By Murray Hunter

BANGKOK, Thailand:A whistleblower from within the Ministry of Health (MOH/KKM) has outlined the workings of a private influencing and censorship network, set up and controlled by the former Director General of the MOH Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah. This operation exists outside of government.

The network dubbed ‘Operation Mermaid’ by the informant was developed from the existing MOH anti-misinformation initiative, and extended far beyond the shores of Malaysia. The network is still operating after Dr Noor Hisham retired. Currently, officers within the MOH are trying to take control and dismantle it.

Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah became a daily figure on national TV, after the former health minister Adham Baba made a number of public gaffs. Noor Hisham very quickly gained the trust of the Malaysian public, and was even named one of the three top doctors in the world fighting Covid-19, alongside Dr Fauci of the United States and New Zealand’s Director General of Health Ashley Bloomfield, by China’s CGTN.

Malaysians were very proud of their Dr Noor Hisham, who was also chairman of the World Health Organization (WHO) Standing Committee on Health Emergency Prevention, Preparedness and Response (SCHEPRR). Noor Hisham became a personality, with the MOH Facebook page predominantly projecting him with pictures of his national TV briefings and visits to clinics and hospitals around the country.

MOH anti-misinformation operations

During the emergency, the Malaysian government issued a decree outside the parliamentary system to tackle ‘fake news’ and ‘mis-information’ related to Covid-19. The ordinance made it an offence to publish or reproduce ‘wholly or partly false’ content related to the pandemic. The MOH poorly defined and politicized the term ‘fake news’, very much following the lead of the US Centre for Disease Control (CDC), Dr Fauci, and the WHO. Basically, anything the MOH didn’t agree with was attacked, taken down, or the author(s) deplatformed from social media. Time has shown that many issues and facts then deemed to be ‘fake news’ have proven to be correct as new research comes to light within the public domain.

Noor Hisham went even further and was reported as saying that the media must play an important role in steering the MOH narrative towards Malaysians. This was at a time when there was some vaccine hesitancy in the community.

Turning ‘misinformation operations’ into a ‘deep state’ like apparatus

Between 2020-2022, Noor Hisham had unprecedented power within the civil service and government. The political situation was unstable with the Sheraton Putsch in February 2020, where the country had two different prime ministers within two years. Noor Hisham wanted to go much further than posting what the MOH claimed was ‘false’ from WhatsApp and Facebook groups, on the MOH website, and stamping these postings as Palsu (false).

Noor Hisham needed a clandestine network that would:

·Enhance his stature to the public,

·Quash any dissenting comments or unfavourable information, and

·Maintain the MOH narratives he wanted to push.

Pursuing ‘fake news’ was the overt objective, but much of what it did eroded free speech, undermined the integrity of the media, and was used to attack ‘enemies’. This became what many call ‘Operation Mermaid’.

This clandestine organization was primarily funded by big pharma to the amount of RM 11-12 million, which conducted operations at a number of levels.

A cyber-ops team was developed along a number of levels.

Influencers

At the top, a number of influencers such as Dr Musa Nordin and Dr Adrian Wong write adversarial rebuttals against those who question official narratives. They themselves use untruths through the MOH friendly media to discredit those who question MOH narratives. Other influencers post videos on social media debunking arguments against questions raised about vaccines and treatments.

There are a number of organizations set up with social media accounts that echo the narratives of the MOH. These include Public Health Malaysia, PQ Community, Medtweetmy, and Medical Mythbusters Malaysia. There were also a number of individual influencers like Mohd Farhan Sharafuddin (Baang Farhan) who pushed the MOH narrative on social media.

Cultivation of journalists and editors in the press

The apparatus reached out to reporters, journalists, and editors within the press to push particular narratives, and suppress any information that disagrees with the official line. This includes the mainstream TV, newspapers, news portals, as well as the alternative news portals. Many have become little more than government propaganda outlets, as was clearly seen during the state election campaign, earlier this month.

Hackers, cybertroopers, and troll farms

There is an extensive and elaborate network of hackers, cybertroopers and troll farms. Hundreds of paid trolls are given daily instructions of who and what to attack. For example, a highly critical article in the Asia Sentinel about Noor Hisham, back in 2020 was spammed with over 11,000 comments attacking the article, which have since been cleaned off the Asia Sentinel site. The Malaysianist came out and claimed Malaysians rushed out to defend Noor Hisham.

Hackers could take over the administration of social media accounts. They could undertake attacks on Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram posts, and lodge hundreds of complaints against any account to get its suspension from the platform.

Local troll farms pay people RM1,500-2,000 per month to search social media for criticism of Noor Hisham, Big Pharma, and MOH narratives, where they would make comments or copy and paste comments on posts.

Covert operatives within social media offices

The operation has infiltrated the offices of all social media platforms as well. Employees withing the major social media companies including Facebook (Meta), office in Singapore, Google, office in Kuala Lumpur, and Twitter (X), office in Singapore work ‘freelance’ for the highest bidders. Through payment arrangements, algorithms of target account reaches are dialled up or down. Operation Mermaid has paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to regulate, restrict, and even eliminate target accounts over the pandemic period. This goes on without the direct knowledge of upper management of the social media platforms.

Operation Mermaid completely distorted the truth. Much of this has been illegal. It downplayed the risks of taking Covid-19 vaccines, to the extent Malaysians were deprived of giving informed consent due to the propaganda disseminated by Operation Mermaid. As a consequence, Operation Mermaid has indirectly contributed to the premature deaths of many.

Some within the MOH are concerned that Operation Mermaid, funded outside the government, continues unabated today. Sources inform the writer there are attempts to dismantle the more sinister aspects of the operation, and bring the rest under the direct control of the ministry. This may mean that a purge may need to occur within the MOH to erase those privy and engaged in this sinister project.