Penang Watch

500 people attended the candle light vigil at Dewan Seri PinangPassing vehicles honked continuously to show support.The message is loud and clear for the ISA `operators' to get out!

The arrests of 3 citizens under ISA have attracted such objection by the public that the candle lights vigil organised last night attracted some 500 people who gathered in front of Dewan Sri Pinang. Passing vehicles honked almost non-stop to cheer the crowd on. The crowd features some NGOs as well as scores of Political party members from both sides of the fence. The presence of such a crowd proves that the arrests under such harsh law had breached the tolerance of the middle ground political sensiblity in Malaysia. Those who are responsible -only those at the very top are, will need to give a good enough justification-or else their time is up!

The police knew that they could not stop the gathering with many Yb's among them, so they tried their tried and tested tactics: give the gathering only 30 min to go on-then the gathering has to disperse. The organiser from SUARAM obliged-but most of the crowd obviously disagreed with their feet and continued to stay on the road side and urged passing vehicles to honk to show support. 

This seems to show that Penang's police are more `tolerant' than the KL police who only allowed 10 min to another candle lights vigil in front of the police HQ at Bukit Aman. But the citizens are aware that they are entitled to stay on peacefully for as long as they like, to make a point to the others. In Thailand the protestors stays on for days to make their point -and the police and army would not interfere with such civilian actions.

The civil society need to reclaim or right to peaceful assemblies by challenging the misbehaving politicised police. 

Another news: Ahmad Ismail who was expected to return via Penang Airport had not showed up-dissappointing journalists who choosed to go there instead of covering the candle lights vigil.

The ISA arrests against a journalist certainly had done some good thing to stir up the journalists fraternity in the last few days. I met some journalists chatting at mid night at Weld Quay and asked if they would report the news in case Ahmad Ismail or some one else made  another racial statement. One journalist was quick to asnwer that certainly he dare to report it- though he is not sure if his editor will agree.  

At the vigil I met USM Mass Com Dean Zaharom Naim -who was proud that his school had produced 2 ISA detainees-Teresa Kok and Tan Hoon Cheng. SOmething must have been done right by these lecturers to inspire their students-at least a fraction of them, to report the truth as they see it.