Prominent activist Ambiga Sreenevasan will oversee a fund to assist the families of the 13 people who are serving a 10-month jail sentence for demonstrating against the 2009 Perak coup.

 

The Friends of Perak 13 fund seeks to provide each family RM2,000 per month throughout the jail term, given that most jailed are the breadwinners in the family.

 

Bersih 2.0 chairperson Maria Chin Abdullah and Penang Institute fellow Toh Kin Woon will also be overseeing the fund.

 

A Facebook page has also been set up to attract donors to the fund, which was proposed yesterday by NGO Engage’s chairperson Thomas Fann.

 

"The goal is to raise enough donations to give RM2,000 per month for each of the affected families by getting 520 fellow Malaysians to pledge RM50 each month for 10 months, raising a total of RM260,000,” Fann said in a statement.

 

The aid will be disbursed to the families from April 2015 till January 2016, he said.

 

Fann said any surplus from the fund will be carried over to set up another trust, dubbed the Freedom Fund.

 

The Freedom Fund will provide financial assistance to anyone who has been jailed, fined, sacked, or had privileges withdrawn for participating in a rally.

Contributions may be made to Engage Network via Maybank account number 501271441377.

 

The Perak 13 were jailed on Wednesday after failing in their appeal to the Court of Appeal, which upheld their conviction but reduced their sentence from two years to ten months.

 

They were also fined RM5,000 each.

Perak fiasco lives on

 

In February 2009 they took part in a demonstration to block BN’s Zambry Abdul Kadir from swearing in as menteri besar.

 

BN took over the state government after then Perak’s Sultan Azlan Shah refused PAS MB Nizar Jamaluddin’s request to dissolve the House after two PKR and a DAP rep quit their parties to become BN-friendly Independent reps.

 

The late Sultan Azlan cited the Perak constitution to say that based on his discretion, Nizar no longer enjoyed the confidence of the House following the defections.

 

Nizar took the matter to court and in February 2010, the Federal Court ruled that Zambry was the lawful MB.

 

Zambry is now in his second term as MB after BN won Perak in the 2013 general election.