This article first appeared in The Edge Financial Daily on October 25, 2019 - October 31, 2019

KUALA LUMPUR: Opposition lawmakers welcome the government’s decision to ban the sale of the pro-China Belt & Road Initiative For Win-Winism comic book here.

“We applaud the home ministry for taking swift action in banning the comic book,”  Opposition leader Datuk Seri Ismail Sabri Yaakob (Umno-Bera) told a news conference at the Parliament lobby yesterday.

Ismail Sabri said he and other opposition members concurred with the ministry’s reasoning for the ban — that the 164-page comic book promotes communism and socialism, as well as being factually inaccurate.

He was of the view that DAP was involved in the comic book’s release, and urged the home ministry to investigate the party’s leadership and anybody involved in the release, circulation and creation of the controversial comic book.

Datuk Takiyuddin Hassan (PAS-Kota Baru), meanwhile, qualified that the opposition’s criticism of the book should not be viewed as racist as communism and socialism are ideologies used by different races.

The comic book is authored by former DAP member Hew Kuan Yau and includes a foreword by DAP secretary-general and Finance Minister Lim Guan Eng.

The home ministry yesterday gazetted a prohibition order on the comic book, saying that the publication was found to have content that may “endanger public order and security” and “distort the mind of the public”.

The prohibition order gazette under Section 7(1) of the Printing Presses and Publications Act 1984 specifies that “the printing, importation, reproduction, publication, sale, production, circulation, distribution or possession of the publication is strictly prohibited in Malaysia”.