Recently, a picture of a recent street protest held in Hong Kong captioned ‘Thousands rally for Hong Kong democracy’, appeared in world news page 23 of The Star on Jan 2, 2014.

Protesters carrying banners and shouting slogans against the government were seen marching in Hong Kong “to demand a greater say in how their future leaders will be chosen”. It looked
rather peaceful and orderly, especially with all protesters seen walking forward packed like sardines in one direction and inside a fenced-up portion of the street.

If you were to take a closer look at the picture, you could actually see shoulder-high fences put up in place along both sides of the street, to barricade a part of the street strictly for protesters to walk inside.

In this way, no protester could make a detour or diversion or a ‘breakout’ to form a satellite or rather splinter group elsewhere or even try to run helter-skelter to create chaos and unrest along the way.

Those who have plans to hold street rallies or protests or peaceful walks in Malaysia could learn something from how protesters do it in Hong Kong. This also is a lesson for the police, who are responsible in issuing permits, that it will be a lot easier to provide crowd control, public safety, peace and security when the ‘route’ is fenced-up, sort of.

That means with the setting-up of a path strictly for protesters to walk along, that is, from A to B, the police will then be in full control of protesters’ activities, let alone take care of public safety, peace and security.

There should be no harm for the police to issue the required permit to any political party to hold street rallies or protest walks.

Of course, the police force needs to deploy the required numbers of police personnel to stand behind those fences (barricades) during the event.

If not, when a political party from the other side of the divide or an NGO group forwards an application to the police for a permit to hold the event is given an ‘Ah Chee, Ah Joe’ kind of response, then, the rakyat will see that there is no real democracy, albeit the government relentlessly says that they are democratic about what they do for the people and country.

Footnote: How come political parties from both the divides, including district councillors who have gone to Hong Kong on study trips using taxpayers’ money did not see the good points, and forward recommendations to the relevant or appropriate government bodies to follow suit, is amusing.

The rakyat reckon that they have wasted taxpayers’ money and public time making such trips with the excuse of learning and gaining experience; when it was more like a holiday for them.


LAU BING is a community activist and writer in Subang Jaya.