This comes after a picture of a British railway station manager appeared in the second part of Lester’s video confession as one James Steward Stephen who has been alleged to have fabricated e-mails and agreements which Sarawak Report bases its articles on.
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“They also plainly hope that a strong arm, anti-democratic media clamp-down will enable them to contain these issues on behalf of the Prime Minister, who seems unable to answer questions on the matter of these payments into his accounts and has been running away from journalists for weeks”. According to reports in the Malaysian media, Mr Cameron is due to visit Mr Razak in the coming weeks.
She told The Independent: “I’m afraid these sort of intimidating and bullying tactics are not going to work”.
She added: “This is a blatant attempt to censor our exposures of major corruption through the development fund 1MDB”.
“MCMC decided to block a website that could threaten the country’s stability, namely Sarawak Report, for publishing contents with unproven veracity and that are under investigation, after receiving complaints from the public”, the commission said in a statement on Sunday evening.
However, the site remains accessible via servers across the world.
The report also stated that an opposition leader met former PetroSaudi global Ltd executive Xavier Andre Justo to buy information from him to discredit the Malaysian Government.
The authorities insisted their action was justified, saying the site had been blocked because it was carrying “unsubstantiated content”.
“Such contents could affect the peace and cause national instability, disrupt public order and affect economic stability”, it said, adding that the measure would remain in place under a probe into state-owned investment arm 1Malaysia Development Bhd (1MDB) was finalized.
The Malaysian Communication and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) acknowledged it had blocked the site – a kind of outright internet censorship that has rarely occurred in Malaysia’s recent history.
Sarawak Report editor vows to continue with the websiteMalaysia’s Prime Minister Najib Razak claims opposition trying to oust him.
Mr Razak, whose popularity was already under pressure following the introduction of a sales tax to make up for budget shortfalls, flatly denied any wrongdoing. “This is the government’s responsibility and we will leave it to the people to judge the government’s action in the next election”, he said.
Ms Rewcastle Brown said her website has periodically been targeted by hackers since it was established in 2010.
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The MCMC also warned local news portals to be more cautious in their reportage or risk facing action.
