Identify yourselves, Dyana dares Sept 16 rally organisers
Organisers of the Himpunan Rakyat Bersatu rally should be brave enough to come forward and identify themselves to the public, challenged DAP youth exco member Dyana Sofya Mohd Daud.
Provocative posters have been pasted on walls and rumours spread on the Internet about the Sept 16 rally, but the organiser remains anonymous.
"So I ask that the organiser come out, so that we know who are the people we should get explanations from.
"Right now they are doing all this, pretending to be very brave, but when we ask, they are not even brave enough to show their face as organisers," she said at a press conference in Kuala Lumpur today.
She urged them to emulate the organisers of the Bersih 4 rally, who had identified themselves and stated their demands.
Meanwhile, DAP parliamentary leader Lim Kit Siang urged the Umno supreme council and the cabinet to take a stand against this rally, as well as another rally slated for Oct 10.
He said both rallies are seeking to provoke and incite racial hatred and tensions in Malaysia, and while the right to peaceful assembly is a fundamental liberty in the country, there should be no right to incite hatred.
“It is the basic duty and responsibility of any government to ensure that those who want to provoke or incite racial or religious hatred to create conflict, disharmony and chaos in plural Malaysia must be stopped in their tracks, and not allowed any room whatsoever to commit the heinous crimes of inciting inter-racial or inter-religious tension and conflict,” he said.
The Gelang Patah MP added that although the two rallies slated to be held in Kuala Lumpur are purported to be counter-demonstrations in response to the Bersih 4 rally for being supposedly a show of force by Chinese Malaysians, the notion that Bersih is racialised was totally baseless.
He pointed out that the objectives of the Bersih 4 rally on Aug 29 and 30 were non-racial in nature, and although Malay participation on the first day of the rally was poor, there was a marked increase on the second day of the rally.
Lim also claimed that some 80 percent of participants in the first Bersih rally in 2007 were Malays, but that did not mean the Chinese were entitled to a counter-demonstration.
“Malays who came out in support of Bersih 1, 2, 3, and 4 came out not because they were fighting for a Malay cause - just as non-Malays came out in Bersih 1, 2, 3, and 4 did not do so for a Chinese objective – but because transparency, integrity, and good governance are Malaysian causes which deserve the support of all thinking and patriotic Malaysians, regardless of race,” he argued.
'Don't taint Bukit Bintang with violence'
Also present at the press conference was Bukit Bintang MP Foong Kui Lun, who echoed Lim’s statement and urged the police to ensure that the Sept 16 rally does not take place.
“Bukit Bintang is a major tourist destination for foreign tourists in our country. Do not allow it to be tainted with violence.
“From the media statements uploaded in the internet over the past few days, this illegal assembly appears to be threatening the harmony of Malaysians,” he said.
Meanwhile, Balakong assemblyperson Eddie Ng said more provocative posters apparently promoting the rallies have been sighted in the Bandar Mahkota Cheras area yesterday, since DAP last held a press conference on the issue on the eve of the Bersih 4 rally.
He said a police report has been lodged over the issue, and urged members of the public who had seen the posters to report it to the authorities as well.
Segambut MP Lim Lip Eng said DAP would keep lodging police reports until the police take action.
The poster features a person dressed in a black Malay costume leaping in mid-air, as though about to hack another person wearing a yellow Bersih shirt with a machete in his hand.
The only text on the poster reads, “ Cina turun Bersih, sedialah bermandi darah ” (If the Chinese goes to Bersih, prepared for a bloodbath).
A copy of the police report was circulated to the press.
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