With Pakatan Rakyat making final pushes by launching a series of public rallies ahead of the Sarawak state elections, the fast-falling Barisan Nasional regime has responded in an illicit manner. For the past two days, popular news portals SarawakReport.org and Malaysiakini were completely clamped down when 'distributed denial-of-service attacks' (DDOS) were launched.
The recent round of cyber attacks on the alternative media drew parallels between a falling Hosni Murbarak and the Barisan Nasional government. The former Egypt president resorted to cutting off the internet when his government was falling to a historical Egyptian revolution.
Founder of SarawakReport.org, Clara Brown said that: “clearly BN do not find themselves in a position to answer our findings and arguments, so they have taken the cheat route instead. She went on the mention, “their methods of attacking us have all be very expensive, but highly counter-productive and have caused them to look pretty foolish in the process." With the alternative media being freely available to members of the public, Prime Minister Najib Razak and his Barisan Nasional government has no choice but to resort to such dirty tactics. The crackdowns were timed just when the Sarawak state election is around the corner - on Saturday.
Near to non-existence of freedom of media in Malaysia. With mainstream newspapers and media under complete control of the government, the opposition is already at a massive disadvantage going into a round of elections. Opposition Leader Anwar Ibrahim recently pleaded in a rally at Sarawak for a 5-minute coverage to be given to his Pakatan Rakyat coalition leaders on TV3 every night.
His sarcastic tones were to imply how the likes of TV3, RTM, Utusan Malaysia and New Straits Times were being utilized as propaganda tools to smear and discredit the Pakatan Rakyat. What more when the smears and taunts are mostly baseless accusations, with words of PR leaders being twisted to satisfy cravings of their Putrajaya bosses. Even after 53 years of independence, freedom of media remained to elude Malaysians, as Malaysia ranked a lowly 141 in the Press Freedom Index, which was published in 2010.
With this round of crackdowns on the alternative media and coupled with soon-to-be enacted Parliament acts which will restrict and filter internet publications, Malaysia is definitely on their way to join the likes of Iraq and North Korea in terms of press freedom.
Intimidating the voters
The Barisan Nasional government has also turned to all sorts of intimidation. In a recent interview, a local who spoke of the tyrannical acts of the BN had refused to be named in fear of the coalition that has ruled Malaysian for more than 5 decades. But he said, "if workers from big companies have those small opposition flags on their car, someone from BN will go to the employers and threaten them."
It is evident from this flag issue, BN is treating the Sarawakians like how Murbarak treats the Egyptians or Gaddafi the Libyans. It also shows how Sarawakians are being victimized and have been intimidated through the years. In fact, a lot of instances of physical intimidation and threats in rural areas carried out by the Barisan Nasional have not been made known to the public. Knowing that the majority of the rural natives are vulnerable and illiterate, BN took full advantage by exploiting their weaknesses and bullying them.
Barisan Nasional has taken Sarawakians for granted, treating them as fixed deposits for far too long. Indeed, this round of state elections is the golden opportunity for Sarawakians to rise up and let their voices be heard.
Malaysia Chronicle
