Authorities act against 48 lecturers

Authorities act against 48 lecturers

MALAYSIA: Forty-eight lecturers at a state-funded university have been punished for acts judged to be critical of the government, a senior official in Kuala Lumpur said on Tuesday.

Punishments included terminating contracts, withdrawing academic scholarships, demoting or transferring the lecturers, Deputy Education Minister Aziz Shamsuddin said.

Those punished had committed anti-government acts including openly criticizing the government, taking part in anti-government protests and holding posts in opposition-linked organizations, the national news agency, Bernama, cited Aziz as saying.

He did not say over what period the action was taken, but that it aimed to protect the more than 90,000 students at the Universiti Teknoloji Mara, a government school exclusively for ethnic Muslim Malays who make up more than 60 percent of the 23 million population of this Southeast Asian country. --AP