Candlelight protest in Bukit Aman lasts 12 mins
The candlelight vigil outside the Bukit Aman police headquarters lasted only 12 minutes before the police ordered the crowd to disperse.
The candlelight vigil outside the Bukit Aman police headquarters lasted only 12 minutes before the police ordered the crowd to disperse.
The vigil, which took place about 100 meters from the entrance of the national police headquarters this evening, was to protest the arrest of three individuals under the draconian Internal Security Act, which allows for detention without trial.
The crowd, led by organiser Anti-ISA Movement (GMI), kicked off the vigil at 8.30pm, but they were immediately told by the police that they had only 15 minutes to hold the protest and disperse.
The protesters - numbering about 100 - proceeded to light candles and sang reformasi songs under the watchful eyes of 80 police officers, mainly from the Dang Wangi district police station, including dozens of light strike force personnel.
Ordinary citizens made the bulk of the crowd while the rest were leaders of civil society organisations such as human rights group Suaram, the National Union of Journalists, as well as opposition parties PKR, PAS and DAP.
However at 8.42pm - even before the 15-minute deadline was up - the crowd was ordered to disperse. The protesters were clearly upset by the police order.
They nevertheless complied with the order as the riot police began beating their batons against their shields in a show of force.
"We hope the people's power will remain. It is the power of the people that will triumph," said GMI secretariat member E Nalini as organisers called for the crowd to leave the area.
"It is the people's power that determines the (success of) struggles for change everywhere," she added.
Frustrated with the government
Even as the crowd of about 100 people left the venue and marched down the hill from the Bukit Aman police headquarters on Jalan Chenderawasih, more people were seen arriving and adding to the numbers of those participating in the vigil.
"Suara rakyat... suara rakyat... suara rakyat laungkan! Kita bangun... kita bangun... kita bangun dan lawan!" they sang in unison.
"I'm here in support of the demands for the release of (blogger) Raja Petra Kamaruddin and (Seputeh MP) Teresa Kok and to express dissatisfaction with their arrest and that of ( Sin Chew Daily journalist) Tan Hoon Cheng.
"I'm dissatisfied with draconian laws such as ISA," 21-year old journalism student Puteri Shezana Megat Abdul Karim (
left
) told
Malaysiakini
.
The three individuals were arrested yesterday in separate operations consisting of police teams from Bukit Aman.
"We're frustrated with a government that refuses to allow anybody to express their dissatisfaction or their demands or right to know what is happening. They're trying to pull the wool over our eyes.
"The government needs to stop treating its citizens as children. We know what we want, and this is why we're having this protest here," she added.
At one point, senior Dang Wangi police officers from the district's public order division even told Nalini and fellow organiser, Suaram activist Lee Khai Loon (
right
), to direct the protesters to snuff out their candles.
"What harm can we do with lit candles? What's the difference between walking with lit candles and walking with them unlit?" asked Lee. His impassioned entreaties fell, however, on deaf ears.
"We have our orders," said one officer, who declined to be identified.
Journalists on march
Among the journalists from the mainstream and alternative media who - dressed in black to protest Tan's ordeal - was The Edge Daily 's Pauline Puah.
"We journalists are supposed to stay apolitical. But when they detain a journalist under the ISA merely for doing her job, that's my profession they're messing with.
"That was totally unacceptable and ridiculous, and it made a laughing stock of us in front of the whole world," she said.
In reference to Home Minister Syed Hamid Albar's statement that Tan was held by the police for her own protection from certain quarters said to be angry with her report of a politician's allegedly inflamatory speech, Puah said: "That wasn't protection - that was detention!"
Echoing her statements, former New Straits Times journalist Deborah Loh said the authorities had a unusual way of ‘protecting' victims of alleged death threats: "Rather than detaining Tan for her own ‘protection', they should have detained those who uttered the offensive remarks."
Also present at the vigil was Raja Petra's wife, Marina Abdullah (
photo, centre
), who said: "All journalists should stand up and be counted in protest against what's happening. After all, it's one of your own that this happened to."
By about 9:15pm, most of the protesters had left the area.
To the remaining few who lingered with the organisers, GMI chairperson Syed Ibrahim Syed Noh said all civil society organisations and social and political activists should work towards the dismantling of such "evil" regimes as the ISA.
"We will continue to fight until the ISA is abolished!" said a defiant Syed Ibrahim, whose last words drew the evening to a close.
One freed, fate of 2 others unknown
Controversial blogger Raja Petra, 58, who has targeted government figures on his website Malaysia Today , was the first to be taken into custody at 1.10pm.
Tan, 33, a senior reporter for the Chinese-language
Sin Chew Daily,
was later
arrested
at about 8.30pm after reporting on an outburst from an Umno chieftain who called the ethnic Chinese community "squatters".
Meanwhile Kok, 43, the Selangor senior state executive councillor and Seputeh parliamentarian, was arrested at 11.18pm just outside her condominium after attending a mooncake festival at her constituency office.
Tan was released this afternoon while Kok and Raja Petra are still under police detention in an unknown location.
