This article first appeared in The Edge Malaysia Weekly on January 6, 2020 - January 12, 2020

The year was 2015. Police officers descended upon the office of a now-defunct Malaysian news portal, allegedly because of a “seditious” news report published by the said portal. The police wanted access to emails and servers. They questioned the editors and wanted to know who was responsible for publishing the report. They wanted to arrest and detain those responsible. When questioned, the response was that these were “orders from the top”.

Several journalists from the news portal were arrested and detained under the Sedition Act that day, in a blow to media freedom in the country. These individuals, whose “crime” was to report a piece of news that made the powers that be uncomfortable, had to spend one night in the Dang Wangi lockup.

A few months later, The Edge, the very newspaper you are holding in your hands, was suspended for three months. The offence? Publishing news on 1Malaysia Development Bhd.

Those were the years of living dangerously for journalists and dissidents.

We have come a long way in the span of just a few years. We saw the birth of a “New Malaysia” in 2018 and, with it, we are seeing greater freedoms enjoyed not only by the media, but the people as a whole.

But if 2018 was the year of hope and euphoria, 2019 was the year when expectations of this New Malaysia came crashing down for many. To them, New Malaysia has turned out to be a disappointment. Some even wonder whether anything has changed since we elected a new government.

But sometimes, we need to take a step back and take stock of where we were and how far we have come. In this New Malaysia, citizens are free to criticise and condemn the government, with little fear of the authorities knocking on their doors in the middle of the night.

Today, arrests of journalists and suspension of publishing permits are not only unheard of, but would never be tolerated by the people. No one has been charged under the Sedition Act ever since the current attorney general came to office.

With the freedoms we have, we can keep the government on the right path. We can ensure the government acts in our best interests and consults our views and opinions when making decisions. Our freedoms allow us to keep in check those who are in power. These freedoms allow the people to balance out the power held by the state.

At the same time, many have abused these freedoms. In 2019, fake news, hoaxes and online falsehoods were weaponised for political purposes to a degree that we have not seen before. Racial and religious issues were used to create communal tensions for the narrow political purpose of certain quarters. These issues now threaten to tear us apart.

Unfortunately, those who seek to divide us preyed on our suspicions and deep-rooted prejudice. The jawi issue is a perfect example of how a non-issue is manipulated to fray the edges of our multi-racial society.

The almost unprecedented freedoms that we now enjoy bring with them the challenges of managing those freedoms, with the rise of right-wing rhetoric in this post-truth era against the backdrop of our multi-ethnic and multi-religious society.

We must do better. We must acknowledge that our corner of the country is not representative of Malaysia as a whole. There are many who may not share the same worldview as we do. New Malaysia itself means different things to different people.

In 2020, we must start to reach out to those outside our circles. We must start engaging with Malaysians of other backgrounds. We must begin the conversations and discourse among the various segments of our society. And we must do so in the spirit of finding common grounds and similarities, despite our differences.

If in the New Malaysia the freedoms enjoyed have been used to spread hate, the same freedoms must now be used to spread tolerance, understanding and, more importantly, acceptance. We all have a role to play in this regard — the people, the private sector, the media and the government.

The challenges we now face are not miniscule in nature. It will not be easy, but we must not give up on New Malaysia. We must be patient and persevere. We have struggled long and hard to make a better Malaysia, so we must not allow the challenges encountered in the past year and a half to deter us.

If this New Malaysia fails, we will see the return of the clampdown on the media and dissidents and the climate of fear that permeates through society.

For the sake of our freedoms, we must all work together to ensure that this New Malaysia succeeds.

Syahredzan Johan is a lawyer and human rights activist

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