B'day wishes to PM from TBH supporters deleted

Not all Malaysians can wish happy birthday to Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak, who celebrated his 59th birthday yesterday.

All the greeting messages posted on Najib’s Facebook fanpage by supporters of the late DAP political aide Teoh Beng Hock had been deleted, said a group by the name of Malaysians for Beng Hock.

The pressure group had initiated a campaign dubbed “Be Teoh Lee Lan for one minute” and called on supporters to wish Najib happy birthday while reminding him that the perpetrators responsible for Beng Hock’s death have not been brought to justice.

Beng Hock’s sister Lee Lan has been spearheading the movement to seek justice for her brother, who was found dead on July 16, 2009 after being interrogated by the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC).

Malaysians for Beng Hock coordinator Chong Kok Siong claimed that all their messages and photographs posted in the past three days had been removed by the fanpage administrator.

These messages, in three languages, included “Is it so difficult to take action against the MACC officers? It has been three years!” and “Where is your promise? It has been three years!”

“The prime minister is afraid of even a single birthday greeting, and dares not face the queries of Teoh’s sympathisers. How can we expect a leader with such a closed mindset to lead our nation towards democratic transformation?” said Chong in a statement today.

He commented that although Najib has been boasting about ‘people first’ under the 1Malaysia campaign, not even one MACC official has been charged with causing Teoh’s death.

“(Teoh’s sister) Lee Lan has repeatedly requested to meet Najib but he acts like he is deaf.

“Now even messages on Facebook have been banned. Najib has plugged all the complaints channels for Teoh’s family. We fail to see any sign of Najib’s ‘people first’ and ‘performance now’ concept in this issue,” he said.

Chong urged the Najib administration to disclose how many ‘Internet policemen’ the government has recruited to ‘black out’ dissidents in cyberspace, and how much of taxpayers’ money has been spent on it.

The social media have been turned into platforms to consolidate the status and interest of individuals and political parties, instead of being a channel for the people to voice their opinions, he added.

Chong called on the public to support the campaign by continuing to post footage and photographs of themselves on Najib’s Facebook page to pressure the premier.