The Stray World

The cov­er­age of BERSIH 3.0 on the main­stream media has been as expec­ted, ludicrously one-sided. Every 10 minutes of the local news chan­nels will be devoted to a “BERSIH SUCKS!” seg­ment trans­ition­ing into “LOSS OF BUSINESS FOR ONE DAY DISASTROUS SO DISASTROUS” before seguing into “BN IS THE BEST” news with the occa­sional “GUY COMMITS SEDITION AND GROUP REPORTS HIM TO THE POLICE” to cap out the national news segment.

I am not the most object­ive com­menter, although I try really hard to be object­ive in all mat­ters, hence my admis­sion that BERSIH 3.0 in Dataran Mer­deka did des­cend into chaos.

Par­tic­u­lar dis­dain needs to be given to the hoo­ligans who trashed a police car and intro­duced a buf­fet of fists and kicks to a guy who was at the scene.

Des­pite such obvi­ous fail­ings in a sub­set of the BERSIH par­ti­cipants there, what can­not be denied as being over-the-top would be the use of tear gas and water can­nons on the par­ti­cipants, most of whom appeared to be not doing any­thing like destruc­tion of prop­erty, and for all reas­ons and pur­poses appeared to be on their way home.

What can­not also be denied is that pro­ceed­ings could have pro­ceeded smoothly if Dataran Mer­deka was not held under guard as if it was the centre of a nuc­lear war­head bunker. This was a march of protest, and it was extraordin­ary that up until the breach in the bar­rier, no attempt was made to break form­a­tion and tear down that wall of wire and plastic.

The rul­ing gov­ern­ment prob­ably sus­pects that air­ing con­trary pic­tures would degrade their pos­i­tion, and hence the cur­rent report that inter­na­tional media are also being select­ively censored.

Sarawak Report is cur­rently fol­low­ing up on these cen­sor­ships, and as of time of writ­ing, have eli­cited a response from the BBC that some form of legal action will be taken regard­ing the censorship.

It is a won­der­ful thing, the free­dom of inform­a­tion afforded to us via the Internet.