Page 48 - Conflict, Terrorism, and the Media In Asia

Struggle for moderate Islam in Malaysia 37
impoverished Muslims in rural communities who have not shared in the prosperity
of the rest of the country.
These messages are regularly repeated in speeches by government ministers,
which are reported through the national news agency Bernama and subsequently
covered in the mainstream media with little or no direct criticism or analysis.
For instance, the Daily Express prints the verbatim text of Bernama reports on
terrorism related issues.

Reporting counter-terrorism policy
A further element of the propaganda battle between the KMM and the government
is the reporting of the government’s security policies. The media is full of posi-
tive stories about the success of the Malaysian security forces in arresting
suspected militants and Malaysia’s cooperation with other Southeast Asian states
on counter-terrorism. Again, this serves to create the impression of a government
that is in control of events and of a militant movement that is weak and on the
defensive. Yet this reporting does not paint all government counter-terrorism
policies in such a positive light.
The main issue is the government’s use of the ISA to detain militant suspects
indefinitely without trial. Some detainees have links to militant groups but others
are prominent members of the political opposition (The Economist 2002). As a
result, it is believed in some quarters that the ISA has been used as an instrument
of political repression (Abdoolcarim and Mitton 2001). The most prominent
detainee is Nik Adili Nik Aziz, the son of the PAS leader Nik Aziz Nik Mat, who
was detained in 2001 after being identified as the leader of the KMM (Suh 2001;
Gunaratna 2003: 196).
The independent and opposition media constantly criticizes the government for
alleged abuses in its counter-terrorism policy, particularly that it is using the ‘war
on terror’ to isolate what it defines as Islamic fundamentalists in order to stifle
political debate and dissent. However, the government and the majority of the
media deliberately avoid linking detentions under the ISA with the ‘war on ter-
ror’. Reporting typically stresses that detentions are made to combat threats to the
stability of Malaysia, which is strengthened by the fact that the media does not
link militancy within Malaysia to the ‘war on terror’. For public opinion, this
helps to maintain the legitimacy of the government’s use of the ISA. Nevertheless,
on this issue, at least some sections of the media can be seen to be acting as an
agent of restraint.
The alleged abuse of the ISA is fairly widely debated across the mainstream
media. Even Bernama has reported PAS opposition to the ISA, including a state-
ment issued by Nik Abdul Aziz Nik Mat that ‘The ISA is not correct, from the
religious aspect we are not respecting mankind, from the democratic aspect also
we are violating basic human rights’ (Bernama 2003d).
Opposition to the ISA is strongest amongst internet sources which publicize
human rights abuses. The Malaysian human rights organization Aliran has