Deear friends,
As you all may know by now, the civil society led coalition, Bersih 2.0 (Coalition for clean and fair elections) is being attacked in various forms to deter us from having a rally on 9 July. The reason for rally is that Bersih 2.0 have made various attempts to dialogue with the Election Commission such as:
submission of a memorandum to the Election Commission in mid-2010;
meeting with the EC on 9 November 2010;
3 attempts to follow up with the EC for a follow -up meeting which was agreed upon by the EC;
21 February 2011 a public event where the Deputy EC attended and spoke at the forum where he promised to follow up on the memorandum of Bersih 2.0
Since then there were more followup by Bersih 2.0 to seek a response to the memorandum and there was only promises to come back with a date after the Sarawak elections but to date there has been no response nor any visible actions taken to address the issue of electoral irregularities.
As such Bersih 2.0 decided to have a rally and gave 8 demands to the EC to take immediate actions. it was felt that the peoples’ vocies and wishes for a clean and fair election has to be put forward. Since our announcement of the rally Bersih 2.0 has been attacked with accusations of creating chaos, violence, have racial undertones, funded by christian with jewish links, raid of Bersih 2.0 secretariat and arrests of 6 staff and a volunteer, arrests [to date] more than 100 activists and ordinary people for wearing the bersih t-shirts and/or distributing Bersih 2.0 materials, banning of all yellow Berish 2.0 t-shirts and materials, and of recent spinning a communist bogey on Bersih 2.0.
Attach is the press statement released by women’s rights groups in response to the alledged communist link that was thrown against Empower, the secretariat of Bersih 2.0. [1]
We sincerely hope that you will be able to distribute widely our statements and to also request international press to focus on the under-reported threats, harassment, and the detention and ill-treatment of social activists who are campaigning for a clean and fair elections.
Thank you for your support
Maria Chin Abdullah
Bersih 2.0 Steerting Committee Member