It has been a long time since Nirmala Devi Windgaetter could call Malaysia home. Having moved to Germany in 2000, she jokes that she has now spent more of her life there than in the country where she was born.

Yet whenever she meets fellow Malaysians overseas, conversations inevitably turn to home - how things were, how they are, and how they should be.

“It is a sign that we, overseas Malaysians, are interested in what's happening in the country. We are very interested in the policies and everything, really,” she said in an interview with Malaysiakini.

Those conversations eventually drew Nirmala into Global Bersih, a diaspora-led group established in 2011 to support electoral reform and strengthen Malaysia’s democracy.

She joined the movement after meeting its...