Tuesday, August 4, 2009

malaysiakini and the ISA Debate....

After the Saturday chaos in KL caused by the aggressive behaviour of the police on a peaceful demonstration by Malaysians, there are the different views on how Malaysia should tackle such matters.
From the extreme 'Arrest Pakatan top trio under ISA' in malaysiakini coming from a lawyer who probably seeks some prominent title to the more common reaction of 'Police protect gov't, not citizens' as people were even being arrested for owning/wearing "anti-ISA" tee-shirts. Since when did a fashion choice become an offence?
If you look at what happens in HongKong, you can see that even China allows more freedom of expression than Malaysia.
Over there, peaceful demonstrations are held regularly over the election reforms and the police do a really professional job to maintain law and order; allowing the demonstrators to walk along designated roads.
Over here, there are the usual road blocks that create massive traffic jams for everyone and then the usual cocktail of tear gas and water cannon.
Hopefully the authorities can learn from the HK police on how they minimise the chaos - after all they did fashion the MACC after the HK model, right?

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