Anonymous-sparked protest begins in Philippines, held back in Indonesia

By Yasser Paragian, Enricko Lukman, Phoebe Magdirila, Terence Lee

The Million Mask March, a global protest initiated by hacktivist group Anonymous, has begun in Southeast Asia this morning. Eye witness reports say that protestors wearing Guy Fawkes masks have gathered in the Philippines along Batasan Road in Quezon City. The group told local media that they were protesting against rampant pork-barrel politics in the country.

While the Philippine event’s Facebook page says that over 1,300 people will attend the protest, about 200 individuals were estimated to have showed up. The masked protesters were mostly youths. Some of them were carrying banners that say: “The corrupt fear us. The honest support us. the heroic join us.”

Policemen were stationed at Batasan and they initially stopped protesters from going to the front of the House of Representatives. They were later allowed to do so. However, the lawmakers were apparently not in the building to listen to the protesters’ demands as they are on Halloween break until Nov 18.

The march today followed the outage of two government websites starting from around 5.30 A.M. Anonymous has claimed credit for causing it.

AnonymousPH spokesperson, in mask, says they're not afraid of govt #MillionMaskMarch @rapplerdotcom pic.twitter.com/piK8PvHiGG

— Buena Bernal (@buenabernal) November 5, 2013

Things aren’t going as smoothly for the Indonesian group however. While initially drawing 1,000 confirmed attendees on its Facebook page, the protesters did not get permission from the police to hold a mass gathering at the venue, so the group shifted to Tugu Proklamasi, a historical monument, instead.

The sudden change in location caused confusion as some Facebook users still thought that it was going to be held at Bundaran HI. While Anonymous Indonesia operates two major Twitter accounts, the communications were not water-tight and may have hampered the mass gathering.

@AnonNewsIndo, which has 10,000 followers, tweeted about the change of venue just once. The tweet then got retweeted 34 times by its followers. However, the other Anonymous Twitter handle, @Anon_Indonesia, which has 27,000 followers, didn’t talk about the venue change or any mass gathering at all in the past few days.

And unlike the Philippine protest, a live CCTV feed from LewatMana showed no protest activity happening at Bundaran HI. Local media, both on television and internet, did not report on movements at Tugu Proklamasi either.

The nature of the Indonesian protest is markedly different from the Philippines though. Its agenda was to merely show the world that Anonymous Indonesia isn’t criminal, rather than protest specific policies or a political climate.