Of Candle Light Vigils and Police Harrassment

Candlelight vigils are held mostly in most parts of the world by civil society, generally without disturbance or violence. However, in Malaysia, mostly, these vigils are often interrupted by the Police. On the 7th of May, outside the Sungai Buluh Prisons, a group opf about 60-80 people were gathered in solidarity with Raj Petra Kamarudin, who was held in remand after his failure to raise bail in his recent charge of sedition by the Malaysian Government. The night passed without any untoward incident, with an address by Selangor State EXCO member YB Ronnie Liu, as well as a short speech from both Haris Ibrahim and Marina Lee Abdullah, wife of RPK. There was heavy Police presence, as well as off duty prisons officials, but the evening genrally got on without any problems.
On Thursday, 8th of May, another vigil was held in the Dataran Merdeka, or Independence Square. There was heavy Police presence as expected, coupled with the Federal Reserve Unit, normally tasked with crowd and riot controls. There was also heavy machinery parked around the area, tear gas cannon and all. The evening started without much problem, until 8.15pm, when Lawyer Haris Ibrahim was taken away by Police (Arrested, according to Haris) from the Square. He had been accused of ignoring police warnings, and subsequently removed from the area. Read here for other witness accounts of the night. Confusion arosed at first of Haris was indeed arrested, as not much information was attainable from Police personnel present in the square. It is a practice by Police not to divulge information to anyone after such incidents. In fact, previous accounts had also lead certain parties to lodge kidnapping reports against the police for not disclosing information of the detainees. However, Lawyers Malik Imtiaz, through many telephone calls had coordinated with Lawyer Edmund Bon and Viswa on Haris's whereabout, that they were at the IPD Dang Wangi police station to meet Haris an hour after the incident. Haris was subsequently 'released' and it was eventually clarified that he was never arrested at any one point!
The point here is that the police could have just allowed the gathering seeing that those present was really there to show support for those wrongly held (including those under the ISA detention). A strong show of force by the boys in blue, but was it really necessary?