Well, he is the Umno information chief after all, he needs to lead the cyber-evolution for the party. However, a blog is just a medium to share thoughts and information; it doesn’t help if the politicians are not doing their best to make the country a better place.

After a controversial police report by Mat Taib against Raja Petra Kamarudin (RPK), the webmaster of Malaysia Today (MT) on July 23, it seems like the government has up their ante in the battle against MT by blocking the accessibility of the website from Malaysian IPs.

I couldn’t access the website earlier on, and I thought that the website might be overloaded server or something… but I just realized that MT might be blocked by Malaysia ISP instead (Hat tip to Shadowfox and Kai).

I tried accessing MT from an anonymizer, and the site is working just fine. You can access MT using proxies – find one from this link.

The censoring is not 100% proven yet, as some people are not able to access MT with proxy as well [Hafiz]… but it is likely that the ban is on.

I am not a regular reader of MT so I guess I won’t be much affected, but I will be really disappointed if the government decided to impose internet censorship against their critics. It will be another blow to MSC’s Bill of Guarantees for ensuring no Internet censorship, and more importantly… it shows that Malaysia government is not ready to handle criticism.

Besides, it is easy to find another route to access the website; does government really think they can just shut down a website like that? This kind of cheap act will likely to create more retaliation against them instead… not the smartest move.

Update – MT is back online on 11pm… I guess I was a bit paranoia. I am not sure what was happening; I am guessing that RPK was migrating MT to a new server, and the DNS was resolved in a different pace with various ISP.

My apology regardless.

Update July 29 – MT’s explanation on the downtime

Umno has filed a police report against political website Malaysia Today for allegedly publishing disparaging remarks against the King and Islam.

From Thestar…

Umno has lodged a police report against MalaysiaToday for carrying a series of comments and remarks that it deemed as insulting the Yang di-Pertuan Agong, degrading Islam and as inciting hatred and violence in Malaysia’s multi-racial society.

Party information chief Tan Sri Muhammad Muhammad Taib lodged the report at 12.57pm at Tun H.S. Lee police station here Monday. He said the comments and remarks, consisting of criminal elements and inciting religious and racial sentiments which could affect the country’s security, were carried by the blog on July 11.

The report was lodged under Section 121 (B) and Section 123 of the Penal Code, Section 4 of the Sedition Act 1948 and Section 263 and Section 266 of the Communications and Multimedia Act 1998.

First Nat Tan, now Raja Petra (webmaster of Malaysia Today)… the battle has just begun.

I am not a fan of absolute freedom of speech; I believe that bloggers (or whoever) have to take responsibilities on their articles… but the recent situation really irritates me, as it indicates that we have to be responsible for the comments posted on our blogs as well, and that is ridiculous.

It’s like asking the Prime Minister to be responsible for every wrong-doings of his UMNO members, parents to be responsible for their kids’ crime, and perhaps asking the king to be responsible for all their citizens’ improper acts… doesn’t make sense at all ain’t so?

Some thoughts from other bloggers…

Screenshots: Something brewing, RPK?
Lim Kit Siang: Axe coming down in Malaysian cyberspace
Susan Loone: Next victim: Malaysia-Today
Rauff: UMNO should take a more pro-active role in defeating scepticalism
Walski: Police report filed against Malaysia Today
Sagaladoola: Malaysia Today, What is 50th Merdeka?

Update July 25 – Raja Petra Kamarudin has been called to the Dang Wangi district police station in Jalan Tun HS Lee this morning regarding the police report filed by Umno information chief Muhammad Muhammad Taib. [Malaysiakini]