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Now this is a sad news to tell. Two famous and well recognized bloggers, Jeff Ooi at Screenshots, and Ahiruddin Attan at Rocky’s Bru, are being sued over defamation by a local newspaper New Straits Times Press (Malaysia) Berhad, along with several individuals, Kalimullah bin Masheerul Hassan, Hishamuddin bin Aun and Brenden John a/l John Pereira. Local press release can be found here, both of the bloggers have their own announcements here and here.

A short introduction for these two bloggers. Jeff and Ahiruddin are well known as socio-political bloggers, their blogs are very good source of information that can hardly be found on any local press regarding current issues in the country. As for New Straits Times, a pro-government English daily newspaper.

It is not a surprise that I couldn’t find much info regarding this lawsuit in local press. However, International links returned from google indicated that this issue has arose massive attentions within the Asia region, I will list down a few trustworthy sources below.

1. International Herald Tribune
2. Channel NewsAsia
3. Yahoo! News
4. ZD Net Asia
   
5. Reporters Without Borders

For more results, you can google for “Malaysia Bloggers Sued Over Defamation”.

This is the very first lawsuit against Bloggers in Malaysia. Bloggers in Malaysia have shown supportive efforts by raising legal fund to help these two bloggers, and web banners have been created to be displayed in bloggers’ space. A campaign “Walk With Us” is also formed to support them. Last but not least, our famous opposition leader Dr. Lim Kit Siang has a blog entry regarding this news too.

Whether agree to what Jeff and Rocky blog about or not, I certainly don’t want to lose my last source of local issue in Malaysia, as I’ve given up mainstream media since a long time ago. This is a line I’m willing to help defend.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 23rd, 2007 at 5:07 am by Yien Bin and is filed under Blogging, Malaysia, WWW. Total 3,104 View(s). You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, email to friends, or trackback from your own site.

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