A WOMAN activist and her five friends returning from the International Women’s Day march in Kuala Lumpur were harassed by a gang of men near the Dang Wangi police headquarters today.

Kaanchana Suppayah, from civil society group Women’s Aid Organisation, said the men yelled “women have no rights” before snatching a placard from her and her friends, and destroying it, in the 1.30pm incident.

She said she sensed something was amiss after she and her friends came upon the men near the police headquarters.

“When we were walking past the entrance to the police headquarters, we saw four men there. It seemed as though they wanted to take a selfie, so we stopped to give them way.

“But, it got weird when they also wanted to take photos of us.”

She said she and her friends then crossed the road to get to a nearby car park, and that was when the men shouted at them.

“When we were crossing the road, we heard people shouting, asking someone to stop, but there were too many people there, so we thought it was something else.”

Three of the four men then went after the activist and her friends, yelling at them to stop, and grabbed the placard from the women.

“They shouted ‘LGBT not allowed’, read the placard, and told us that ‘women have no rights’,” said Kaanchana.

She said she and her friends had brought along three placards for the march, and one of the placards read: “Why I march? So girls will never say #MeToo.”

After tearing one of the placards to pieces, one of the men told Kaanchana that a police report had been lodged, and forced the women to go to the police headquarters.

She said she and her friends decided to head back to the Sogo shopping mall instead.

The activist said she was so shocked by the incident that she did not think of taking photographs or videos of the men.

This morning, some 250 people gathered in the city centre for a march in conjunction with International Women’s Day.

The event, organised by the International Women’s Day Committee, saw participants marching from the Sogo shopping mall to Dataran Tugu in Masjid Jamek.

Besides championing women’s rights, the march also called for an end to the discrimination facing the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transexual community. – March 10, 2018.