COVID-19: News report claiming discrimination against migrants inaccurate - Saifuddin

A foreign news special report that alleged Malaysia was discriminating illegal immigrants while enforcing the Movement Control Order (MCO) as part of efforts to contain the COVID-19 pandemic is flawed.

Communications and Multimedia Minister Datuk Saifuddin Abdullah said the news report not only portrayed an inaccurate account of how the government had been managing the outbreak, it also painted a very bad image of the country.

"The beginning and the end of this particular news report were done badly, and in addition had caused much damage to Malaysia's image. The report kicked-off by mentioning 'racism' and ended the same way. Malaysian is a multi-racial and multi-religious country and widely known as a peaceful nation.

"It is not as how portrayed by Al Jazeera at all, I am not too keen with the fact that they started and ended the report with that (racism) as though the situation is so bad over here... this is inaccurate," he told a media conference here today.

Earlier, Saifuddin attended a ministry state-level special coordination committee meeting at the Melaka Broadcasting Department here.

Ministry secretary-general Datuk Suriani Ahmad and Broadcasting Department director-general Nor Yahati Awang also attended the meeting.