COMMENT | What is Fahmi Fadzil babbling about? Defending his regime’s drop in the 2024 World Press Freedom Index Report published by Reporters Without Borders (RSF), he said improvements in press freedom had to be considered in the context of “Eastern values or manners” we practise in Malaysia.

What does this even mean? Whenever Malaysian political operatives talk about Eastern values, what this really means is that the rights of the citizens are going to be curtailed on religious or cultural grounds.

No Malaysian political operative has ever said...