More bad press for Utusan

According to recent news reports, Hindu Rights Action Force (Hindraf) leader, P Waythamoorthy, has called on Prime Minister, Abdullah Badawi, to revoke the annual publishing and printing licence of Malay language daily, Utusan Malaysia, as it has been “inciting hatred” against Indian Malaysians.

According to Waythamoorthy:

Utusan Malaysia has been doing this for years and is the main stumbling block to racial unity, racial integration, co-existence and a peaceful and harmonious Malaysia… Utusan is trying to incite Malay Muslim hatred for Indians. (It) is threatening the Indian minority with violence by the Malay Muslim majority or setting the tone for the same.

Waythamoorthy also claimed that the newspaper is focussing on Hindraf in order to “divert attention from Umno’s leadership tussle”.

The call for Utusan’s permit to be revoked follows swiftly after MP Teresa Kok filed a RM30 mill defamation suit against the UMNO-related Malay daily, together with its columnist Mohd Zaini Hassan. Her statement of claim was reported to have stated that an article was published without the daily, or Mohd Zaini, its author, first making effective and proper queries into its truth and veracity.

 

Furthermore, Kok claims that the article meant that she was a racist, a religious and racial bigot, an untrustworthy person, intolerant and a chauvinistic politician who is anti-Islam and anti-Malay. Kok had sought a retraction and apology from the daily and the columnist, they had failed to respond. I might add that they instead challenged her to take a lie detector test.

As blogged on earlier, the troubled national language newspaper also faces a defamation law suit filed by Karpal Singh and possible (just possible, who knows how likely) police investigations into the police report Teresa Kok herself lodged against the defendants in her defamation law suit.

Just a general search online on Utusan ‘facing the music’ yields quite a wealth of results. Here’s a general breakdown of what happened in 2007:

1. Migrant labour activist Irene Fernandez was awarded RM200,000 in damages in her defamation suit against Utusan. Justice Tee Ah Sing was reported to have stated, “I am of the opinion that the article was not a piece of responsible journalism.”
2. Sarawak Chief Minister Abdul Taib Mahmud filed a defamation law suit against Utusan and Malaysiakinin on reports relating to timber kickbacks.
3. Four villagers of a Semai-Orang Asli community in Perak filed separate police reports against Utusan, accusing the daily of ‘spinning and concocting’ statements in a news report to purportedly show that the villagers supported a disputed development project.

This is just from a very basic search for 2007, not forgetting what has happened in 2008.

While the Sun, Sin Chew and PKR’s newspaper faces show cause letters to answer, Utusan, with all this public outrage, faces not even an investigation?