British activist barred from Malaysian state

A former BBC journalist and sister-in-law of ex-British prime minister Gordon Brown was deported from Malaysia where a civil suit had been slapped on her after she accused a provincial chief minister of massive corruption.
Clare Rewcastle Brown, an activist journalist who runs a website and radio station fiercely critical of chief minister of the Malaysian state of Sarawak, Taib Mahmud, said she was deported to Singapore on arrival at the airport yesterday.
Brown, who this year won an award from the International Press Institute for her work, said she arrived at Sarawak's Kuching International Airport from Singapore and was issued a notice of refusal of entry by immigration authorities.

Brown said she wanted to enter the state to meet her lawyers regarding a lawsuit that had been filed against her in a High Court in Kuching, the state capital, in May.
The activist journalist, who was born in Sarawak but lives in Britain, said the suit was brought by "a transnational corporation that is on the British and European stock exchanges," and by powerful figures within Sarawak.
"I came in an attempt to defend myself in this case. But I was informed that I've been put on the blacklist and not allowed to enter Sarawak," she said in a video interview.

It was an abuse of power and the process of court to deny her entry, she said.

She accused authorities of barring her so that she could not defend herself in the case.
"The fact that I am threatened with being turned away by the Immigration shows exactly how this country is run for the benefit of the sorts of people who are trying to sue me," Brown said.
She became a journalist, joining the BBC World Service in 1983.
Switzerland-based forest-protection group the Bruno Manser Fund called on British premier David Cameron to raise the matter personally with visiting Malayian premier Najib Razak.

Sarawak chief minister Taib has dominated the state -- a vast state on Borneo island of 2.5 million people, rich jungle habitats and powerful rivers -- since 1981.