Three supporters of the Save Our School (SOS) committee of SRJK Damansara were arrested during the new year's countdown revelry at Dataran Merdeka for distributing leaflets to the public.

The three, Kampung Damansara Baru villagers Wong Yau King and Saw Chin Cai and Malaysia Youth and Students Democratic Movement committee member Ng Chong Soon, were among 50 SOS members and supporters who turned up at the new year countdown which was also graced by Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi and his senior ministers.

The group, wearing 'SOS Damansara' T-shirts, distributed leaflets to the crowd highlighting the recent incident in which they claimed the authority had attempted to turn the school into a warehouse .

Police officers on duty at the function asked the group to stop distributing the leaflets and disperse after observing them for about 20 minutes.

They said the group did not have a permit to carry out their activities that night and that the trilingual leaflets contained "racially sensitive" elements.

No appropriate forum

According to the SOS members, the police also said that there is no necessity to turn the closure of the school into an issue that night as it was not the appropriate forum to do so.

At one point, the police threatened to arrest all wearing the SOS committee's T-shirts if they insisted on staying at the Dataran Merdeka.

When they were dispersing, the police arrested the two villagers and Ng, who was taking pictures of the incident. No clear reason was cited for the arrests.

The trio were then brought back to the Dang Wangi district police station and held there for about four hours.

They were finally released at about 4am on police bail and requested to report back to the station on Jan 8.

SOS publicity chief Chong Pai Chee when contacted criticised the arrests as a violation of human rights.

She said that when the police threatened to arrest all the SOS supporters on Wednesday night, they did not give a reason why they were doing so.

"Isn't this a blatant abuse of power by the police?", she posed.

Chong explained that the SOS group gathered at Dataran Merdeka to celebrate the new year together with other Malaysians and at the same time took the opportunity to distribute leaflets.

Turn up at old school

On a different matter, Chong urged the public to turn up at the original school during the first day of the new school year next Monday as a sign of support for the school.

Five new Standard One students had registered with the Damansara school.

The Damansara school located at Kampung Damansara Baru was ordered to close suddenly by the Education Ministry in 2001 as the ministry claimed that it "no longer provided a conducive learning environment".

Its 1,430 pupils were told to relocate temporarily to another school while a new building in Tropicana, located several kilometres away, was built and completed in time for the 2002 school term.