yeah this is a very personal report of the walk. if you want ‘official’ report, please go to our benar blog (url of posts at the end). i had posted up several articles/write ups from the media and bloggers there.

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the media freedom walk and talk was successful! many journalists and bloggers turned up.

i left penang on saturday, 31 may afternoon. took the aeroline bus. stayed at the holiday villa hotel. lovely hotel with a large spacious room. (photos later!)

foo, who is, like me, from benar, came to pick me at 7.45am. we first headed directly to NPC. i was asked by foo to stay at NPC to look after the butons and some handouts. alamak! this means i have to miss ot on the morning walk. Luckily i understand there will be a walk too after all the talks.

it was only 8.15am so nobody was around except the staff. thank god NPC has wi-fi, so i spent my time surfing the net with my PDA. (also later on i was able to blog live – but only brief details as busy).

the earliest people to drop in about 9.00am were 3 persons from the star. they were there to report the event i guess. saw one of them with a huge camera together with a camera stand.

slowly the people trickled in, all coming from dataran merdeka. wai fong from CIJ was there to help me with the distribution of buttons and hanouts.  she also brought along some CIJ materials and memo petition form for people to sign. the 2 handouts given out were the memorandum and the organisers’  (which were BENAR, CIJ and WAMI) statement.

(wai fong  who decided to have breakfast first, later on couldn’t get back to where i was because of the crowd, thus i was left alone handling the ’secretariat’ desk)

NPC seemed to be too small to contain the huge crowd that turned up. many people had to stand, and some sat on the staircase. by the time the speeches began, the place was cramped with people standing near each other with hardly space left to move about! later i understand that there were some people standing outside too. i guess the crowd can be estimated to be around 100 but the media reported 150.

i can see the enthusiasm in the crowd during the Q&A time after datuk zaid’s talk, but unfortunately as time was short, the Qs were limited. only malaysiakini reported zaid was booed (i think) but malaysiakini  did not mention though that there was a lady voice from the back who shouted "bullshit!!" at something zaid said. haha. so i revealed the secret.

immediately after the Q&A, the people dispersed and many decided to walk to the dataran.  i didn’t know they decided to walk as a group, lead by chin huat until i saw the video when i was back home. why didn’t foo or anyone called me to join them? sad lah. beginning… from dataran to NPC i already did not walk and was hoping to walk from NPC to dataran, and when they did, i was not informed.

thing is when everybody left (went out the door), i had to stay on first to clear up (but still someone could have called me to join them and i can clear up after the walk or clear up quickly). anyway, my friends , sharon and daevid came to meet me after everything had left and helped me to pack up. we had wanted to go on our way (for lunch) but foo suddenly called and asked me to bring the benar caps to the dataran as he wanted to give the caps to those who had walked from NPC to dataran. so  the 3 of us walked to the dataran. oh well, that was the only walk i did then!

foo was there to distribute our benar caps. about 20 people were still hanging around there. there were 6 policemen present. after a little while, one of them, probably the head, said to us that, since there were more than 5 of us, it was consider an illegal assembly, thus he gave us until 12 noon to disperse, otherwise he would have to arrest us! (at that time it was 11.45pm.)

one of the walk participants pointed to some tourists at a corner and boldly asked the police , "those tourists there… about 5 of them… will they be arrested too?" of course the police didn’t answer but kept repeating, "you have to disperse at 12 noon."

i was leaving with sharon and daevid, when daevid suddenly exclaimed, "captain america are here."  huh? i puzzled, then realise he meant the FRU! true enough i turned back and saw 8 FRU men standing in line, 2 armed with tear gas. "oh, i must take their photo", i said.

it was funny to note that many others who were busy snapping photos of them, as though they were some famous celebrities. a few of them even stand next to the FRU for a photoshot (eg this mat salleh looking man you see here, who seemed so happy to stand with the FRU… he was there for a long time… sort of posing together with the FRU for the photographers!)

after taking photos of the FRU, i left the dataran for lunch with sharon and daevid. went to the windmill restaurant (which is nearby holiday villa) for  western food. try the stone age rosmary chicken, where i had to cook the chicken myself on a  hot stove (and gotta wear a bib!).

after lunch i went back to the hotel. since i have lots of time before dinner with foo and helen ang (malaysiakini columnist), i called up lynnee who lives nearby and she agreed to come for tea with me. i’m glad that at this kl trip of mine, i managed to catch up with my 2 closest KL friends! thanks to sharon and lynnee for the company and the lunch/tea treat.

NOTE:  actually i have lots of other photos to post alongside this post but i have no time to do that (photo uploading in my wordpress is damn slow! anyone can recommend which photo editor to use?), since it is  close to 2.00am.  i will post the photos tomorrow, so please make sure you come back ya?

report from benar

blog links

media links

video links