Malaysia police has issued a statement to deny Facebook parent company Meta’s accusation that the police is involved in creating fake accounts and troll farms on social media to attack government critics. However the police did not provide any evidence to refute Meta’s claim. A bare denial without any evidence is no denial.
I urge the Minister of Home Affairs Hamzah Zainuddin to come clean and explain to the public whether he had ever instructed the police to use public resources to smear and slander political opponents on social media.
Meta’s allegations are not unsubstantiated or baseless allegations, but based on big data obtained by Meta from various social media platforms and the network IP address tracked from the fake social media accounts.
Meta’s allegation is very serious, this directly alleges that the Barisan Nasional government had abused civil servants, government agencies and public resources to attack political opponents. Civil servants should remain neutral and should not take instructions from the government to smear and slander political opponents on social media.
I urge the Prime Minister to set up a Royal Commission of Inquiry to thoroughly investigate Meta’s allegations in order to clear the name of Royal Malaysia Police. If Meta’s allegations were found to be true by the Royal Commission of Inquiry report, all those involved should be severely punished.
On the other hand, if the investigation by the Royal Commission of Inquiry proves that the allegation is false, Malaysian government should sue Meta for defamation as this allegation has seriously damaged the reputation of the Royal Malaysian Police.