Anti-rape campaigners seeking to hold a public awareness rally this weekend at the Mid Valley Exhibition Hall in Kuala Lumpur suffered another blow today after the venue owners cancelled their booking and returned their down payment.

The event coordinator for the All Women's Action Society (Awam) Maria Abdullah said the event has to be put off to a later date due to the last-minute cancellation for the event scheduled to take place tomorrow.

"We regret to inform you that we have to postpone the above event as the Mid-Valley Exhibition Centre has cancelled our booking and returned our payment. We sincerely apologise for all inconvenience but this reflects the powers of the authorities and their intolerance for freedom of expression and assembly," she said in a statement.

The latest development is the second setback faced by Awam over its plans to hold a public anti-rape rally, themed 'Citizens Against Rape: Make Public Places Safe - Towards a Violence-Free Community', to protest the rising number of sex crimes in the country recently highlighted by the kidnap and murder of Canny Ong.

Originally, Awam had planned to organise an anti-rape march along Jalan Maarof from the Bangsar Shopping Complex to Jalan Telawi for symbolic reasons as Canny Ong was kidnapped from the carpark of the building on June 13.

Her charred body was discovered four days later off Old Klang Road.

'Chicken-and-egg'

Met later at a memorial service for Canny Ong, Awam president Dr Mary Cardosa said she felt "very disappointed and upset" at the authorities' moves to prevent the anti-rape rally from taking place.

"We were faced with a chicken-and-egg situation. The hall owners would not confirm our booking until the police gave us a permit. The police, on the other hand, refused to give us a permit until we have a confirmed venue.

"We could not convince either side to take the first move. So we decided to postpone the event," she explained.

The activist said that the police should have offer assistance to organisers to ensure public safety and security rather than set up obstacles for the organisers.

"If the police are concerned about keeping order, they should be there to help us with security. That is the whole purpose of the permit. We followed every rule but even then we are unable to hold the rally," she added.

Violation of rights

Cardosa said the authorities' concern for "public security" is misplaced as it is unlikely for a rally to oppose violence against women to get out of hand.

"We cannot see what possible threat we can pose. This is a rally against rape and not a political rally. All we wanted to do was to give a space for people to express themselves," she said.

Cardosa said Home Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi should explain to the public the reasons behind the decision.

She added that a complaint would be lodged with Suhakam next week as the organisation views the refusal by the police to issue a permit as an infringement of the people's rights to gather peacefully.

The Awam president said a rally is still being planned for a future date although the time and venue for the event would be announced only after the arrangements are set.

Men must act

Earlier, Malaysian Aids Council president Marina Mahathir said to the crowd of some 80 people attending the Canny Ong memorial service that the unhappy events should be used to remind the public that much more work has to be done to address the issue of violence against women.

"In order to change this situation, to break the cycle of seeming inevitability about violence against women, both men and women must take action.

Thus far, it has only been women who have taken steps, to learn the do's and don'ts of safety, to equip themselves with self-defense skills, to lobby for better security. What have the men done?" she said during her keynote address.

Marina said society first has to stop excusing rape as being due to "uncontrollable sexual urges" or that they are perpetrated by men who are "wild beasts who cannot control themselves".

Change of attitude

She said that people should also stop perpetrating the myth that women's inner nature is to be provocative to men.

She referred to rape and murder cases in the past which have provoked intense public outrage, such as that of Ang May Hong, Audrey Melissa Bathinathan and Noor Suzaily Mokhtar, to stress that they were assaulted for merely being female and not because they did anything to provoke their attackers.

"These women and young girls were diverse; they were young, they were older, they were Malay, Chinese, Indian, they wore tudung and they didn't. These are all the things that made them ordinary and different. But they were all women," she said.

"There has to be a change in attitude...If good men and women existed, there would not be insinuations about a victim's dress or behaviour when they are raped or murdered...There would not be expressions of puzzlement about young girls who go out with strange men, implying that they asked for it," she added.

Marina also criticised the authorities for not providing Awam with a permit to hold the anti-rape march in Bangsar.

"It seems ridiculous to me that a march to campaign for better public safety should be refused permission by the guardians of public safety themselves. Did they see it as a criticism of themselves? By right, we should all be working together for the betterment of society, not hinder one another," she said.