The BERSIH Rally - The Reconstruction of Reality and the Second Phase of Collective Movement

I like this open letter to Badawi written by fiction writer Beth Yahp, entitled Malaysian Narratives, dated Monday, 12 November 2007, in The Other Malaysia. She too writes about the absence of press freedom and the discrepancies between newspaper reports and the experiences of protesters.

An exerpt:

Like most of your state controlled media, Prime Minister Abdullah, yesterday’s Sunday Star reported only the IGP’s version of Saturday’s events. Journalism 101 requires a range of eyewitnesses to describe an event objectively yet only your Ministers were allowed airtime; only aggrieved shopkeepers were interviewed and photos of traffic jams published, to support our Deputy PM’s lament that the march only served to disrupt traffic, create loss of business and “mar the general perception others have of our society”.

The police were depicted as being “forced” to use their batons, boots, shields, helmets, trucks, water cannons and helicopters against unarmed men, women and children (New Sunday Times, November 11, 2007).

This reconstruction of reality is one that I, and 40,000 other marchers, do not recognise. In spite of what we saw and experienced, we are told that we were only 4000 in number and that 245 of us were detained, as opposed to the 24 I later saw released at IPPK (Police Contingent Headquarters), Kuala Lumpur. It was later reported in the NST (12 November 2007) that the majority of detentions were pre-emptive, taking place outside Kuala Lumpur the day before. The reasons for arrest included being in possession of yellow t-shirts and bandanas.

Farish Noor has also written about the BERSIH Rally in an article entitled A Wake-Up Call for the Government: Malaysians Want Their Country Back also posted on The Other Malaysia.

He says:

For a nation that has always been cast in a passive light as docile and apathetic, Malaysians defied their own stereotype by coming out in huge numbers and braving the rain from above and the tear gas and batons on the ground. Contrary to the scare-mongering campaign of the government, the rally proved to be ordered and peaceful. What does this say about Malaysia today and where the country is heading?

He ends his piece commenting:

There is no telling how the Malaysian government and the UMNO elites will react to this clear demonstration of public disquiet in the once-sleepy streets of Kuala Lumpur. But what is clear is that Malaysia at least is no longer the kingdom of the blind that it was once made out to be.

I hope you are right, Farish.

I also hope that those who did not participate in the rally will speak to their family and friends who did, to get their personal accounts of what happened. They need to hear the stories of everyday Malaysians about why they demonstrated peacefully. I hope some truth pierces through the song-and-dance that the mainstream media is conjuring.

As it was with the BERSIH rally, it is likely to be the voices of ordinary people - through blogs, websites, letters to the independent media, personal phone calls and casual conversations - that share the truth of what happened, and which call, again, for reform: the reform of mainstream media in addition to the reform of the electoral system.

This is the second phase of our most recent collective movement for justice, truth and fairness in Malaysia. The mobilization of Malaysians did not end at the gates of the Istana that rainy Saturday afternoon.

It is where it began again.