[...] Tomorrow, I shall be speaking to Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim to ask him to coordinate a five-state Anti-ISA Campaign. I want to see the five Pakatan Rakyat state governments putting their money where their mouths are. About 200 people have religiously participated in Anti-ISA Candlelight Vigils every Sunday since I was detained on 12 September 2008. Even when I was released on 7 November 2008 the vigils continued and a few days ago 21 people were charged for the crime of ‘illegal assembly’. These 21 were detained at the 9 November 2008 Candlelight Vigil, two days after I was released.
Incidentally, the bail for each of the 21 was RM1,500 and ten of them did not have the money to post bail. So I arranged to pay for their bail. The RM15,000 came from the money that was collected when I was sent to the Sungai Buloh Prison for three days in 2008. My own bail on the four charges that I face comes to RM7,000; so, thus far, we have spent RM22,000. We still have a balance of RM26,000, which will be used for future cases in the event there are further arrests.
Anyway, I am of the opinion we have achieved the objective of those Candlelight Vigils and maybe we need a change of strategy to get our message through to more people. After all, if we just hold the vigils in a dark car park in front of the PJ Civic Centre, only the 200 or so participants will be informed about the issue. What about the rest of the 26 million Malaysians? They too need to be exposed to the issue and the Candlelight Vigils are not achieving this. [read more]
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