ibrahim becomes the new Prime Minister? Can Anwar do what Najib cannot do? Can Anwar or the Pakatan Rakyat government kill Lynas?

Will Malaysia have RM20 billion or RM30 billion to pay as compensation to kill the project? Najib inherited this project just like Anwar will if he takes over as Prime Minister. And Anwar’s hands will be tied just like how Najib’s is. The cost to kill this project will be extremely expensive for the country. And whether Najib stays on as Prime Minister or Anwar takes over, it will still be a costly exercise to kill the project.

 How the hell did Malaysia approve a project that so many other countries refused to take? And why give them a 12-year tax holiday on top of that when they are going to be making RM1 billion a year? They don’t need any tax breaks! Instead, Malaysia should whack them for as much tax as we can. And, most importantly, did the RM500 million really go to Umno or did it go into the pockets of certain Unmo people? According to Najib’s people, Umno did not receive the money. They said that the money went into Abdullah Badawi’s pocket. So how can Umno refund money it did not receive?

 Would Abdullah Badawi dare do something like this? Okay, maybe he knew he was at the end of his term and that he was about to get kicked out. Nevertheless, Lynas is a very high profile issue and surely you can’t keep a high profile issue such as Lynas below the radar screen. It seems Lynas is not the only disaster created by Abdullah Badawi that Najib had to inherit. The NFC project is yet another. This is another disaster that was left by Abdullah Badawi and which Najib has now inherited.

And it seems Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad is pissed big time about this. When the NFC proposal was first mooted, Deputy Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin rejected it. Khairy Jamaluddin then pushed it to the Ministry of Finance and got his father-in-law to approve it. After it was approved by the Minister of Finance cum Prime Minister, the project was pushed back to the Ministry of Agriculture. And now it is Najib’s problem, an inheritance left by Abdullah Badawi.

 Yes, how does Najib solve the Lynas and the NFC matters? He can’t. And the voters do not care that both these disasters were Abdullah Badawi’s doing and that Najib merely inherited the problems. As far as the voters are concerned, both Lynas and the NFC are Umno’s and Barisan Nasional’s doing. And the voters are going to punish the ruling party in the coming general election, never mind which Prime Minister is guilty of these crimes. Again, I will stop here for the meantime and will continue in part three the other issues that are preventing Najib from calling for the general election in June as he had originally planned. So stay tuned as I take you through my series called Now that Bersih is over.

Nowhere Else In The World Do We Find Censorship Like This!

Nowhere Else In The World Do We Find Censorship Like This! –

Al Jazeera Condemns Malaysia EXCLUSIVE This post is also available in: Malay Al Jazeera - appalled at censorship!

The Middle East’s leading TV News Service, Al Jazeera, has given its own appalled reaction to the discovery that its coverage of Saturday’s Bersih 3.0 rally may have also have been doctored by Malaysia’s Astro satellite station. In an uncompromising statement a spokesman today declared: “We have not been censored in this way by another distribution platform anywhere in the world.”

 The statement has added to the growing international outrage over Malaysia’s authoritarian censorship rules, in a country that poses as a democracy. The BBC, who discovered its own report of the day’s events was covertly edited, has launched its own legal and editorial enquiry into the incident and is said to be taking the matter “extremely seriously indeed”, according to one insider.

Cover up Menaced by police - Al Jazeera's Harry Fawcett speaking to camera shortly before his equipment was smashed The Qatar-based Al Jazeera meanwhile, now has reason to believe that its extensive coverage of the Bersih rally was also interfered with.

The station had sent it’s English language reporter Harry Fawcett onto the ground in KL, covering the rally and providing on the spot interviews. Much of his material was dramatic and showed a number of cases of excessive use of force by the police against demonstrators. As he spoke to camera, police officers could be seen hovering at the reporter’s shoulder and eventually he reported that they smashed his equipment to the ground – one of several attacks reported against news crews by police. Fawcett’s report had concluded on an even handed note, suggesting that both sides had matters to regret over the direction of events. Yet the station is believed to have received information from a number of sources that Astro censored its coverage.

 Today Al Jazeera’s English Spokesman released this official statement: “We will be asking Astro for an explanation as to why Harry Fawcett’s report of the rally in Malaysia was apparently censored. If Astro are indeed saying that it breached “local content regulations”, they would need to outline exactly what these alleged breaches were and how they arrived at their decision. “

As we understand it, the censoring was not made clear to viewers when it happened. We have had no communication on this incident from Astro either. “Our news report was a factual account of events that day, and intrusion in our editorial process is unwarranted. We have not been censored in this way by another distribution platform anywhere in the world.”

 What breaches?

Exclusive licence for Astro in Malaysia Al Jazeera’s accusation that Malaysia’s censorship system is the most authoritarian they have experienced anywhere in the world is a particularly stinging indictment of a regime that has spent hundreds of millions on cultivating its international image. In fact it has long been the case that only pro-government organisations ever qualify for print or media licences in Malaysia and that these all slavishly adopt a pro-government stance on each and every issue. Astro itself is run by the pro-BN crony billionaire Ananda Krishnan and it has been given exclusive rights by the government to act as the sole platform carrying 24 hour news channels, like the BBC, CNN and Al Jazeera to viewers in Malaysia.

In its own defence Astro this week admitted that it is only allowed to operate in accordance with “National Content Regulations”, which media organisations are supposed to put into practice through ‘self-censorship’. The Al Jazeera statement demands to know what these content regulations consist of and how breaches are assessed? The station is clearly particularly outraged at Astro’s opinion that it is entitled to censor news reports without even informing either the news channel or viewers! [see Astro statement]. “News Control” Sarawak Report can now reveal for the first time just how the sinister and arbitrary system of TV News censorship works at Astro. Sources have revealed that the satellite station employs people round the clock under the job title “News Control”. Astro’s “News Controllers” have the editorial responsibility of scouring all the news coming in and demanding edits on anything they judge to be contrary to the Home Ministry censorship rules! “They do four hour shifts, monitoring news output particularly from CNN, BBC and Al Jazeera, and deciding if anything is not to go to air”, explained our source. For reputable broadcasters like Al Jazeera, this means that objective reports can be turned into biased reports, but that Malaysian viewers are given the deliberate impression that this was the actual voice of the international news station. If the BBC and Al Jazeera have knowingly entered into commercial agreements that permitted such tampering the reputational issues could be highly damaging. However, it is most likely that it is Malaysia’s secretive authoritarianism that has been at last fully exposed by this shameful incident.

 Harry Fawcett tweeting today about his outrage over his treatment at the Bersih rally and the censorship of his report Today the British MP Tom Greatrex, a member of the All-party Parliamentary Group on Malaysia made his own statement deploring the tampering of BBC News by Malaysia: “Freedom of expression is a vital element of any democracy. For people all across the globe, the BBC World Service is a vital lifeline in the search for truth. William Hague [Foreign Secretary] must make it clear in no uncertain terms to the Malaysian government that it is entirely unacceptable to censor the BBC.”

 Content regulation Weighty document - so many things are censored, but it comes down to one main thing. Don't allow anything the BN government might not like! Sarawak Report has been unable to reach Astro Channel’s communications officers today. We have been requesting both a copy of the National Content Regulations which they are forced to abide by and to learn exactly what their criteria for censoring material is. Censorship is regarded as an extremely serious issue in most countries.

However, documents that we have obtained showing the Home Ministry’s rules on Film Censorship, give the impression that in Malaysia the restrictions are wide-ranging and arbitrary and apply to anything that might be construed as undesirable by the ruling political regime!

The first main category of 4 areas of censorship outlined by the Government refers to ‘matters of security and public order’. The list of offences makes clear that anything that criticises or shows the government or its agents in a bad light is to be censored. Under such a heading bad behaviour by police officers during the Bersih rally would certainly be included! Nothing that contradicts the policies of the government should be allowed!

Nothing that shows the government or its agents in a bad light either! Under such rules it is plain that censorship should apply to anything that reveals corruption, illegality, stupidity or misbehaviour on the part of the BN government or anyone working for it.

It is clear that Malaysia, which poses as a democracy, has censorship laws that would befit the most authoritarian and dictatorial states in the world! Should Al Jazeera and the BBC and CNN be allowing their news broadcasts to pass through such 3rd party censorship without them even being told when these rules have been applied?