Kuala Lumpur (AFP)
Malaysian police interviewed six Al Jazeera journalists, including five Australians, on Friday about a documentary on migrants that angered authorities, the Qatari channel said it was shocked by the investigation. authorities.
The interrogation came as human rights defenders denounced a wave of prosecutions against journalists and activists in recent months in the country.
The documentary "Locked Up in Malaysia's Lockdown" describes a wave of arrests of hundreds of undocumented migrants in confined areas, who have been detained.
But the government said it was biased and inaccurate, and police are investigating whether the channel has broken laws against sedition, defamation and the transmission of offensive content.
On Friday, six Al Jazeera journalists, including the station's office chief, were interrogated for five hours by police in Kuala Lumpur. Five of them are Australians.
According to national police chief Abdul Hamid Bador, prosecutors believe the documentary contains "seditious elements". "We will give them the opportunity to explain themselves," he added, ensuring that the police would act "fairly".
He said the journalists were being interviewed as witnesses, not suspects, and that the police were looking for a Bangladeshi who appeared in the documentary.
Al-Jazeera, whose headquarters for Asia is based in Kuala Lumpur, said it was "shocked" by the attitude of the Malaysian authorities.
"Accusing journalists who are doing their job is not an action by a democracy that respects freedom of expression," the channel said, assuring that "journalism is not a crime."
The broadcast of the documentary last week had sparked numerous protests online and Malaysian Defense Minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob had asked Al Jazeera for an apology.
Authorities justified the May arrests of undocumented migrants by saying it was a necessary public health measure. But human rights associations stress that placement in a detention center has increased the risk of contamination of this population.
Many migrants from Indonesia, Bangladesh and Burma are employed as labor in Malaysia, a relatively wealthy Southeast Asian country.
Signs of a decline in freedom of expression are multiplying in Malaysia since the fall of the reformist government of Mahathir Mohamad in February and the return to power of UMNO (Malaysian United National Organization), mired in a vast corruption scandal .
Managers of one of the main news sites, Malaysiakini, are scheduled to appear in contempt of court next week after comments from readers criticizing the justice system were released.
© 2020 AFP