KUALA LUMPUR: The Bersih 5 rally will go on tomorrow, with or without its chairman Maria Chin Abdullah.
The organisation’s steering committee member Fadiah Nadwa Fikri said that despite the arrests of Chin and its secretariat officer Mandeep Singh, the rally will continue.
“Despite this crackdown, the rally will continue. We will not back down,” she wrote on her Facebook page.
She had earlier told an online portal that the Bersih steering committee members would be stationed at specific locations including bangsar, Dataran Merdeka and Masjid Negara.
Chin and Mandeep were arrested earlier this evening at the Bersih office in Petaling Jaya, following a raid by federal police.
The policemen were accompanied by representatives from the Companies Commission of Malaysia.
It is believed that the investigation centred on Bersih’s source of funding, among which included Open Society Foundations (OSF), helmed by US billionaire George Soros.
Other detained in a police sweep included DAP’s Seremban Member of Parliament Anthony Loke, Klang MP Charles Santiago, as well as DAP’s ex-Pandamaran assemblyman Ronnie Liu.
All those detained were taken to the KL police headquarters for questioning.