Participatory Democracy, Lived Experience and an Oral History of Protests in Malaysia, 2007-2022

"Many challenges confront Malaysia’s fragile democracy. Of the six million newly emancipated voters – following constitutional amendments that lowered the voting age to 18 years old and automatically register eligible voters – a sizable chunk has no shared experience or collective memory of past democratic protests and being involved in mass social movements. In the absence of participatory democracy that meaningfully educates and empowers them,  many voters are left to passively consume hateful ethnic and religious content on social media channels that pose a risk to democratic backsliding and contribute to political polarisation, as reflected in the 15th General Election."

"The DEMO project serves as a public intervention to reignite democratic values via documentation of and engagement with the lived experience of movement activists and protest participants in the past 15 years – a crucial period of political awakening in personal and national histories."

Archiving the Past, Educating the Future

This project originated from a lepak session in McD Masjid Jamek – a pivotal space for various protests in Kuala Lumpur – where we wondered aloud, “Where have all the protesters gone? What did they think of their protest days?”

For stories and more information please visit link below....

https://pusatsejarahrakyat.org/demo/intro/

For more info about DEMO and other Democracy Discourse Series Projects, visit: https://www.democracydiscourse.org/