Pakatan Rakyat (PR) lawmakers, who strongly backed the July 9 Bersih rally where police dispersed demonstrators with tear gas and water cannons, said that the deputy inspector general of police was comparing “apples not just to oranges, but to spaceships.”
“The comparison beggars belief. Khalid should be reminded who is holding arms in London and who was doing the same in Kuala Lumpur,” DAP publicity chief Tony Pua told The Malaysian Insider.
PAS’s Shah Alam MP Khalid Samad, who needed stitches to the back of his head after being hit by a tear gas canister, also said the senior cop was forgetting that it was the police that had used force against the tens of thousands who poured into the capital last month.
“He is insulting our intelligence, as if we can’t differentiate a peaceful demonstration and a riot,” the PAS central committee member said.
DIGP Khalid had said on his Facebook page yesterday that the ongoing riots in London and other major cities in Britain are evidence of the “nightmares” that can be prevented by avoiding street protests.
The violence in Britain has appalled many Britons, who have been transfixed by images of rioters attacking individuals and raiding family-owned stores as well as targeting big business.
Many Londoners have been stunned by the looting in which gangs ransacked shops, carting off clothes, shoes and electronic goods, torched cars and defied the police.
But after the first three nights, London alone saw just 450 arrests, and arrests nationwide have just breached 1,000 after five days despite police launching a murder inquiry after three Muslim men were run over by a car in Birmingham.
In Malaysia, opposition leaders and human rights activists have accused police of using excessive force to clamp down on the Bersih march for free and fair elections, claiming that police fired tear gas directly at demonstrators, acts they termed “attempted murder.”
The electoral reform movement had initially accepted the Najib administration’s offer to move its street rally to a stadium but it was denied its choice of Stadium Merdeka.
The coalition of 62 NGOs took to the streets to march to the historic venue anyway, defying warnings of police action, which finally resulted in nearly 1,700 arrests, scores injured and one ex-soldier dead.
The London riots are said to have sparked off after last week’s fatal shooting of Mark Duggan, said by some to have had his “head blown off” by a police sharpshooter despite not opening fire at officers.
Since then, violent clashes between groups of young people and the police have dominated the British domestic news. The clashes were soon followed by the looting of shops as well as the torching of vehicles and buildings, and lately a few attacks on civilians have also been reported.
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