PRESS STATEMENT| Gerakan Media Merdeka (Geramm) notes with serious concern a report on suspected blocked access to online news portal MalaysiaNow.
Gerakan Media Merdeka (Geramm) notes with serious concern a report on suspected blocked access to online portal MalaysiaNow.
Any such move if proven true would be an indirect form of government censorship on a news outlet and a blatant breach of press freedom.
MalaysiaNow reported that its website has been inaccessible to a large number of Celcom and Maxis users since yesterday evening.
Meanwhile, Malaysiakini reported that its own testing through Maxis’ network using a connectivity testing tool provided by Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI) suggests that the website is blocked on Maxis through DNS tampering.�
DNS tampering is a common method used in Malaysia to censor ‘undesirable’ online content including pornography, online gambling, and violent extremist sites.
Any forms of online news or legitimate opinions clearly should not be subjected to such censorship.
As such, Geramm urge authorities from the Ministry of Communications and Digital, as well as the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission to clarify whether there were any instructions or authorisations to restrict access to MalaysiaNow.
Geramm 