Of Assassinations and Press Freedom

After the Blogging and Defamation Forum on Thursday 23rd Oct, I rushed over the KL & Selangor Chinese Assembly Hall for the “Assassinating a YB vs. Press Freedom” forum, organised by DAP. I was late (although I left early from the earlier forum).

The forum at the Chinese Assembly Hall had already begun, seemingly more crowded than the earlier one. In hindsight, I don’t think this was the case. The Bar Council auditorium was much bigger than the theatrette at the Chinese Assembly Hall.

Bersih was there as well, which is great to see. It’s nice to see how committed they are to the cause. Also good to see the great number of non-Chinese attending. Amazing!

The forum was basically on the short story ‘Politik Baru YB J”, published in Mingguan Malaysia. The story, written by Datuk Chamil Wariya, tells of a protagonist politician, apparently a racist and bigot, who is shot dead. The panelists were:

• Lim Kit Siang, DAP Parliamentary Leader
• Khalid Samad, Member of Parliament
• Harris Ibrahim, Lawyer
• Azmi Sharom, Academician
• Wan Hamidi Hamid, Senior Journalist
• Teresa Kok, Selangor Senior Exco

The panelists, in a nutshell, said the media must be responsible and held accountable for the stories they publish. They also were in agreement that action must be taken against the author and publisher.

I had to sit outside initially, and watch journalist Wan Hamidi Hamid on the screen. He said it was wrong for Chamil to use creative writing to incite violence. “All over the world, press freedom does not incite hatred or violence”.

There were “Boikot Utusan” t-shirts for sale, and basically, the public were urged, if they believed that what Utusan/Mingguan Malaysia/Chamil Wariya did was wrong. In fact, boikot the paper, the advertisers and the whole media conglomerate, we were told!

Lucky me, I don’t read or watch anything from them, and I got rid of my NST RSS feeds when I came home. Interestingly, nobody knows if the Malaysian Insider has Media Prima connections…

At the end of the session, there was the usual Q&A. Surprisingly, the press didn’t ask a single question (when I was there, I left early though). I was told by the Malaysian Insider that they were just there ‘to observe’. Since the event was televised live on the Internet, including a question (or statement, almost) from Nat Tan. If you want to watch the event on the web, click here.