MCMC raids Malaysiakini’s office
The Malaysian Communication and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) today kicked off its investigation into two videos relating to the controversial cow-head protest by recording an official statement from the editor of independent news portal Malaysiakini.
Three MCMC officers visited Malaysiakini office in Bangsar Utama at 2pm to question editor-in-chief Steven Gan, who had yesterday said the website would not remove the videos.
The commission has sent a letter asking Malaysiakini to remove two ‘provocative’ videos, which included the footage of the Aug 28 cow-head protest in Shah Alam, from its website.
According to the commission, the “videos contain offensive contents with the intent to annoy any person, especially Indians”.
“This is an offence under Section 211/233 of the Communication and Multimedia Act 1998,” said monitoring and enforcement division senior acting director Abdul Halim Ahmad in the Sept 3 letter.
At the 45-minute session, Gan told MCMC investigation officer Mohd Shukri Jamaluddin (far right) that Malaysiakini was carrying out its job as a media organisation in reporting key news events.
“I told them we did not violate the Act as we did not intend to ‘annoy’ anyone by uploading the videos, but to bring the cow-head protest to public attention,” he said.
