28th April 2012
Written by May Ling
Photo by May Ling
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| The crowd marching from KLCC to Dataran Merdeka |
Although this wasn't my first time to a protest, it was my first time to a Bersih protest and to be honest, I was pretty excited and scare at the same time.
When I depart from Sunway at 9.30pm, there wasn't much to see but once the bus headed to Kelana Jaya LRT station drive into Petaling Jaya, I started seeing some cars with passengers and drivers dressing up in YELLOW or GREEN. When I saw this, immediately I knew I wasn't alone anymore.
I took the LRT to KLCC quite often during the weekends and usually it wasn't that pack but today, it is all yellow and green. I notice a lot of youngsters are going as well.
Today everyone is everybody's friends.
I had a short conversation with one uncle around the age of 50 plus in the LRT. Although he didn't join the rally, he wishes me good luck and stay safe when I exit the LRT. *personally after the rally I think it is a good thing the uncle didn't join the rally because it was very difficult to breath for a youth like me when the FRU throw the tear gas at us.*
People in GREEN, YELLOW and even RED had gathered along Jalan Ampang at KLCC this morning and started marching towards Dataran Merdeka around 11 something. I didn't notice many police traffic except in a few places. However, the protesters still manage to march safely with volunteers wearing in red guiding the traffics and the march.
Drivers honk when they saw the group march by, and the crowd cheer back to them. Everyone was so unite and doing the same thing, which you don't see this often in here.
We managed to get in front of the barrier during the rally and saw quite a few things like a few people throwing water bottle or hitting the police truck when it pass by. But luckily things didn't go wrong when I was there because there are people from behind shouting to the crowd not to throw things towards the police.
"Don't throw! Don't give the police an excuse to arrest you!" a guy shouted.
The rally changed me in some way.
All these time, I heard a lot of people saying things you will see in the rally but this are all just from listening. But after experiencing Bersih 3.0, I strongly agreed with what they said.
Strangers become friends in the protest. You can just talk to any strangers and they are friendly.
Everyone help and care for everyone despite race, age, or religion. There are people offering water, salt, mask and ice to people who seems to be having difficulty after experiencing the tear gas. *I had not experience the water cannon so I can't comment much about that.*
I felt so touch by their actions. People are asking anyone who pass by whether they need salt or not. some even offer us (I went with my classmate) water after the tear gas were shoot towards our direction. There are also people comforting others "it is alright, don't worry".
For the first time, I felt really lucky that I'm a girl, because the people were like, "ladies first." in the 7-11 when everyone is trying to get a drink or refreshment from there.
A young guy approached me for some salt and after some time while I was sitting by the roadside with my classmate, he saw us and came to thank us for the salt. I was a bit shock to see this. That in the mist of chaos, he still can recognise us.
Although it wasn't comfortable at all to get hit by tear gas and so on. I will never regret deciding to go for the rally and I will never forget how I felt and see in this event. The burning I felt in my nose and throat, the pain that caused my tears to drop, it is all worth it because of what I had seen.
Everyone is so unite in the rally. Somehow from here, I began to believe there are actually still a lot of polite people like this in Malaysia.
