Published September 15, 2008

Police allow Anwar to stage rally

Event at Selangor stadium set to draw 30,000 supporters

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(KUALA LUMPUR) Malaysian police have allowed opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim to hold a rally this week protesting against a government crackdown widely seen as a move to derail his plans to take power, his party said yesterday.
Mr Anwar: Tension is high after the govt extended the crackdown on the former deputy prime minister

The rally today, expected to draw 30,000 supporters to a stadium in the opposition-held state of Selangor in central Malaysia, will be on the eve of Mr Anwar's bid to lure 30 MPs from the ruling party to join his opposition bloc and form government.

'The rally should be not an issue for the police because we are not taking to the streets. It is a peaceful expression of the injustices suffered by Malaysians,' said Tian Chua, the information chief of Anwar's People's Justice Party.

On Friday, authorities arrested an opposition member of parliament, a well known blogger, and a journalist under the Southeast Asian nation's draconian Internal Security Act (ISA), which permits the indefinite detention of people without trial.

Police said the three had made comments that inflamed racial and religious hatred. The journalist was released on Saturday after the government said she had been taken into custody for her own protection.

The detentions were seen as an attempt to spoil Mr Anwar's bid to seize power from a coalition that has ruled the country of 27 million for 51 years since independence from the British.

Earlier last week, Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi's government sent 50 of its MPs on a study trip to Taiwan.

It has denied there were any political motives behind the arrests and the study trips ahead of Anwar's bid to wrest power from the government.

Mr Anwar, 61, was jailed in the late 1990s on charges of sodomy and corruption. A former deputy prime minister, he is facing new sodomy charges which he describes as trumped up.

Political tensions are bubbling after the government extended its crackdown by issuing warning letters to three newspapers.

A leading Chinese daily, for which the released journalist worked, was warned for reporting comments made by a junior official from the ruling party who referred to the country's ethnic Chinese as 'immigrants' and 'squatters'.

The remarks sparked outrage in the Chinese community, which makes up about a quarter of the population.

The opposition fear a repeat of a 1987 crackdown in which almost 120 people were imprisoned under the ISA after then Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad blamed the media for playing up racial issues. -- Reuters