[Para penulis siber dan pengendali laman web perlu mengambil iktibar dari rencana ini. Dengan 'menangkap' komputer Raja Petra tampak jelas internet sudah menunjukkan puakanya yang bakal menggugat kerajaan BN dan Umno yang ada. Jangan berhenti menyumbang idea dan melakar sesuatu untuk ugama, bangsa dan negara kerana tinta anda itulah senjata moden yang tiada tandingannya..... - Editor]

Terjemahan Ringkas:

RAJA PETRA SUDAH BEBAS, TETAPI PC BELIAU DIBERKAS PULA

Rencana ini amat baik sekali. Kerajaan membebaskan sdr Raja Petra selepas sehari di penjara, tetapi komputer beliau diberkas pula. Ia satu pengiktirafan kepada kuasa laman web yang sudah berjaya mempengaruhi rakyat awam dan mampu menggocangkan banyak tempat duduk selesa pemimpin Umno yang ada. Beberapa kejadian mutakhir ini membayangkan pengaruh Internet sedang berkembang rancak mewarnai pemikiran rakyat sehingga ia meresahkan semua pemimpin BN dan pihak berkenaan yang mempunyai jenayah dan kesalahan.

KUASA INTERNET BUKAN SEBARANGAN

Ketika melancarkan MSC satu ketika dulu, Mahathir tidak terbayang ia akan melahirkan kuasa baru seperti perintis seperti Raja Petra yang teradun pandangan mereka dalam arus pemikiran sejagat. Melalui FAC, Raja Petra menyiarkan pelbagai rencana dala m dan luar negeri sehingga laman tersebut akhirnya menjadi satu laman 'rasmi' untuk berkempen - tidak seperti laman reformasi lain yang sedikit samar kerana sebab-sebab keselamatan. FAC menarik minat 20,000 lawatan sehari dan penangkapan PC beliau memang dijangkakan. Sekaligus ia satu PENGIKTIRAFAN kepada kebolehan internet untuk menyebar maklumat dengan efektif tanpa sebarang sekaan.

Menurut Raja Petra PC beliau mungkin akan ditahan lama. Kerajaan mahu mencari bukti dan kaitan beliau dengan FAC untuk mensabitkan kesalahan. Besar kemungkinan beliau akan dituduh dibawah Akta Hasutan. Akan tetapi laman FAC tetap dikemaskini sewaktu Raja Petra dalam tahanan. "Kini pihak polis tahu saya bukan berseorangan", kata beliau. "Mereka tahu ada orang lain dalam jaringan ini". Polis juga mungkin akan cuba mengenal pasti siapakah nama dibelakang beberapa laman web reformasi yang begitu rahsia kini.

Raja Petra diikat jamin RM5,000 dan perlu melapur diri kepada polis pada 21/3/2001 untuk mengetahui apakah beliau akan dikenakan sebarang tuduhan. Beliau ditahan bersama lapan reformis lain dalam perhimpunan (sekitar 50 orang) menyinari lilin dekat balai Dang Wangi baru-baru ini untuk memberi sokongan dan mendesak Ezam dibebaskan.

LAMAN WEB SEMAKIN MENJADI SASARAN

Bukan FAC sahaja menjadi sasaran. Dua hari sebelum itu CEO malaysiakini mendapat emel ugutan. Laman beliau kini sedang dihambur tuduhan didalangi atau dibiayai oleh Soros.

Kerajaan turut juga memantau penulisan di laman forum berupa perbincangan. Seorang pensyarah universiti, profesor Chia Oai Peng terjebak dalam kesusahan bila timbalan kanselor mengarahkan beliau (pada 6/2/2001) memberi tunjuk-sebab menulis sesuatu yang tidak menyenangkan kerajaan dalam isu SRJKC Damansara.

Chia merupakan bekas ahli PTA sekolah itu dilapurkan sebagai berkata beliau mengirim maklumat untuk memperjelaskan beberapa tanggapan yang tidak benar. Pada 8/3/2001 lebih kurang sedozen laman perbincangan yang lain menyokong beliau.

UMNO SEMAKIN SIBUK MEMANTAU KEADAAN

Sementara itu, seorang Pemuda sayap UMNO telah membuat lapuran polis mengenai satu tulisan di Laman Reformasi yang dirasakan menggugat keselamatan beliau. Zulkifli Alwi melapurkan kepada polis KL pada 7/3/2201 betapa parti pembangkang hendak 'mengugut' beliau dengan mempamirkan semua alamat peribadi dan nombor daftar keretanya di laman reformasi.

Nampaknya kerajaan dan Umno semakin memberi fokus kepada laman-lamman web kebelakangan ini.Walaupun cuma sekitar 10-15% sahaja rakyat negara ini yang mempunyai kemudahan internet, berita nya dapat bergerak lebih pantas dari segala media yang ada.

Dalam pemilu 1999. kerajaan BN menang dengan majoriti yang begitu menipis sekali. Jika ratusan rakyat di kesemua 193 kawasan parlimen itu terdedah kepada maklumat kritikal mengenai penyelewengan kuasa dari alam siber, kerajaan yang ada kini akan miring dan tumbang.

-Anil Netto-

-TJr Kapal Berita-

Rencana Asal:

From Asia Times
10th March 2001

DIRE STRAITS

You're free to go, but not your computer

By Anil Netto

It's a sign of the times. A Malaysian opposition activist has been released after spending a day in jail, but his computer has now been taken into custody.

It is the latest in a series of incidents over the past week that illustrates just how much the Internet is influencing public opinion and unnerving the authorities.

When Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad mooted the futuristic-sounding Multimedia Super Corridor in the mid-1990s, he could scarcely have imagined that information and communications technology would be used by the likes of Raja Petra Kamaruddin to mold critical public opinion.

Raja Petra heads an effort to mobilize public opinion, both domestic and international, in a bid to free jailed former deputy premier Anwar Ibrahim. He runs the Free Anwar Campaign (FAC) website, reporting on new campaign initiatives and reformasi protests both locally and internationally. His FAC website, the only "official" campaign site, unlike the hugely popular but anonymous reformasi websites, draws about 20,000 hits daily, he says.

Given the sustained reformasi protests and the high stakes involved, Raja Petra's detention was perhaps not unexpected. But it was telling that the authorities released him less than 24 hours later and then confiscated his computer's central processing unit (CPU) - surely a recognition of the Internet's ability to sidestep Malaysia's tight media controls.

"It [the CPU] will probably be in custody for a long time," Raja Petra told Asia Times Online. "They are trying to establish that I am the one behind the FAC. They need to link me to the website."

Even while Raja Petra was in custody, the Free Anwar Campaign website was still being updated, informing visitors of Raja Petra's arrest. "So they [the police] know that I'm not alone," he says. "They want to know who else is in the network." He says the police are probably also trying to put names and faces to the other anonymous reformasi webmasters.

Raja Petra, now out on a bail guarantee of 5,000 ringgit (US$1,317) has to report back to the police on March 21 to find out whether he will be charged. He believes he is being investigated for possible "sedition" for the postings on the FAC website. He was among eight others, including his wife, who were detained on March 6 after a group of about 50 people held a candlelight vigil outside the Dang Wangi police station in Kuala Lumpur in support of a colleague, Ezam Mohammad Nor, who was arrested a day earlier.

The FAC is not the only website to have drawn unwelcome attention in the past few days. On the same day the nine were detained, two threatening e-mails were received by the chief executive of another website, the independent news portal Malaysiakini. A Malaysiakini report said the e-mails to Premesh Chandran were "believed to be linked to the recent allegations that the news website was funded by controversial currency speculator George Soros".

In recent weeks, Malaysiakini has been singled out for attacks from sections of the mainstream media and from several government officials for allegedly obtaining financing from Soros, a charge the website refutes. Mahathir has blamed Soros for triggering the regional economic crisis in 1997.

Even postings on discussion groups are monitored. A Universiti Malaya lecturer, associate professor Chia Oai Peng, found herself in trouble when she was ordered by the vice chancellor on February 6 to explain her Internet postings on the controversy surrounding a Chinese vernacular school in central Selangor state. Some 70 pupils at the Damansara Chinese school are holding out against an Education Ministry directive closing down the school and relocating its pupils to another Chinese vernacular school farther away.

Chia, who was once a PTA member of Damansara school, was reported as saying she posted her messages to correct some erroneous information on the school controversy. On March 8, about a dozen Internet discussion groups threw their support behind her.

Meanwhile, a leader of the Youth wing of the United Malays National Organization (Umnno) has lodged a police report against a posting on the Laman (Website) Reformasi, which he said threatened his safety. Umno Youth assistant secretary Zulkifli Mohd Alwi made the police report in Kuala Lumpur on March 7, claiming that the opposition National Justice Party (Keadilan) had "threatened" him by posting his house address and car registration numbers on the Laman Reformasi website.

Laman Reformasi is the standard-bearer of a host of anonymous reformasi websites clamoring for political and economic reforms. The website has even criticized certain Keadilan leaders in the past. Zulkifli claimed that the threat in the website had warned him "to beware and not to regret if anything bad happened in his house".

Laman Reformasi has been critical of an earlier police report by Zulkifli which led to Ezam's arrest on March 5. Zulkifli made that report claiming that a pro-government Malay daily on Sunday had reported that Ezam was planning demonstrations to "topple" the government, a charge Ezam denies.

The heightened scrutiny of the Internet is a fairly new development and an implicit recognition of the medium's effectiveness in shaping public opinion. Only last year, the authorities cracked down on critical Malay print publications. But this time the focus appears to have shifted towards critical websites and discussion groups, which have come under intense scrutiny. Though only some 10-15 percent of Malaysians have access to the Internet, its reach is wider given that news from the Web invariably spreads by word-of-mouth to other Malaysians.

In the 1999 general elections, the ruling coalition won a clutch of parliamentary seats with razor-thin majorities in Malaysia's first-past-the-post system. If hundreds of Malaysians in each of the country's 193 parliamentary seat are exposed to more critical Internet news exposing abuse of power, the political equation could easily tilt away from the ruling coalition. If the computer in custody is any indication, that is a possibility that has not been lost on the ruling coalition.

http://www.atimes.com/se-asia/CA23Ae03.html