Reporters sans frontieres picked up on the Jeff Ooi blog/commener/newspaper/government blowup this past week.
From what I can gather it’s a fair summary of the events that started with a reader’s comment, and caught the attention of key government officials.

Jeff Ooi on 30 September 2004 posted an article on Screenshots discussing the contradiction between the values of Islam Hadhari and the corruption of the ruling United Malays National Organisation (UMNO). A contentious comment was posted a few hours later by someone calling himself Anwar. It said, “Islam Hadhari and corruption are like shit and urine”. Ooi reacted quickly to this statement and replied online, “What you said affects and hurts me because you have twisted and hijacked my blog topic.”

To date, the person who posted the comment has not been identified. In fact on most weblogs contributors can post responses to an article without going through whoever runs the publication.

A few days later the internal security minister told the press that Jeff Ooi “must stop playing with fire or we will use the ISA”. The Internal Security Act is a law that allows imprisonment without trial for two years for reasons such as harming state security.

The row has been stoked up by pro-government newspapers, in particular the daily Berita Harian, which strongly criticised the blogger.

I wouldn’t want to have been in Ooi’s position. He not only removed the offending comment even before the paper made any noise, he then openly posted what information he did have on the commenter, which wasn’t much. He did so without repeating what was said. In reading the comments under that particular post, I saw that some readers understood how potentially serious the government intervention could be, while other readers took a less concerned approach.
There has been an arrest in Malaysia before.

The Malaysian authorities have previously acted against online publications. The webmaster and journalist of Malaysiakini, Hishamuddin Rais, was arrested on 10 April 2001 under the ISA and was only released two years later.

Does Reporters sans frontieres need to be monitoring this and speaking out?
We forget in Canada and other countries that the voilatile mixture of politics, media, religion and speech don’t play out as freely in many countries as it may here.
As a Canadian I can rail against my government ad nauseum as long as I don’t make specific threats against individuals. I can criticize any media outlet I want to until I drop from exhaustion.
I don’t know what will happen to the commenter ‘Anwar’ if the government seeks him out. It looks like Ooi will blog on.
This statement from Reporters sans frontieres sents a strong and cautionary note about intimidation of bloggers to government.

The international press freedom organisation called on Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi to see that no legal action was taken against Ooi. “A blogger cannot be responsible for a message posted by an anonymous contributor,” it said. “The statement by the internal security minister is serious because it will force those running weblogs to use excessive censorship.”

Jeff Ooi needed help with this issue from a fair number of sources; political, legal, technical, media….

POSITIVE USE OF INTERNET. The benefits that we can derive from this unnecessary ruckus is that we should all be committed to promoting the Positive Use of Internet, an area I had been exposed to when Datuk Suriah Abdul Rahman was the deputy secretary-general at the former Ministry of Energy, Communications and Multimedia.

Categorically, I will not condone offensive postings like ‘Anwar’s’. I hope my fellow bloggers would remain committed to continue promoting this principle. Bloggers will ultimately earn respect in the knowledge-based society if we do it well.

For the record, yesterday, I had a preliminary discussion with the Monitoring & Enforcement Division of the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission. They requested for my assistance in the investigation and I had obliged without any hesitation.

As for the parties that had pointed their accusing fingers without verifying the facts, I urge them to stop all allegations and await the outcome of MCMC-Mimos investigation which is on-going.