“However one looks at it, the anti-fake news agenda has clearly arrived in Southeast Asia, and Malaysia is only one case as part of this wider trend.
“Unless things change from where they are now, that means only one thing: less free speech for a region already stifled and tight-lipped,” it said.
The report said Malaysia’s anti-fake news law, “hurried through Parliament ahead of an upcoming general election”, was “so egregious that it could be the final blow to free speech in Malaysia, which, as it is, has long been tempered with hushed tones and calculated risk”.
It added that this fake news law “is clearly predicated on silencing any criticism of the Barisan Nasional coalition government, particularly the 1MDB scandal”, ahead of the general election.
According to the report, this had been implied by BN government ministers such as Deputy Communications and Multimedia Minister Jailani Johari, who said last month that “the ministry has identified several news portals that are trying to revive the 1MDB issue”.
Jailani also said that “while the government is trying to combat fake news here, these issues are brought up by sources from outside the country… We believe that these efforts are by certain quarters who have a political agenda and are trying to damage the prime minister’s good name”.
The report also quoted Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Abdul Rahman Dahlan as saying “even spreading (bad) news about the economy is bad. (Fake news would be) anything that is not substantive, and dangerous to the economy and security of the nation”.
The Diplomat report said the law was so general in its wording that exactly what constituted fake news would be decided by the courts, “which of late have proven to be much too compliant to the ruling party’s wishes”.
It noted that the definition in the legislation did not say where the line was between mistakes and intentional falsehoods. The law also did not specify the distinction between online gossiping and actual reporting, or how Malaysia intended to apprehend suspects not living in the country.
The report said most Southeast Asian nations were following in Malaysia’s path, which could mean “less free speech and more suppression”.
It said Singapore and the Philippines were in the process of writing their own anti-fake news legislation and that Thailand had already criminalised the spread of allegedly false information on the internet.
Cambodia is also looking into ways to curb fake news, which the government contends is spread by opposition supporters. Vietnam already has a 10,000-strong cyber-crime team, dubbed Force 47, that monitors “wrong” views expressed online.
According to the report, the ministry of public security last June drafted a new internet law that could require Facebook and Google, among others, to store user data in Vietnam-based centres. This potentially puts the data of social media users in the hands of the government.
It said Myanmar’s de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi, “once a purported champion of free speech when she held no power, is now crusading against anything critical of her unstable government”.
Indonesia’s Communications Minister Rudiantara had also threatened this week to close down Facebook ahead of next year’s elections, “chiefly over concerns about the leakage of personal data, but also about fake news”, it said.
The report also noted that several European nations such as France were drafting laws to fight fake news but these stopped short of criminalising those who spread it. The European Commission, it said, had proposed that these laws target social media firms, not users.