Story out of Bangkok, Thailand:
It is a simple yellow T-shirt with the word “clean” in Malay. Tens of thousands of people own them. But wear one on the street in Malaysia today and you risk arrest.
A Malaysian High Court has upheld a government edict declaring the shirt a national security threat.
The T-shirts say “Bersih 4,” the name of an antigovernment demonstration in Kuala Lumpur, the capital, last August. “Bersih” means “clean,” and the protesters were calling for clean government.
Before the protests, Home Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi banned the shirts, along with fliers promoting the Bersih 4 events. As many as 100,000 protesters defied the government and wore the shirts anyway, creating a sea of yellow in the streets of Kuala Lumpur.
The protests targeted Prime Minister Najib Razak after reports emerged that nearly $700 million had been deposited in his personal bank account. The government said the money was a donation from undisclosed Saudi royalty, an explanation mocked by the opposition and later contradicted by the Saudi government.
“The T-shirts have now become a symbol of our struggle for democracy and human rights in Malaysia,” said Maria Chin Abdullah, chairwoman of Bersih 2.0, a clean-government advocacy group that organized the protests. Cont.
Story from - New York Times
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