The Malaysian mainstream media has often been viewed as deeply regimental and tightly controlled. This has been a main reason for the rapid rise of alternative media; specifically independent news portals. As the government has pledged not to cencor the Internet, many Malaysians are taking this oppurtunity to expose issues that normally would not be reported by the mainstream media. one such issue was the recent 'cow head' protest.

In this protest, Muslim demonstrators severed the head of a cow, a sacred animal to Hindus, and placed it outside the state secretariat building in protest against the decision by the Shah Alam City Council to relocate a temple (Mahmood & Ramlee 2009). The mainstream media reported minimally on the actual progress of the issue and made it seem as though it were a peaceful protest; when it was anything but peaceful.

MalaysiaKini, who posted the video on their website was asked to remove it by the MCMC (MCMC tells Malaysiakini: Take down videos 2009). They claimed that the videos contain offensive contents which could annoy any person, especially Indians. In the end MalaysiaKini took down the video from their website but did not remove it from YouTube where it is still accessible to people.

Article 10 of the Federal Constitution states that we have the right to freedom of speech, assembly and association. By reacting this way, the goverment has violated the peoples' freedom of speech. They have also gone against their promise to not censor the Internet.

Reference:
Mahmood, M & Ramlee, J 2009, ‘All sides slam cow head incident’, New Straits Times, viewed 30 August 2009, <>.

Article 10 2008, Federal Constitution (as at 5 Mac 2008), Legal Research Board, International Law Book Services, Petaling Jaya, Malaysia.