KUALA LUMPUR (July 23): The Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) today explained that the decision to fine Measat Broadcast Network Systems Bhd for airing a controversial Al-Jazeera documentary in 2015 was made to prevent the latter from being charged in court.

This follows the Attorney-General's Chambers' (AGC) instructions to MCMC on Jan 5, 2016 to charge the wholly-owned unit of Astro Malaysia Holdings Bhd with committing an offence under Section 211 of the Communications and Multimedia Act (CMA) 1998, the commission said in a statement.

"An investigation paper [on the matter] was submitted to the AGC on Dec 31, 2015. MCMC had on Jan 5, 2016, been instructed to charge Measat Broadcast under Section 211 of the CMA for committing an offence by providing offensive content with the intention to harass any person.

"On Jan 8, 2016, MCMC submitted a recommendation to the AGC to reconsider its decision to charge [Measat Broadcast] and suggested that the firm pay a compound instead. The recommendation was agreed to [by the AGC] and MCMC was instructed to file a petition for compounding and carry out further probes to complete the investigation paper," the commission added.

According to the MCMC, a complaint over the documentary was investigated for allegedly being in breach of licensing conditions under Section 206(3) of the CMA for the Content Applications Service Providers — Individual (CASP-I) category.

Under Section 211 of the CMA, it is an offence for any content applications service provider or anyone using such service to provide content which is "indecent, obscene, false, menacing, or offensive" with the "intent to annoy, abuse, threaten or harass any person".

If convicted under Section 211, the offence is punishable by a maximum RM50,000 fine or a maximum jail term of one year or both, with a further fine of RM1,000 for every day that the offence is continued after conviction.

Yesterday, Malaysiakini reported that Astro had been fined by the MCMC for airing in 2015 an Al-Jazeera documentary on the controversial murder of Mongolian Altantuya Shaariibuu. The documentary, titled "Murder in Malaysia", was aired as part of Al-Jazeera's Asia-Pacific show — 101 East.

According to the online news portal, MCMC sent a notice on July 7 to Measat Broadcast, where the satellite television provider was told to pay a fine of RM1,000 for each time the show was aired, with the total fine coming up to RM4,000 and the company given 30 days to appeal against the compound.

This comes on the heels of intense scrutiny on another Al-Jazeera documentary titled "Locked Up in Malaysia's Lockdown" aired recently, which accused the Malaysian government of mistreating illegal immigrants in the country amid the Covid-19 pandemic.

The National Film Development Corp had said that Al-Jazeera did not have the necessary licences to film the documentary. Al-Jazeera's crew that was involved in the documentary production had also been called in by local authorities for questioning.

MCMC in its statement today clarified that the case of the other documentary titled "Murder in Malaysia" was re-presented to the Deputy Public Prosecutor on April 30, 2019 and June 4, 2020. The AGC then instructed MCMC on June 23 to fine Measat Broadcast.

"A compound offer dated July 1 was then issued against Measat Broadcast for violating Section 211 of CMA. Measat Broadcast has the option to either accept the compound offer, file and appeal or reject the offer."