Freedom of Speech
My friend Dirk always said compared to Arab countries Malaysia is very liberal, and if you only spend a short time in that country you won’t even notice certain regulations. I don’t know other Arab countries, so I can’t say anything to his first comparison, but I can definitely say, that during a longer stay here you will notice some issues, which are not as liberal as they seem to.
So the Freedom of Press is highly regulated by the government, the economy of the country has performed really well in the last years, but the government is very strong and no democracy at all.. Have a look at the strategic judgment of the Bertelsmann Stiftung .
Last week the parliament decided to ban articles about sex from print media. I think this is a very rude step, since this does not only ban “nasty”-articles, but also content which might be important for educational purposes. Read the thoughts of the Malaysian Blogger Kamigoroshi concerning this topic here and here.
And this issue is of course not the only one that gets restricted… Therefore independent journalists like Jeff Ooi, or the Malaysian News Portal Malaysiakini.com try to give an alternative viewpoint.