Implications For Civil Liberties
The incident provided Mahathir's government with the excuse to further tighten the executive stranglehold on politics. In the following year, the Printing Presses and Publications Act was amended so that it would be more difficult for printers and publishers to retain printing licenses eliminating the renewal process. They would have to annually re-apply. In addition if any license is revoked, it could not be challenged in court. A prison term was added for publication of false news, jail sentence for up to three years.
The leading Malaysian English language daily, The Star, was closed down for a few months. In the weeks prior to Operation Lalang, The Star had continuously provided transparent news coverage about the Opposition's point of view. This constituted treason as far as the government was concerned, and they were shut down under Malaysia's repressive sedition laws. The Star resumed publication months later under new management that was installed by UMNO. Most of the previous staff were laid off or otherwise threatened with prison and ISA.
From that point onwards, The Star, as well as many other media outlets in Malaysia, became government-controlled mouthpieces with an obvious pro-government slant. These media outlets were also noticeably whitewashing all of the UMNO government's wrongdoings and corruption. All the cover-up and whitewashing by the mass media became more obvious towards the late-90's, when another power struggle within UMNO (the Mahathir vs Anwar episode) revealed the extent of corruption and crimes among the UMNO executive that have never been revealed or reported.
Amendments were also made to the Police Act making it practically impossible to hold any political meeting, including a party's annual general meeting, without a police permit. A conviction could mean a fine of RM10,000 and a jail term of one year. Even an assembly of more than five people in a public area is considered an "illegal assembly" and could not be held without a police permit. This law was intentionally made to be so restrictive in order to give the police arbitrary rights to detain any group in public by citing it is an illegal assembly.
Read more about this topic: Operation Lalang
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