KUALA LUMPUR, Sept 30 — The police are investigating a small rally which took place yesterday in the capital city, in support of the ongoing protests in Hong Kong.
Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post (SCMP) reported Dang Wang police district’s Criminal Investigation Department head Chief Inspector M. Gunalan as saying the rally is being investigated as an illegal gathering.
“We will be calling them in under the Peaceful Assembly Act 2012 as they did not inform police. We have opened an investigation paper,” he said, adding the participants and organisers will be interviewed sometime this week.
The rally had been planned only days in advance, and did not meet the required 10-day notification to the authorities under the Act.
Initially slated to take place at a Chinese event hall, the protest was reportedly forced to change venue to a large car park near a community space after a police report was filed of the potentially illegal gathering.
Some 70 attendees, mostly young ethnic Chinese, reportedly made speeches, shouted slogans of support, and sang the protest anthem Glory to Hong Kong, as 15 police officers monitored their activities.
Part of the Global Solidarity with Hong Kong movement, the demonstration was one of over 40 similar gatherings in cities around the world.
One of the KL protest’s organisers, student activist Liew Liang Hong, 25, was quoted as saying very few people in Malaysia dared to speak out against Beijing.
“But this is a global issue. We intend to hold many more events like this,” he told SCMP at the event.
Liew later added that he had yet to receive any word from the authorities about being called in over the rally.
Hong Kong protesters are angry about what they see as creeping interference by Beijing in their city’s affairs despite a promise of autonomy when British rule ended in 1997.
The trigger for the protests was a planned legislation, now withdrawn, that would have allowed people to be extradited to mainland China for trial, despite Hong Kong having its own much-respected independent judiciary.
