SUNGAI BULOH, March 21 ― A small group of Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim’s supporters started their hunger strike today outside the Sungai Buloh prison where he is being held, hoping to pressure the authorities into releasing the Opposition Leader from his five-year incarceration for sodomy.

The protest has attracted ten participants so far but is expected to draw at least a hundred, according to PKR member Chegu Sekar.

The group calling themselves Kita Lawan Kita Bangkit (KBKL) gathered outside the prison gates at around 8am holding a banner bearing the faces of world-famous freedom fighters and civil rights defenders like Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King.

According to organisers of the event, only five protesters will stay put outside the prison throughout the weekend while the other participants are free to come as go as they please.

“Only five of us the organisers will sit for 48 hours. The rest of the supporters can come and go,” said Chegu, who is one of the organisers.

“We are here to show our dissatisfaction with hunger strike. The outcome depends on what the government will do.”

Chegu said there will be supporters from Kedah, Kuala Selangor and Klang Valley areas among others and they predict an attendance of about 100 to 200 supporters over the next two days.

To officiate the hunger strike, the organisers and PKR's Kuala Selangor division chief and former Kapar MP S. Manikavasagam released several birds, including a pigeon as a symbol of freedom.

The police have already set up a few wired barricades outside the prison entrance but the organisers said they do not fear them.

“If they come, we will still sit here. They want to arrest us, arrest us lah,” Chegu said.

KBKL said they have three requests: for the Agong to convene a pardons board hearing to discuss Anwar’s application for a royal pardon; for the Home Ministry, Prisons Authority, and Attorney-General to allow Anwar to attend Parliament; and for Anwar to be moved to Sungai Buloh hospital for medical treatment.

On February 10, the Federal Court upheld the Court of Appeal’s 2014 ruling that reversed Anwar’s acquittal of sodomising former aide Mohd Saiful Bukhari Azlan, and sentenced the Permatang Pauh lawmaker to five years’ jail.