By Helen Ang
_____________________________
GMI president Syed Ibrahim Syed Noh hazarded possibly up to 2,000 people were at the ISA candlelight vigil outside the Kamunting detention camp. He told me that as speaker, he was standing on a chair and thus had a high vantage point but added it would be a safe bet to say 1000-plus attended.
I’m 5’ 2” and being short couldn’t peer over people’s heads to gauge the crowd size … but this is only my excuse for an inability to count beyond 20 – the number of my fingers and toes.
However, I do remember years ago when I was an accredited journalist, I’d once covered an Umno-affiliated function in Kota Bharu. I asked a police spokesman how many turned up and like any other MSM-er, dutifully regurgitated his estimate. That’s how Malaysian reporters are taught and that’s local editorial practice – always quote figures of authority.
Delineated above are options, (a) credit the event organizer, (b) use own eyes, or (c) employ protocol journalism. That MSM invariably opts for the last resort is evident … their track record on the Bersih and Hindraf rallies indicts them.
And they have not changed. Consider this headline, “Police: Do not take part in candlelight vigil at Kamunting”. This article is today’s second most popular link in theSun Online. It reported the Taiping district police chief saying, “We will act against those who attend the vigil.” The paper also conveyed his warning that FRU will be there “to prevent anyone from attending the vigil”.
Hakam president Malik Imtiaz was on the phone with Haris (at the event as Bar Council observer last night), and told ‘nothing untoward’ happened. Imtiaz has noted before that when the Home Minister asserts the continued need for ISA, he is “defending a means of fear-mongering as lethal as it is a means of suppression”. It is this psychology of fear that keeps Malaysians in check.
How many were deterred from showing their support for the abolishment of ISA because MSM colluded with the powers-that-be in propagating scare tactics? With the widespread dissatisfaction now over the fuel hike, has it again become necessary to intimidate people from participating in public rallies?
Does police reasoning hold water: if the ISA vigil is approved, it “can lead to rioting if not controlled”? I failed to see the faces of rioters-in-waiting at the gathering, among who were some elderly, pudgy folks. I do not suspect a latent streak of violence in those holding candles, among who were some young teenagers and women in purdah.
If anything, it was the government’s riot squad who demonstrated their streak of violence at the recent BMC fracas, where more than 20 of them ganged up to beat an unarmed youth, after dragging him out from his car.
I’m also appalled our media should parrot the official line that public expression against ISA might perhaps be allowed if “held in a hall or field without disturbing anyone”. Why does MSM foster this sort of government-say-so as if it were the accepted way to think? Such a framing only conditions Malaysians to steer clear of any civic involvement.
If one who does not wish to disturb or be disturbed, then do like the rich and lock ourselves in gated communities. But behind the Kamunting wall is incarcerated the rakyat’s representative for Kota Alam Shah – state assemblyman M. Manoharan – a concern MSM has helpfully kept under wraps.
One of the wives of the ISA detainees asked to take a picture with Sg Siput MP Dr D. Jeyakumar who was present at the vigil.
Dr Kumar said all the Pakatan in Parliament support the repeal of ISA but does not imagine that BN reps would be willing to join a parliamentary caucus. In other words, don’t expect them to break ranks defying the party whip. So we have forces of change emerging, and we have the same old stagnancy – eddies of opposing currents.
Last night it drizzled in Kamunting, a small town in Perak. A week ago, it was a sunny morning at Dataran Merdeka in the heart of the capital, and traffic was clear too. Yet how many from the press corps (a profession in whose pens Malaysia reposes the trust to report for truth, justice and the BN way) bothered to turn up for Media Freedom Walk?
Press reform? Or Repress reform?
The People's Parliament 
Samuel Goh Kim Eng
June 8, 2008
What IS A Great Wrong?
Let’s try to be really civilised
Without being heavily criticised
For wrong strong steps being exercised
In getting political opponents exorcised
(C) Samuel Goh Kim Eng – 080608
http://MotivationInMotion.blogspot.com
Sun. 8th June 2008.
Nanda
June 9, 2008
Head under water, and they tell me, to breathe easy for awhile.
Breathing gets harder, even I know that.
Sara Bareilles
Paul Warren
June 9, 2008
But then again you oughtto sometimes feel sorry for MSM too. Just go back to the Star’s report on the 24th January of the thaipusam festival this year. Headlines was something like big hike in attendence. Then when you start reading its a hike from the usual 1000 to 100,000 at the temple in Port Klang. Then about another hike in numbers in another temple in Klang and similar stories of other temples elsewhere. Then in the third or fourth paragraph it was on attendance at Batu Caves.
You see, they syurely could not call Samy Velu a liar in his face. At the same time they felt beholden to him and his ilk to not contradict him. At the same time for them to commit themsleves to a number, any number at all would have been suicidal I suppose. So they confined themselves to quoting what Samy Velu said. Suddenly The Star could not count and Samy had given them a way out. They quoted him verbatim. And Of course he had said that the Batu Caves attendance was soemthing like 1.3 million or whatever. Nobody dared say that it was something more like only 500,000 or less maybe. That people could actually drive and park their cars within the temple grounds. That most stall owners could not sell their stuff and the NGO that gave out free food had food for over 20,000 people remaining not consumed. But never mind that. They preferred the lie and they saw to their peril what it would cost them.
su
June 9, 2008
About the Walk for media freedom, I was disappointed that there weren’t more “media people” there, especially editors of newspapers. I personally wasn’t there (overseas), but I would have thought that since such an event would be in their favour, they would have turned up in herds. I guess I thought wrong.
It’s the same with the memorandum that is currently waiting for endorsement at http://benar.org/memo/
So far only 99 people have endorsed it. And I don’t think I would be very wrong in guessing that of that 99, probably only a handful are journalists or editors. It almost feels like it’s the people who care more about their job ethics than they do themselves. There has got to be more than 99 journalists, editors, news reporters and media people in Malaysia.
Syed Hamid Albar has been reported as saying that the ISA is still needed in Malaysia to “keep racial riots at bay”. To me, there is no such thing. The ISA is only there to “scare” people. We go “Don’t do that, nanti ISA tangkap”, or “ISA-lah, don’t say anything about it.”
There are more than enough laws in Malaysia that would put “terrorists” under detention. We don’t need the ISA.