The Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) has denied the allegation that it had blocked access to articles from international news portals.

In a statement, the MCMC stressed that the allegation was not true and was meant to mislead internet users in Malaysia.

The commission said based on its investigation, the uniform resource locators (URLs) for news articles from Nikkei Asia, Yahoo News, Reuters, Al-Jazeera, The Guardian and Washington Post had been intentionally or coincidentally shortened or modified.

"Because of that, any attempt to click on the URLs would take the user to a page that shows like the articles do not exist anymore.

"MCMC's check shows that the articles still exist, can be accessed and were not erased or taken down by the news portals as alleged," the statement said.

Therefore, the MCMC urged the public to always evaluate the contents of any message they received and stop sharing news and information which had not been verified.

-- BERNAMA