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Some 30,000 demonstrators massed at the landmark Merdeka (Freedom) Square, led by opposition leaders. (Reuters) |
KUALA LUMPUR — Malaysian police unleashed tear gas and water cannons on protesters Saturday, November 10, as tens of thousands defied a government ban and rallied in the capital to call for fair and clean elections expected to be called early next year.
"We want free and fair elections and clearly Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi and his cabinet are complicit to the crime of cheating Malaysians from having free and fair elections," dissident former deputy premier Anwar Ibrahim told journalists, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).
Anwar, whose sodomy conviction has been overturned but the corruption verdict stands, barring him from standing for public office until April 2008, out his slogan of "Reformasi" or "Reform" and thanked the crowd for coming.
Some 30,000 demonstrators massed at the landmark Merdeka (Freedom) Square, led by opposition leaders as they faced off against hundreds of riot police.
The protesters were chiefly teenagers wearing yellow T-shirts emblazoned with the slogan "Bersih", or "Clean" in Malay.
They chanted "Allahu Akbar" (God is greatest) and "Reformasi", a reform demand that was the chant of 1998 opposition protests, while waving banners reading "Save Malaysia" and "Election Commission, stop your tricks."
Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi had vowed to suppress the demonstration.
"They are challenging the patience of the people who want the country to be peaceful and stable," he said.
Police detained about a dozen protesters and effectively shut down the city centre, using barricades on main roads to halt cars and turn away protesters, witnesses said.
The rally was organized by Bersih, a loose coalition of 26 opposition parties and non-government groups that is pushing for reforms to the electoral process it says favors Abdullah's ruling coalition.
Royal Petition
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| "We want free and fair elections," said Anwar. (Reuters) |
The demonstrators converged on the palace of Malaysia's king, where opposition leaders handed a list of electoral reform demands to a royal representative.
"Now we have no option but to appeal to his majesty," Anwar said after he and several opposition colleagues, including Hadi Awang of the Parti Islam-se Malaysia and Lim
Kit Siang of the Democratic Action Party, submitted their list.
"The Malaysian public must be allowed to express their opinions and views," added parliamentary opposition leader Lim Kit Siang said at the palace gates.
"It is not fair for the government not to issue a permit for this rally to take place as it is only the voice of the people being expressed here," he said.
New York-based Human Rights Watch slammed the government's stance on the mass rally and urged it to support free speech as the nation heads towards elections.
"If Malaysia wants to count itself a democracy, it can begin by upholding constitutional guarantees of free speech and assembly. The way the system works now, only the ruling coalition can get its messages out," it said.
Protests are rare in Malaysia, and the last major rallies were seen in 1998 during the "Reformasi" movement that erupted after Anwar's sacking.
Incumbent premier Abdullah won a record victory in a 2004 election, and is widely expected to call snap polls in early 2008.
Two people were seriously injured in September when police opened fire to disperse rioters at a Bersih rally in the northeastern state of Terengganu.
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