Edmund Bon was a colleague back when I was in KL. I had made an entry about him earlier, (see here) about his role as a human rights lawyer.
 
Yesterday, he was arrested by the Malaysian police. 4 other lawyers were arrested together with him. They were all in the office building of the Malaysian Bar Council. Apparently, they were having a meeting in that building and had put up some posters at the lobby of the building which advertised that meeting. The meeting was originally planned to be march (latest in a series of marches) in a section of KL. The police refused to issue a permit for this march-cum-meeting so the meeting was moved indoor.
 
The government has been unhappy with recent public meetings which showed up how ridiculously stupid and wrong the government has been. I guess they are pretty sore with lawyers, who have spearheaded these public meetings. The recent Indian demonstrations were also organized by lawyers.
 
So when the meetings progressed indoor and the government was either late in responding or lacked imagination so all they could do was send a few city council enforcement officers along to remove “illegally placed” posters. These posters were apparently in the lobby of the building so the city council workers couldn’t have brought this allegation. I don’t think these posters contained explicit or illegal contents so I suppose the police have no basis to ask for its removal either.
 
But absence of either a legitimate basis or coherent reasoning didn’t stop the Malaysian government from behaving stupidly in the past so I suppose it didn’t come as a complete surprise, outrageous though such behaviour may have been.
 
It isn’t clear what happened. The Malaysian Bar website suggested that all Edmund did was to persuade them to stop removing the posters and when this failed and as the city council workers were leaving, he stood on the steps of the building and said out loud that these workers had violated the rights of the Bar. A police officer was there with the workers and Edmund even invited this officer to go into the building to participate in the meeting, saying there was food in the building and they were welcomed to have some. So it didn’t sound like he was obstructing any law enforcement officers from carrying out their work so I wonder what was the act or behaviour which provided the basis for any alleged breach or infringement. The only thing which appeared to be infringed was the ego of the officers, I think.
 
In Malaysia however that is enough to land one in trouble. This time, Edmund is at the receiving end. The day would come however when these perpetrators and participators of such bloody mindedness would wake up and regret their action. When that day comes, I hope the circumstances are still ripe for a painless turnaround.

It’s open season again for Malaysian Government bashing…