Sarawak Report not put off by MCMC action

The focus should be on whether 1MDB and Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak can rebut the information it has put forward

KUALA LUMPUR: The Sarawak Report has disclosed that it will also look to find other ways to get out stories. “Right now, the Sarawak Report should not be the issue that attracts attention, since we have done our job as reporters in bringing matters to light,” said the website Editor Clare Rewcastle-Brown. “The focus should now be on whether 1MDB and Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak can rebut the information we have put forward.”

If they can’t, she added, which seems glaringly to be the case after all this while, “what’s going to be done about that?”

These are the issues, she stressed, not the Sarawak Report or her. “The information has already long been disseminated and backed up by other major global news organisations.”

“So, we can only assume that the Malaysian Communication and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) was fearful that we are about to bring out further revelations.”

She ventured that the authorities in Malaysia also plainly hope that strong arm, anti-democratic media clampdown will enable them to contain these issues on behalf of the Prime Minister, “who seems unable to answer questions on the matter of payments into his personal banking accounts and has been running away from journalists for weeks”.

“But, this line of attack betrays weakness rather than strength.”

She was commenting on MCMC taking action to block the Sarawak Report site in Malaysia, “although it can still be accessed via other servers across the world”.

“This is a blatant attempt to censor our exposure of major corruption through the development fund 1MDB, including the information that nearly USD700 million of 1MDB related money was paid into the Prime Minister of Malaysia’s personal AmBank account in Kuala Lumpur just before the last election,” said Rewcastle.

She alleged that so far no one in the Malaysian Government has had the guts to take Sarawak Report formally to task over any factual detail of its revelations or to issue legal proceedings which would trigger a public examination of the evidence. “This is because our information was overwhelming, easily proven and patently substantiated by a mass of corroborative factual evidence.”

She ventured that it was because “they are not in a position to refute the evidence, that certain members of the government have instead spent the last few weeks doing their best to distract from the issue of misappropriated funds at 1MDB by attacking the integrity of the Sarawak Report”.

Ever more bizarre, she alleged, inconsistent and unsubstantiated accusations have been channeled through proxy news media outlets, with just one glaring thing absent, “which are facts to back up their accusations”.

“Ministers have shouted about forged, tampered or distorted documents, but they have been unable to pin point a single example,” said Rewcastle. “A bought ‘confession’ from a well-known fantasist and liar has wilted under scrutiny.”

So, now the latest step has been taken, she lamented, which was to pull down Sarawak Report’s website in Malaysia claiming that it has “violated national laws” and published “unverified accusations”. “Is there a single person in the whole of Malaysia who believes a word of that official claim by MCMC?”

If all its exposes were a dark and tangled plot of elaborate forgeries and lies, she asked, why is it that politicians across the political spectrum have been voicing anger and concern for months and years about the growing indebtedness and missing billions at 1MDB?

“And why are there a mass of official investigations being conducted into this very matter?”

Sarawak Report will not be impeded in any way by MCMC in bringing out future information as and when its investigations deliver further evidence, she said. “This latest blow to media freedom only brings further discredit upon the present administration, which has proven unable to counter the evidence we have presented in any other way.”