A few days ago, Sunday Observer of the United Kingdom carried a report entitled “Will fake news wreck the coming general election?” which shows the ubiquity of the problem of fake news in the world.

In fact, in the past two years, one nation after another has been wrestling with the problem and danger posed by fake news.

Indonesia ’s riots in May served as a warning to all democracies with polarised electorates, high social media penetration and institutions labouring under the strain of populist politics.

Indonesia’s unrest was the first time in a democracy that social media-fuelled fake news and disinformation led to election riots.

But what made fake news particularly incendiary and combustible in Malaysia is the country’s diversity of races, languages, religions and cultures resulting in fake news and hate speech designed to incite inter-racial and inter-religious polarisation and conflict doubly explosive and destructive.

Fake news and hate speech can not only destroy plural Malaysia, they can destroy the world.

This is why fake news has been identified as the third existential threat to humanity apart from nuclear warfare and climate change.

The Doomsday Clock in 2019 is currently set at two minutes to midnight, the closest it’s been to midnight since 1953 during the Cold War.

The clock is a metaphor that visualizes the threat humanity faces from unchecked scientific and technological advances, according to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists — a group of experts in nuclear weapons, biological weapons and climate change.

Last year, the clock was advanced 30 seconds due to a higher threat of nuclear war. The clock was updated during tense relations between North Korea and the U.S., which have since cooled.

On the Doomsday Clock 2019, officials of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists said while world tensions have eased, fake news and misinformation pose a higher threat and are contributing factors in why the clock has remained the same as last year.

They explained that cyber-enabled information warfare exploits humans’ thinking, and undermines our ability to deal constructively with the perils facing the world.

The clock did not budge from last year, but that “should not be taken as a sign of stability,” said Rachel Bronson, president and CEO of the group of scholars and international experts in security, nuclear, environmental and science fields.

“It is a state as worrisome as the most dangerous times of the Cold War,” said Bronson, describing the current climate as “The New Abnormal.”

“The velocity of information has increased by orders of magnitude, allowing information warfare and fake news to flourish,” she said.

“It generates rage and polarization across the globe at a time when we need calm and unity to solve the globe’s greatest problems.”

This “New Abnormal” is “a state that features an unpredictable and shifting landscape of simmering disputes that multiply the chances for major conflict to erupt,” she added.

“We appear to be normalizing a very dangerous world in terms of the risks of nuclear warfare and climate change.”

These are among the reasons why all Malaysians must be aware of the existential threat posed to the nation by untrammelled spread of fake news and hate speech to incite inter-racial and inter-religious polarisation and conflict, and why firm measures must be taken against such untrammelled spread of fake news and hate speech without undermining freedom of expression, press freedom and legitimate dissent.

In December last year, a group of parliamentarians from various countries met in London and affirmed that “representative democracy is too important and too hard-won to be left undefended from online harms” like the “co-ordinated activity of fake accounts using data-targeting methods to try manipulate the information that people see on social media”.

The international Parliamentarians, in the interests of accountability. transparency and representative democracy, called for “a system of global internet governance that can serve to protect the fundamental rights and freedoms of generations to come, based on established codes of conduct for agencies working for nation states, and govern the major international tech platforms which have created the systems that serve online content to billions of users around the world”.

If there had not been a change of government on May 9, 2018, Malaysia would stand out as the only country in the world using Ant-Fake News Act to protect fake news!

The whole world except Malaysians would know about the 1MDB scandal and Malaysia as a global kleptocacy, and any Malaysian who tries to breach this clampdown and censorship on news about the 1MDB scandal would be guilty of an offence under the Anti-Fake News Act and liable to be jailed or six months or fined RM500,000 or both.

Anti-fake news legislation, like the Anti-Fake News Act passed by the previous government, must not be enacted to supress corruption like the 1MDB scandal and violate fundamental rights to freedom of expression and legitimate dissent or to curtail press freedom.

Malaysia should play a leading role to curb the abuses and dangers of fake news, hate speech, disinformation and malinformation, not only in the country but in the international community, to ensure that they do not destroy humanity and civilizations.

(Media Statement by DAP MP for Iskandar Puteri Lim Kit Siang in Parliament on Wednesday, 9th October 2019)