Malaysia's press freedom ranking improves slightly to 113th place

Malaysia has posted a slight improvement in the latest RSF press freedom rankings for 2005. It has risen from 122nd position in 2004 to 113th position this year. But the ranking is still worse than the 103rd ranking in 2003, when Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi took over from Mahathir Mohamad, who was regarded as one of the global enemies of press freedom.

But within South East Asia, Malaysia is now in 5th place, a slight improvement from 6th place in 2004, but this "improvement" comes about due to a plunge in the Philippines' ranking.

Timor Leste retains its top ranking, with a global ranking of 58th place (57th place last year). Cambodia moves up to 2nd spot.

Thailand, under Thaksin, records the worst plunge in the region from a global ranking of 59th last year to 107th this year. This forces it down from 2nd place in the region to 4th, just ahead of Malaysia. The Philippines too posts a sharp fall, dipping below Malaysia to 6th place from 4th previously. The bottom four positions remain unchanged, with Burma under military rule unsurprisingly propping up the regional table.

Here are the South East Asian nations' press freedom rankings. The regional rankings for 2005 are shown on the left, followed by the previous year's regional ranking in brackets. The global rankings for 2005 are shown on the right in brackets.

1. (1) Timor-Leste (58)
2. (3) Cambodia (90)
3. (5) Indonesia (102)
4. (2) Thailand (107)
5. (6) Malaysia (113)
6. (4) Philippines (139)
7. (7) Singapore (140)
8. (8) Laos (155)
9. (9) Vietnam (158)
10. (10) Burma (163)