TUESDAY came and went like any other ordinary day. But the third day of the week wasn't an ordinary day in any sense of the word. Yes, Tuesday was the extraordinary World Press Freedom Day. Yet, no ministers here chose to extol the virtues of a free press. They won't.
You see, a free press bothers them. Nay, it threatens them to extinction. Because a free press speaks truth to power. And when that truth hurts, they stop the press. Or cause some other pain, like prolonged paralysis. We, a very storied newspaper of 176 years, too, have our painful story.
One episode that is four decades old in this sad tale is that of then sister paper — the Malay Mail — an edition of which saw print and just as quickly was made to disappear. Call it the magic of political power.
There have been other episodes, though not as dramatic as this. No, don't go away thinking this is just a Malaysian story. No, it's not. Not at all. It happens in the "free-est" of the "free world". And in more dangerous ways.
Like in Britain and the United States, where there is chest-thumping on press freedom, human rights and rule of law.
Yes, the last one, too, whatever that means these days. At least one thing we can say of this blessed Malaysia of ours. It doesn't pretend to be a part of that "free world".
Now back to Britain and the US, the so-called free world where a free press is supposed to be alive and well. Frankly, free press there is a walking cadaver, if it had any semblance of life at all, that is. Start with Britain, where in Belmarsh jail lies imprisoned free press in the shape of Julian Assange, the founder of digital news site, WikiLeaks.
He is what Britain calls a remand prisoner, meaning he hasn't been charged with any crime. There is the first legal hole. Call it the free-world headache.
Peter Oborne, writing in The Middle East Eye, has this to say: "Assange has done more than every other journalist in Britain put together to shed light on the way the world truly works." Make that every other journalist everywhere else. And the truth is really ugly.
But first, why are Britain and the US after Assange? Because he has shown the two regimes' political and military hands to be tainted. Consider just the atrocities in Afghanistan and Iraq, leaving other gory tales elsewhere for others.
Thanks to WikiLeaks, the world got to see — yes, see — the tragic details of how the US soldiers gunned down helpless civilians in Afghanistan. Of how US gunmen in a helicopter shot and killed unarmed civilians in Iraq, laughing as they sprayed the bullets.
The very same gunmen killed two members of the free press from Reuters there. As usual the US military lied to the American people and the world.
It still lies. The US calls WikiLeaks' brand of journalism espionage just to force Assange out of Britain's Belmarsh to one of its own where it threatens to keep him for 175 years.
Let's be blunt. WikiLeaks' expose of British and American atrocities in Afghanistan and Iraq isn't espionage in any meaning of the word. It is journalism. And that is what the US and Britain want Assange for. Speaking truth to power was never a crime. It should never be.