Tian Chua: ‘Cops, not us, lost control’

PETALING JAYA: PKR has blamed the police for the violence that erupted during Saturday’s Bersih rally.“We did not lose control. The police lost control,” the party’s Batu MP Tian Chua told reporters at the PKR headquarters this afternoon.He was responding to the government’s claim that Bersih’s leadership as well as Pakatan failed to keep the crowd under control.

On Saturday, hundreds of protesters surged towards Dataran Merdeka at around 3pm after the barricades were suddenly breached.Only minutes earlier, Bersih leaders had asked the crowd to disperse, informing them that the protest’s objectives had been met.When the barricades were breached, the police reacted by firing tear gas and water cannons into the crowd without warning.
The police then engaged with the protesters in bouts of street fighting along Masjid Jamek, Jalan Raja and Jalan Tunku Abdul Rahman over the next four to five hours.

Tian Chua said Pakatan’s crowd control units, especially PAS’ Unit Amal members, had done all they could to maintain order, even when the Dataran Merdeka barricades were taken down.
“Unit Amal’s job was to protect the people…When people rushed to the front (after the barricades were broken), the Unit Amal’s job was to protect people,” he said. This was evident in a FMT video, which showed Unit Amal members trying in vain to stop the protesters from surging forward into Dataran Merdeka.

In one instance, a PAS Unit Amal member in Masjid Jamek was heckled and assaulted by some 2,000 protesters after he tried to convince them to go home. ‘Why chase them through the streets?’ “If you look carefully, all the Unit Amal [members] were putting their hands up to stop [the protesters] but the people were rushing through,” said Tian Chua. “I don’t think anyone can stop thousands of people who want to go to Dataran,” he said, adding that it was not a crime for people to want to sit in the square. He said students, particularly those from the Occupy Dataran movement, had been camping at the square a week before the Bersih 3.0 rally, after the anti PTPTN (National Higher Education Loan) protests. Tian Chua said he was not against the police being ordered to stand their ground at Dataran Merdeka, but questioned the need for them to chase the protesters through the streets, hours later. “If the police, being tasked to ensure no one goes into the barricades, defended their ground, [I'd say] fair enough, [even] though I disagree.
“But they went three streets down the block (along Jalan Tunku Abdul Rahman and Jalan Raja) to attack people, arresting people and bashing people up. “Whether [the] barricades [were] broken or not, it is premeditated violence intended by [the] police,” he said.

News Source: FreeMalaysiaToday