What Malaysia Banned
A data story · Printing Presses and Publications Act, Malaysia
There are 3,212 prohibition records in the database, covering 1950 to 2026. One of them was a memoir that had been openly available for more than twenty years. This is what is in them.
Shamsiah Fakeh was a guerrilla commander, feminist and one of the most prominent Malay women in the anti-colonial movement. Her memoir offered a rare first-person account of that history. Penerbit Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM) first published it in 2004. It was later reprinted three times and remained in circulation for more than two decades.
KDN prohibited Memoir Shamsiah Fakeh: Dari AWAS ke Rejimen Ke-10 and Komrad Asi (Rejimen 10): Dalam Denyut Nihilisme Sejarah under the Printing Presses and Publications Act 1984. The ministry said the action was intended to protect public order and cited communist elements and ideology. Gerakbudaya said it received the prohibition notice on 15 April 2026.
KDN later said continuous surveillance and intelligence gathering had found publications containing communist elements circulating more openly, with a growing tendency to normalise and glorify the ideology. But its public explanation did not identify what had changed specifically about Shamsiah Fakeh’s memoir after more than 20 years in circulation.
PEN Malaysia condemned the decision. Lee Chean Chung, PKR MP for Petaling Jaya, and Jamaliah Jamaluddin, the Bandar Utama assemblywoman and Shamsiah Fakeh’s granddaughter, also criticised it. Gerakbudaya announced that it would challenge the prohibition.
On 15 June 2026, publisher Chong Ton Sin, owner of Gerakbudaya and the Strategic Information and Research Development Centre (SIRD), applied to the High Court to quash both bans. He argued that the decision was irrational because the books had already circulated for years.
Home Minister Saifuddin Nasution Ismail signed the revocation orders on 1 July 2026. The bans on both memoirs were subsequently gazetted as revoked, and Chong withdrew the court challenges.
The revocations went beyond these two books. KDN gazetted five revocation orders also affecting Islam Without Extremes and Mao Zedong: China Dalam Dunia Abad ke-20.
This captures a bigger question: What gets banned in Malaysia, why, and for how long?
This is what is in them.
INITIATE.MY compiled, cleaned and classified the Ministry of Home Affairs’ Senarai Perintah Larangan covering 3,212 recorded prohibition orders from 1950 to 2026. These are historical prohibition records and do not necessarily represent the number of publications that remain prohibited today.
Part 1 · What the bans covered
Religious doctrinal deviance · Syiah
Banned because they were associated with Syiah teachings, which Malaysian authorities have treated as religiously sensitive or deviant.
Subversive / political · Communism/socialism
Banned because they promoted or discussed communist ideology, historically treated as a political and security concern in Malaysia.
Religious doctrinal deviance · Al-Arqam
Banned because of its association with Al-Arqam teachings and practices, which were regarded by Malaysian religious authorities as deviant.
Subversive / political · Revolutionary politics
Banned because its political cartoons and criticism of government and political leaders were considered potentially disruptive to public order.
Subversive / political · Revolutionary politics
Banned because of its critical allegations about abuse and conditions within Malaysian prisons and security institutions.
Race, religion & royalty · Ethnic incitement
Banned following controversy over content considered racially or culturally insensitive, particularly its portrayal of an Indonesian domestic worker.
Part 2 · Time
Publication bans occurred in waves rather than at a steady rate. The largest concentration appeared in the early 1950s, followed by another sustained enforcement cycle in the early-to-mid-1990s.
The 1950s recorded 786 bans, or 24.5% of the dataset, while the 1990s recorded 715, or 22.3%. Between these two peaks, the pattern remained uneven: 247 bans were recorded in the 1960s, 408 in the 1970s, 358 in the 1980s and 399 in the 2000s.
Locked square-on so the pile reads as the chart — switch to Perspective to move the camera. Drag the bottom-right corner to resize the box.
1950–2026 · 3,212 publications banned
The 2010s recorded 229 bans, while the 2020s have recorded 70 so far. As the current decade is incomplete, it should not be compared directly with full decades. Lower numbers after 2000 also do not necessarily mean that overall content regulation declined, as this dataset captures formal publication bans rather than the wider regulation of digital and online content.
Part 3 · Language, type & origin
Chinese is the largest category, with 1,159 entries, followed by English with 948 and Malay with 765. Together they account for 2,870 times — nearly nine in ten publications in the database
The pattern also reflects some historical trends. Chinese-language publications are strongly associated with earlier communist and socialist material, while English and Malay publications appear across a wider range of political, religious and moral categories. Language alone, however, does not determine why a publication was banned.
The dataset also contains 262 records with an unknown language, limiting more precise conclusions about changes over time.
Part 3 · Language, type & origin
Printed documents account for 3,147 of 3,212 records, or 98%. Audio and recordings account for 57, while physical goods, visual media and digital or electronic materials together account for only eight.
98% print
This reflects the print-based scope of the PPPA dataset, but does not mean audiovisual or digital content was otherwise unregulated.
Part 3 · Language, type & origin
Foreign-origin publications form the largest category, with 1,476 records, or 46%. Local publications account for 669, or 20.8%, while the origin of 1,067 records, or 33.2%, remains unclear.
1 in 3 records has no confirmed origin
Because one-third of the records lack a confirmed origin, comparisons between foreign and local enforcement should remain cautious.
Part 4 · The people
No single named author or translator dominates the dataset. Wei Wei appears most frequently, with 21 bans, followed by Ustaz Ashaari Muhammad with 18 and Marcus Van Heller with 16. The ten most frequently listed names account for only 115 bans, showing a relatively dispersed pattern.
These repeated appearances show that some publishers were associated with multiple prohibited publications, but they do not by themselves prove deliberate targeting. Higher counts may also reflect publication volume, repeated imports, multiple editions or inconsistent naming.
Part 5 · KDN’s recorded justifications
Official KDN justifications are available for 1,586 of the 3,212 publications in the dataset. Only five of these records pre-date 1984.
Two legal grounds dominate. Morality accounts for 893 bans, while public order accounts for 652. Together, they represent 97.4% of all available justifications.
Other grounds were used rarely: causing public alarm (23), public interest (9), security (5), national interest (3) and contrary to law (1).
These findings apply only to publications with a recorded KDN justification. Because justifications are available for only about half of the dataset and are overwhelmingly post-1984, they do not represent the complete historical pattern.
Part 6 · Content themes
INITIATE.MY classified the 3,212 records into five broad content clusters. The largest is obscene or immoral content, with 1,252 records (39.0%), including erotic or immoral material and pornography.
Subversive ideological and political content follows with 973 records (30.3%), covering communism or socialism, revolutionary politics, LGBT-related content, and terrorism or militancy. Religious doctrinal deviance accounts for 684 records (21.3%), including publications associated with Al-Arqam, Syiah, Ahmadiyyah and other religious teachings.
Race, religion and royalty (3R) issues form the smallest cluster, with 22 records (0.7%). A further 281 records (8.7%) are classified as general or unidentified because there was insufficient information for reliable classification, including vague publications from the Malayan Emergency and communist insurgency periods, possible nationalist materials and one-word titles.
Together, the three largest clusters account for 90.6% of the dataset. These categories describe the apparent content of publications under INITIATE.MY’s research taxonomy.
Part 6 · Content themes
The subcluster analysis identifies the more specific types of content within the broader taxonomy. Erotic or immoral content is the largest subcluster, with 1,097 bans (34.2%), followed by communism or socialism with 849 (26.4%). Together, they account for 1,946 records, or 60.6% of the dataset.
Other religious doctrinal teachings is the third-largest subcluster, with 573 bans (17.8%), covering religious publications not classified under Al-Arqam, Syiah or Ahmadiyyah.
A further 281 records (8.7%) are general or unidentified because available information was insufficient for more precise classification. Pornography accounts for 155 bans (4.8%) and is classified separately from erotic or immoral content.
The remaining subclusters are Al-Arqam (95), revolutionary politics (78), LGBT-related content (41), ethnic incitement (15), Syiah (10), Ahmadiyyah (6), terrorism or militancy (5), insults to religion (4) and insults to royalty (3).
Part 7 · Grounds against content
Three findings stand out. Morality was strongly associated with obscene or immoral content: 820 of 893 morality-based bans fell within this cluster, including 701 erotic or immoral publications and 119 pornography cases.
Public order was closely associated with religious doctrinal content. Of 652 public-order bans, 564 involved religious doctrinal deviance, including 90 Al-Arqam, seven Syiah and six Ahmadiyyah publications.
By contrast, ideological content did not consistently map onto security grounds. Communism or socialism appeared in only one security case, compared with 12 public-order cases in the available justification data. This should be interpreted cautiously because official reasons are largely unavailable for pre-1984 bans.
Overall, the comparison shows that similar types of content could be prohibited under different legal grounds, reinforcing the distinction between what a publication contains and the legal reason used to ban it.
Part 8 · Policy recommendations
Section 7(1) of the PPPA gives the Home Minister particularly broad authority. Where the Minister is satisfied that a publication may prejudice public order, morality, security, public or national interest, among other grounds, the Act states that the Minister may act “in his absolute discretion” to prohibit its printing, importation, publication, sale, circulation, distribution or possession.
Such broad discretion should be balanced against freedom of expression under Article 10(1)(a) of the Federal Constitution. Restrictions should therefore be based on clear evidence of harm, necessity and proportionality.
The PPPA reflects an earlier system of publication control shaped partly by the security concerns of the Malayan Emergency.
Until repeal, Section 7(1)’s broad ministerial discretion should be narrowed and subject to stronger safeguards. Every prohibition should clearly state its specific reason and legal ground, supporting evidence, duration, review process and right of appeal.
Political criticism, historical inquiry, religious disagreement or controversial views should not, by themselves, justify a ban.
Not every harmful publication requires complete prohibition.
Authorities should first consider age classifications, content advisories, restricted access, limited redactions or targeted action against direct incitement.
This would address genuine harm while reducing unnecessary restrictions on political debate, academic freedom and access to knowledge.
The database records 786 bans from the 1950s and 715 from the 1990s, many imposed under very different political and security conditions. KDN should introduce periodic reviews and sunset clauses.
KDN should also create a consolidated prohibition and revocation register linking each ban to any subsequent Perintah Mesin Cetak dan Penerbitan (Kawalan Hasil Penerbitan Tidak Diingini) (Pembatalan) or court decision.
Each record should clearly state whether it is Active, Revoked, Quashed by Court, Under Review or Status Unclear.
KDN should maintain a searchable and regularly updated database showing each publication’s title, author, publisher, legal ground, gazette reference and current status.
Open data would allow researchers, journalists, civil society, policymakers, Members of Parliament and the public to scrutinise publication regulation and participate in evidence-based reform.
The dataset
All 3,212 records behind the story — search by title, publisher, printer or author, filter by cluster, origin or revocation status, and click a column header to sort. Download takes whatever the table is currently showing as a CSV, so filter first to export a slice or leave it clear to take the whole database. Spotted a mistake? Tick one or more rows — the checkbox column is pinned to the right — to suggest a correction. A dash means the gazette record left that field blank; KDN justifications exist for about half the records. The five bans revoked in July 2026 stay in the table, marked with a badge.
Suggest an edit
The classification work is ongoing and the gazette records are uneven. If a field is wrong, a publication is missing, or a ban has since been lifted, describe the change below. Tick any number of rows in the table above and they all travel into one issue — useful when the same mistake runs through a batch of records. Ticks survive searching, sorting and paging, so you can gather records from anywhere in the dataset. Nothing is sent from this page: your answers are packed into a pre-filled issue on the project’s GitHub repository, which opens in a new tab for you to review and submit.
Codebook · Research methods
This research combined official government data, human verification and AI-assisted analysis to build, clean and classify the PPPA prohibition database.
The research began by extracting the Senarai Perintah Larangan from the Ministry of Home Affairs (KDN) e-PQ portal. KDN’s Enforcement and Control Division also provided a separate list containing the available official justification for each prohibition.
The e-PQ portal does not appear to be reachable from every country — readers outside Malaysia may find it times out. The full extract as used in this research is in the Data tab and in the repository.
The original metadata included:
The official justifications were grouped under seven grounds:
A script generated with Claude was used to extract the website records directly into a comma-separated values file. Using a script reduces the risk of information being altered or generated during extraction. Subsequent updates were identified by monitoring KDN’s website and relevant news reports and were added manually.
The research team reviewed the extracted records to identify inaccurate, incomplete or misplaced information. Where possible, titles, authors, translators, publishers, printers, languages and other metadata were verified using publicly available sources.
Some information remained unavailable, particularly for older publications. These gaps were retained as unknown or unclear rather than filled without sufficient evidence.
The team then developed additional taxonomies — also referred to as classifications throughout the research — to supplement the original KDN data.
The taxonomies covered three areas.
Records were classified as:
Publications were classified as:
The main themes of prohibited publications were organised into five broad clusters:
These were divided into more specific subclusters, including communism or socialism, revolutionary politics, terrorism or militancy, LGBT-related content, Al-Arqam, Syiah, Ahmadiyyah, pornography, and erotic or immoral content.
The content taxonomies were applied through two stages.
The metadata for each publication — including its title, author, translator and publisher — was combined into a single text string. This was converted into a numerical representation, or embedding, using multilingual sentence-transformer models.
Three models were evaluated:
paraphrase-multilingual-mpnet-base-v2;intfloat/multilingual-e5-large; andBAAI/bge-m3.The research used a semi-supervised anchor-based nearest-centroid method:
However, the confidence threshold did not reliably identify uncertain records because very few publications received low-confidence scores.
The research therefore adopted a more transparent rule-based keyword classifier. The system reviewed the following fields in order:
Earlier matches took priority. For example, recognised publishers, authors or title terms could assign a publication to Al-Arqam, Syiah, communism or socialism, pornography, or another relevant subcluster.
ChatGPT, Claude and DeepSeek were used to help generate multilingual keywords and phrases. However, the research team determined the taxonomies, reviewed the keyword rules and verified the resulting classifications.
Publications that did not match any rule were placed under General/Unidentified for further review.
The analysis kept two coding systems distinct:
This allowed the research to compare content patterns with official grounds — for example, obscene or immoral publications with morality-based prohibitions, and religious doctrinal publications with public-order justifications — without treating the two coding systems as interchangeable.
Codebook · Research limitations
The gaps, ambiguities and interpretive limits that shape how far the findings can be pushed — in the source records, in the taxonomies, and in the historical reading.
The dataset was imported from KDN’s official prohibition list. However, several limitations affect the reliability of the classifications and the interpretation of the findings.
Many records do not include the full text of the publication. Classification therefore relied mainly on titles, bibliographic details and publicly available online information.
Some titles provide insufficient context for reliable classification. For example, Percutian Yang Romantik (Romantic Holidays), published in 1990, lists no author and provides only the publishing house, making it difficult to determine which cluster it belongs to. Another example is Suratan2 Dalam Bahasa China Yang Mengandongi Perkataan2 Dan Muzik Dalam Lagu2 Yang Tajok2Nya Ia-Lah: (Terdapat Sebanyak 13 Tajuk), where the record does not even specify the individual titles that were prohibited. Similarly, I Am Jazz does not, from its title alone, clearly indicate that it contains LGBTQ+ themes. Information on older or obsolete publications was also often difficult to locate or verify.
The official records contain several metadata issues:
These issues limit the reliability of analysis by language, origin, author, printer and publisher.
Official KDN justifications are available for 1,586 of the 3,212 publications. These records are overwhelmingly from the post-1984 period, although five publications pre-date 1984.
Findings on morality, public order, security and other official grounds therefore mainly reflect the post-1984 period and should not be applied to the full historical dataset.
This may understate the historical relationship between security enforcement and earlier communist, socialist and revolutionary publications.
Revoked bans are not consistently identified in KDN’s official prohibition list. There is also no comprehensive public list showing which prohibitions have been lifted.
Recent media reports identified revoked publications that were not yet reflected in the official list during the research period. The cumulative number of prohibition orders should therefore not be interpreted automatically as the number of bans that remain active.
Findings on publication content, language, origin, publishers, printers and official legal justifications should be interpreted cautiously. The available data supports analysis of broad patterns, but not definitive conclusions in every individual case.
The research used online searches, Chinese-language translation tools and contextual information to address data gaps. Missing or unverifiable information remained coded as unknown. Automated classification was combined with human review, and each analysis states its relevant period, coverage and number of records. Entity names should also be cleaned and standardised before detailed publisher, printer or network analysis is conducted.
Some publications may reasonably fit more than one cluster or subcluster. For example, Voice of the Revolution by the People’s Liberation Army of Malaya, North Johore 5th Brigade, West Section could be classified under either revolutionary politics or terrorism/militancy. October Revolution and China could similarly fall under revolutionary politics or communism/socialism. Lesbian Sex Positions could be classified as both LGBT-related and obscene or immoral content. Distinguishing erotic or immoral material from pornography was also difficult where the full publication was unavailable.
Keyword rules may introduce unintended bias. Chinese-language publications, for example, could be associated too readily with communism because of patterns in older records. Language or origin alone does not establish ideological content.
INITIATE.MY’s taxonomies and KDN’s justifications also serve different purposes. The taxonomies describe what a publication appears to contain, while KDN’s justifications record the formal legal ground used for prohibition. Repeated appearances of particular authors, printers or publishers likewise do not necessarily prove targeted enforcement.
Implication: The classifications should be treated as analytical categories rather than definitive descriptions of every publication. Relationships between content, official legal grounds and recurring entities should not be interpreted as evidence of government intent or targeted enforcement without further evidence.
Mitigation: Each publication was assigned a primary category based on its most identifiable theme, while overlaps were recognised. Keywords were assessed alongside the title, period, author, publisher and available contextual information.
The database covers PPPA prohibition records and is mainly focused on printed publications. It does not represent the wider regulation of digital, audiovisual or online content under other laws and enforcement systems.
The dataset shows when bans were recorded but does not prove why enforcement rose in particular years. Peaks may reflect political or security developments, but they may also result from delayed gazettement or administrative batching.
The 2020s are incomplete and should not be compared directly with full decades. Aggregate language and origin data also cannot show historical changes without decade-level analysis. The cumulative total represents all recorded prohibition orders, not necessarily the number that remains legally active.
Implication: The findings can identify broad enforcement patterns but cannot establish the cause of each peak, demonstrate changes in the wider regulation of information, or determine the current number of active bans.
Mitigation: Historical interpretations were checked against gazette dates, legal grounds, content taxonomies and relevant events where possible. Researchers applied contextual judgement when interpreting ambiguous records and historical patterns, while expert reviewers were consulted to assess the reasonableness and consistency of key interpretations. Further decade-level analysis and more complete review and revocation data are required for stronger conclusions.
Codebook · Taxonomy definitions
The three classification systems applied to every record: what kind of publication it is, where it came from, and the cluster and subcluster themes describing what it contains.
Under the Printing Presses and Publications Act 1984 (PPPA) of Malaysia, the Home Affairs Minister has broad, “absolute discretion” to ban items defined as “publications” if they are deemed prejudicial to public order, morality, security, or national interest. Because the legal definition of a “publication” is extremely wide — covering anything capable of suggesting words or ideas — the ban extends beyond books and newspapers to various physical goods.
| Num. | Cluster theme | Definition | Sub-cluster | Definition |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Subversive ideological and political content | Publications that promote, justify, or discuss ideologies, movements, or narratives considered to challenge the authority of the state, constitutional order, or national security. These publications typically advocate revolutionary political change, extremist ideologies, or alternative political systems perceived as destabilising Malaysia’s governance structure. | Communism/socialism | Publications that promote, defend, or disseminate ideological materials related to communism, Marxism, Leninism, Maoism, or socialist revolutionary movements. This includes materials advocating class struggle, overthrow of capitalist systems, or historical narratives supportive of communist movements such as the Communist Party of Malaya. |
| Revolutionary politics | Publications advocating political upheaval, regime change, or revolutionary transformation of the state through radical or confrontational political movements. This includes materials encouraging mass mobilisation, civil resistance aimed at overthrowing institutions, or ideological justification for dismantling the current political system. | |||
| Terrorism / militancy | Publications that promote, glorify, justify, or provide information supporting violent extremist groups, terrorist organisations, or militant activities. This includes propaganda, recruitment material, operational guidance, or narratives legitimising violence against civilians or state institutions. | |||
| LGBT | Publications that explicitly promote, advocate, or discuss lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender identities, lifestyles, or rights, particularly where framed as challenging prevailing social norms or moral standards. Materials may include advocacy, personal narratives, educational texts, or activist literature relating to sexual orientation and gender identity. | |||
| 2 | Race, religion & royalty (3R issues) | Publications containing narratives, statements, or depictions that may incite hostility, tension, or conflict related to race, religion, or royalty (3R) in Malaysia. These materials may challenge social harmony or involve sensitive issues affecting inter-ethnic relations, religious respect, or the constitutional monarchy. | Ethnic incitement | Publications that contain derogatory, inflammatory, or hostile narratives targeting specific ethnic groups, or that encourage discrimination, hatred, or violence between communities. |
| Insults to religion | Publications that contain content perceived as insulting, mocking, or degrading religious beliefs, figures, scriptures, or institutions. These materials may provoke religious sensitivities or challenge established religious doctrines in a way considered offensive. | |||
| Insults to royalty | Publications containing content perceived as insulting, mocking, or degrading the Malaysian monarchy or members of royal institutions. This includes narratives that question the legitimacy, authority, dignity, or role of the royal institution in a manner considered offensive or disrespectful. | |||
| 3 | Religious doctrinal deviance | Publications associated with religious teachings or interpretations considered deviant, unorthodox, or contrary to mainstream Sunni Islamic doctrine as recognised by Malaysian religious authorities. | Al-Arqam | Publications promoting, defending, or documenting the teachings, ideology, leadership, or activities of the Al-Arqam movement, including materials associated with its founder or organisational structure. |
| Syiah | Publications advocating or explaining Shi’a Islamic theology, jurisprudence, or religious practices, particularly where presented as an alternative to Sunni doctrine dominant in Malaysia. | |||
| Ahmadiyyah | Publications promoting or explaining the beliefs and teachings of the Ahmadiyyah movement, including materials related to its founder, theological interpretations, or organisational structure. | |||
| Others | Publications associated with other religious movements or teachings classified as deviant by Malaysian religious authorities but not belonging to the Al-Arqam, Shi’a, or Ahmadiyyah traditions, and Christian proselytisation. | |||
| 4 | Obscene / immoral publications | Publications containing sexually explicit, obscene, or morally offensive material, including depictions or narratives that violate public decency standards. | Erotic / immoral content | Publications featuring sexual themes, suggestive imagery, drug glorification, or narratives intended to stimulate sexual interest, but not necessarily containing explicit graphic sexual acts. |
| Pornography | Publications containing explicit depictions of sexual acts, nudity, or graphic sexual imagery intended primarily for sexual arousal. | |||
| 5 | General / unidentified | Publications where the reason for prohibition is based on multiple overlapping grounds, making precise classification difficult or unclear and other administrative reasons. | Administrative / unclear rationale | Publications where the official prohibition notice does not clearly specify the reason, or where available information is insufficient to classify the content into other clusters. |
Codebook · Research team
The compilation, cleaning, classification and analysis behind this record — and the people accountable for each part of it.
Contact
Everything behind this site — the 3,212 records, the scripts that build them, the codebook and the site itself, is published in the open repository below. The classification is a work in progress, so corrections, additions and challenges to it are the most useful thing you can send.
The fastest route is the suggest an edit form under the data table. Tick any number of rows and the form carries their current field values into a pre-filled GitHub issue for you — no account setup beyond a GitHub login, and nothing is sent from this page. You can also name a publication the directory is missing entirely.
Please cite a source. A change traceable to the Warta Kerajaan (Federal Gazette) notice can be verified quickly; one without a source takes far longer.
For the website rather than the data — a chart that misreads, a broken filter, an accessibility problem, or something you wish the explorer could do — open a feature request.
Clone or fork the repository and the whole dataset comes with it. Re-run the analysis, check our figures against the gazette, build something else on top of it, or send a pull request. If you publish anything using it, credit INITIATE.MY and link back so readers can check the record for themselves — that is all CC BY 4.0 asks of you.
Licence
INITIATE.MY’s work on this project is licensed CC BY 4.0. That covers the compilation and cleaning of the dataset, the research taxonomies and classifications, the codebook, and the text and code of this site. You may share and adapt any of it, including commercially, as long as you credit INITIATE.MY, link to the licence, and say if you made changes.
Suggested credit: Database of Prohibited Publications, INITIATE.MY, CC BY 4.0, with a link back to this site. The full terms, and exactly which files they cover, are in LICENSE in the repository.
The licence covers INITIATE.MY’s own work, not the underlying Senarai Perintah Larangan records published by the Ministry of Home Affairs. Those are government works that INITIATE.MY compiled but did not create, and their copyright status under Malaysian law is not something this project can settle on the ministry’s behalf.
The publication cover images shown on this site are reproduced for identification and commentary. They remain the property of their respective rights holders and are not covered by the licence either.
Repository
github.com/dekolab/db4-websiteThe repository holds the finalised dataset and the script that generates it, the codebook documents, and the full source of this site. Issues and pull requests are open to anyone.
For anything that does not fit an issue — press and research enquiries, collaboration, or a question about the methodology. If you are writing about a specific record, include its title and year exactly as they appear in the Data tab.