Bar Council, Suaram to deploy legal teams

The Bar Council has pledged a team of lawyers from its Kuala Lumpur Legal Aid Centre in support of Bersih 3.0 planned for tomorrow.

"(The team) will provide legal assistance in the event of arrests," reads a statement by its president Lim Chee Wee yesterday.

This is in addition to a separate team of observers the Bar Council will deploy to monitor events on the ground at the proposed rally site, Dataran Mereka.

The council representing Malaysia's 13,000 legal practitioners also urged the government, in particular the police and Kuala Lumpur City Hall (DBKL), "to cooperate with the organisers of the Bersih 3.0 assembly in order to facilitate a peaceful gathering".

It called on the police to permit all walks and public assemblies and activities leading up to the rally to take place peacefully with minimal intrusion and disruption, while ensuring public order and protecting the safety of all participants.

Suaram's Urgent Arrest Team

Meanwhile, human rights advocacy group Suaram has initiated a similar move, forming what it called the Suaram Urgent Arrest Team.

The NGO will be stationing its own legal team at several locations where the protesters are expected to gather prior to and during tomorrow's sit-in protest. The team members will assist those detained by the police.

While the Home Ministry, which oversees the police, has declared this year's iteration of the coalition for clean and fair elections rally as "not a security threat", DBKL has denied Bersih the permission to use Dataran Merdeka for the rally and threatened stern action against the participants.

Though DBKL enforcement and security officers have no powers of arrest, in recent days they have "escorted" activists of the Occupy Dataran and free education movements to the police station where they were arrested and charged with a number of offences.