Police turned on tens of thousands of protesters demonstrating for electoral reform in Malaysia on Saturday. It might not help the government’s image ahead of elections.
Tens of thousands of yellow and green-clad protestors gathered in Kuala Lumpur were turned on by police firing water cannon and tear gas Saturday as protests seeking reforms of Malaysia’s electoral system turned ugly.
The demonstrators, part of the latest Bersih (clean) rally, were driven back from Independence Square after they pushed through barricades sealing off the plaza. Almost 400 demonstrators were subsequently arrested by police, including some seen being dragged away holding bloodied faces and bruised limbs.
Moments after Malaysian opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim addressed the crowd at the frontline, several protestors at the barricades suddenly shouted “back, back,” before pushing through the police lines around the Dataran Merdeka, or Independence Square, the iconic downtown location where the protestors sought to hold their sit down demonstration seeking changes to how Malaysia holds elections.
Bersih is a grouping of NGOs and activists who say that Malaysia's election system is skewed in favor of the current government, a coalition that has governed Malaysia since independence from Britain in 1957. Recent electoral reforms proposed by the government don’t go far enough, say the protest leaders, who have been criticized in some quarters locally for being too close to Malaysia’s parliamentary opposition. Bersih says that anyone is free to support their electoral reform cause, including the current government.
Bersih said Friday that they expected 100,000 people to take to Kuala Lumpur’s streets, and though the eventual turnout was unclear, estimates have ranged anywhere from 30,000 to 250,000 as protestors lived up to their pledge to march from several locations in the city to Independence Square, where the organizers hoped for “goodwill from the government.” The protestors said that they had the right to gather at the square, but the government ruled otherwise, saying it offered the organizers four alternative venues, a move that Bersih in turn said came too late to be logistically feasible.
Bersih leader Ambiga Sreenevasan told media after the rally that a crowd of 250,000 was on the streets, concluding that “in that sense it (the rally) was a success.” But under a searing southeast Asian sun glinting off the high-rise skyline backdrop, Malaysia’s biggest city once more turned into a battleground, repeating the events of the July 9, 2011, Bersih rally, when the electoral reform group and its supporters last took to the streets.
This time around, though, the blame game could go both ways, with some protestors seen pushing through barricades, followed by police firing water cannon laced with chemicals and tear gas, sending the crowd running back toward a nearby mosque and train station.
In a statement released early Saturday evening, Malaysian Home Affairs Minister Hishamuddin Hussein praised police and put the blame squarely on protestors. “A group of protesters tried to provoke a violent confrontation with the police,” he said.
“I’m not surprised they released the gas,” said Bert Chen, one of the thousands of protestors, speaking after leaving the protest area. Raising his right arm to show a grazed elbow, he said: “I fell, and lost my shoes…There was so much confusion, and people were running in several directions.”
Nodding toward the coils of razor wire running along the edge of the Independence Square, protestor Norariani Harris said “people have the right to sit there peacefully,” referring to the square. “But this wire is like something inhuman.”
Last July, more than 1,600 people were arrested, including opposition leaders. That crackdown prompted a decline in the government's popularity, though Prime Minister Najib Razak recently recovered some lost ground in opinion polls, partly on the back of cash handouts to households taking home less than RM3,000 a month.
Last year’s loss of face also seemingly prompted a reform drive starting in September 2011, with changes proposed to Malaysia's print media regime, to draconian-sounding laws allowing detention without trial, and through new laws allowing peaceful protests.
Photo Credit: Simon Roughneen
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SinbadSailor
The report actually says that the Sec-General of UMNO says Malaysians do not deserve democracy, do not have the maturiaty for freedom and that too much freedom in Indonesia is the downfall of that nations-these were statements made to the international panel.
MANINSTREET
HOW IS UMNO GOING TO WIN?
An important point this report fails to raise is that the ruling UMNO Party has used the massive inflow of foreign “instant voters” to stack up its electoral base. It explain why UMNO chose to largely ignore Bersih3 compared to the hysteria it put out against Bersih2.
A comment by a readers says about what is at stake:
NOT JUST HIGH STAKES FOR BERSIH BUT OUR FUTURE IS AT STAKE!
I mentioned in a previous comment that UMNO was a traitor to the nation and the Malays.
The attached article says that foreigners may well have deciding vote in “our” national affairs not you or any citizen born and bred in the country. It seems that some points scoring against UMNO need to be emphasized by Bersih and the Opposition.
UMNO has sacrificed the national interest for its own selfish grasp on power by importing foreign instant voters to stack up its numbers. This is not an unusual practice or aspect of the “parliamentary democracy” system which has become corrupted and rampant since 1969 when UMNO lost at the polls and Najib’s father launched the May 13 massacre.
But while UMNO is only wanting to secure its electoral base we must examine more closely the long term consequences of this act.
HIGH STAKES TO BE DETERMINED BY ILLEGAL MIGRANT VOTERS-
How has UMNO betrayed the people?
It is highly treasonable of UMNO to allow uncontrolled mass migration of foreigners into the country and pose a danger to its military political economic and social security wellbeing. This is not an alarmist view as it has already happened politically.
(1) Threat to national security in the sense that this is a “fifth column” from Indonesia, Bangladesh and other Muslim countries. (This is also to reinforce UMNO’s Malay supremacist apartheid system institutionalized after 1969)
The total Malayan population with that of the Sabah Sarawak colonies is around 28 million. Someone claimed 11 million of these are illegal migrants.
In any conflict with say Indonesia which is not always friendly many of these 11 million migrants can be mobilized to support its cause. Who knows with such easy access – Indonesia could easily infiltrate its military personnel into the country?
One of the foundation arguments for the creation of Malaysia was it would give joint military security to the people of Malaya and Sabah and Sarawak. This excuse has been fulfilled by UMNO itself by allowing the “peaceful invasion” of the Indonesians and other foreigners. Hence it has betrayed its own rationale for creating Malaysia…
(2) Upsetting the federal and state electoral systems. The estimated 11 million foreigner has become a force strong enough to gerrymander the electoral system and is a short term guarantee for UMNO to stay in power. In the long term they may rise to become the main force in control of the country. Nothing is far fetch or alarmist. Forget about them doing jobs we don’t want but think of the national security.
(3) The threat to economic stability in that local people have to compete with foreigners for limited jobs. Some of us may have an ideological soft spot for “workers”. But please be real, these workers are political economic instrument of the ruling class and must be expelled. Also we should solve our own economic issues and not import foreign solutions. Why not pay workers better so they feel like working at home? Is not this a better solution? Why pander to the creation of a semi slave society with badly paid foreign workers?
(4) A threat to the existing social order with the creation of a massive economically “poor” group of people/workers. Eyesore slums are already springing up posing a health and social burden on the system which hardly serves the citizens. At the heart of this is the human exploitation which we ourselves should oppose in principle – so we should not allow mass migration of workers into the country. It must be controlled.
(5) A threat to the already bankrupt education health and transport and other public systems in increase demands by foreign non-taxpayers!
(6) Increase in population pressure. UMNO next move will be to allow the migrants to bring in their families and swell the population figures artificially even more and the consequence pressure on the local public systems. We the population figures treble in a short space of time as in Sabah where foreigners outnumber locals.
Anand
The issue is not of the gathering turn ing slightly into rowdy,but one has to look at true intention of the gatherers. They want reform in the electoral system. The EC chairman admitted that he is a Pro-UMNO supporter. The Bersih 3.0 is only asking 8 reforms to taken into consideration, but the UMNO government refuse to adhere to the request quoting opposition had fair chance in the last election.
We want changes. We had enough of 55 years of BN governance…
They had pilfered the country enough. We have changed from what was used to be Tiger economy to soon to be a third world country.
Ricardo Lane
A day of pride and prejudice that is to be remembered.. (28/4}. We have a government that are not accustomed to tolerance of a democratic process where people are fighting for space to make their presence felt by sit in protest. The sit in protest has become ugly with strong police action against the people who only ask for clean and fair election. Of late, there have been numerous complaints over thousands of voters as allegedly reported that illegal immigrants were given temporary I/C in blue to register as voters for exchange of votes as well as 80,000 new voters with a few thousand addresses based in Selangor.Election Commission should once and for all release the electoral roll to confirm whether the accusations are genuine. The postal votes and increase of voters in Selangor that put the rakyat in suspense. It looks the wind is blowing to the opposition if there is no hanky panky using dirty hands to manipulate the electoral roll.
Eric Mudasi
By Antares M
The Barisan Nasional government (which has held power for almost 55 years) has painted itself into a tight spot. If it accedes to the popular demand for electoral reforms, it stands a good chance of becoming the Opposition – an unthinkable prospect for many of the robber barons who would then be vulnerable to prosecution for past misdeeds ranging from blatant, massive corruption and criminal breach of trust to cold-blooded, pre-meditated murder. Malaysia is at a political crossroads and a great awakening has occurred, especially among the younger generation with internet access who no longer depend on government-controlled media to stay abreast of events. At this juncture, the Barisan Nasional can only wield power at gunpoint, since its costly propaganda appears to have failed miserably. Nobody can point a gun at an entire nation for long. Sooner or later, fatigue will set in – and the consequences – for both the robber barons in Barisan Nasional and for the people as a whole – will be far more dire. Estimates of the turnout at Saturday’s Bersih 3.0 rally range from the official police figure of 25,000 to more than 100,000 (people were scattered over a wide area in many groups. Some arrived as others left, especially those who had camped out on the streets since the night before – so no exact figures are possible. In any case, there was absolutely no justification for barricading Kuala Lumpur’s iconic Dataran Merdeka (Independence Square) from the public – thereby creating unnecessary tension and provoking brutal police action against defenceless crowds. Indeed, the question uppermost in everybody’s mind is: can’t the Barisan Nasional see that by rejecting so strenuously the entirely reasonable demands of Bersih 3.0, it is indirectly acknowledging its own illegitimacy as an elected government?