Two leaders of Malaysian voting rights group The Coalition for Free and Fair Elections (Bersih 2.0) have been arrested by police and will be remanded today, said Eric Paulsen, one of the duo’s lawyers.
Bersih 2.0 chairperson Maria Chin Abdullah and secretariat member Mandeep Singh were arrested along with another seven people, according to Suara Rakyat Malaysia (Suaram), a human rights advocacy organisation which is compiling a list of people detained.
The arrests come ahead of a mass rally planned for today.
Paulsen added that Abdullah was being held for an activity detrimental to parliamentary democracy while Singh was detained for rioting.
The two were taken to the district police headquarters in the city of Petaling Jaya, some 16km from Kuala Lumpur, earlier yesterday after a raid conducted at the Bersih office.
They have since been transferred to the Kuala Lumpur contingent police headquarters lock-up for the night.
“The investigation and arrest were not done in good faith,” Paulsen told reporters gathered at Petaling Jaya district headquarters last night.
According to Suaram, the others detained included opposition lawmaker Anthony Loke and politicians Lee Khai Meng and S Arutchelvan.
Two student leaders, including Anis Syafiqah Md Yusof who in August organised a protest calling for arrests in the 1MDB scandal, were also detained.
“These arrests are the latest in a series of crude and heavy-handed attempts to intimidate Malaysian civil society activists and other human rights defenders,” said Josef Benedict, Amnesty International’s Deputy Director for Southeast Asia and the Pacific. “They must be released immediately and unconditionally, and tomorrow’s rally must be allowed to go ahead peacefully.”
Bersih 2.0 steering committee member Jay Jay Denis said the raid was held in connection to reports that the group had received funding from the Open Society Foundations (OSF), which is linked to business tycoon George Soros.
The reports said that OSF was allegedly funding several Malaysian organisations to influence the outcome of the next general election.
Police, Denis said, seized computers, laptops, documents and mobile phones belonging to Abdullah and Singh in the raid that lasted about two hours.
Participating in the raid were also officers from the government organisation Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission, which has the role of investigating breaches of the country’s media laws.
Bersih 2.0 said in a media statement that the arrests have changed nothing and that the rally – designated Bersih 5 – will go on as planned.
“We hope that this heavy-handed action on the part of the authorities will spur Malaysians into coming down to the streets (today) not just to demand for institutional reforms but to protest injustices happening in the country,” it said.
“The rally will definitely go ahead. There is no turning back,” Denis said.
Relevant police officials could not be reached for comment.
“The rally will definitely go ahead. There is no turning back,” Denis said.
Human Rights Society chairwoman Ambiga Sreenevasan, Bersih’s former chief, said in a text message: “I think we will have a larger turnout because of them (the latest arrests).”
Relevant police officials could not be reached for comment.
The rally today calls for free and fair elections in Malaysia and for the resignation of Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak.
Bersih staged similar rallies in August 2015, one of which it said attracted half a million people, demanding institutional reforms and the prime minister’s resignation.
Najib has been at the centre of a corruption scandal since July 2015, when a Wall Street Journal report suggested that $673mn in his personal bank accounts had been siphoned off from the beleaguered 1 Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) state fund.
Najib’s administration has cracked down on the media and civil society in an attempt to silence criticism over his involvement in a money-laundering scandal at 1MDB.
Founded by Najib, who chaired its advisory board, 1MDB is the subject of investigations in at least six countries, including Switzerland, Singapore and the United States.
Lawsuits filed by the US Justice Department in July say more than $700mn of misappropriated funds from 1MDB flowed into the accounts of “Malaysian Official 1”, whom US and Malaysian officials have identified as Najib.
Najib, 63, denies wrongdoing, but last year purged critics in his government and shut down domestic investigations.
Critics have accused him of a lurch toward autocracy as he moves to contain the damaging scandal with elections due within 18 months.
Tensions have soared ahead of the rally due to threats by the leader of the “Red Shirts” rightist movement – aligned to Najib’s party – to mobilise its supporters and block Bersih from gathering.