Tuesday, April 27, 1999
Letters To The Editor
RIOTS ON APR 14 NOT DUE TO 'POLICE BRUTALITY'
Hisham Abdullah
Klang
 
It is noticed that Datin Seri Wan Azizah Wan Ismail has now resorted to media hyping in some countries to get support for her newly formed party KeADILan and for her husband, former Deputy Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim, in particular.

In a recent interview with CNN in Hong Kong, Dr. Wan Azizah firmly denied that KeADILan was behind the demonstrations in Kuala Lumpur on April 14 and blamed the police for using brutal force on demonstrators.  Such a statement is nowhere near the actual truth and I am sure she knows it.

However, if KeADILan is really not behind the demonstrations, how is it that on the morning of April 14, at about 9 am, a van was seen distributing KeADILan banners, pamphlets and small placards with the words "Rakyat Hakim Negara" to about 300 unruly demonstrators gathered in the vicinity of the HSBC building trying to make their way to the Jalan Raja Laut courthouse.

And what about the fact that one of the demonstrators, Chua Tian Chang a.k.a. Tian Chua, arrested that morning, was one of KeADILan's three vice-presidents?  Anyway, Tian Chua has since been charged in court for a number of offences under the Police Act 1967.

And as for the claim that the police are to be blamed for using brutal force which resulted in the rioting, I only wish to state the police knew beforehand that there would be demonstrations that morning.  They took the necessary measures to prevent the demonstrators from assembling in front of the courthouse on the morning of April 14 by stationing Federal Reserve Unit personnel at the scene and a truck with a water cannon in front of the courthouse.

The police had to take such preventive action because they only knew too well what the demonstrators were capable of, based on previous encounters with such Reformasi demonstrations.  True enough, a crowd of about 300 demonstrators had gathered in front of the HSBC building near the courthouse carrying banners and placards and shouting  slogans like "Reformasi" and "Justice For Anwar" and were trying to march to the courthouse.

They ignored repeated warnings by the police to disperse and later tried to break through the police lines in order to make their way to the courthouse.  It was at this juncture that the police had to use a certain amount of force to push back the demonstrators, which was necessary in such circumstances.

I sincerely believe that the police had to resort to such action against the demonstrators so as to prevent them from marching to the courthouse in the interest of security.  I dread to think what would have happened if the police had allowed the demonstrators to assemble in front of the courthouse that morning to hear the judgement and sentence passed on Anwar by the judge.

The riots which erupted in other parts of Kuala Lumpur later during that day give some indication of what would have happened to the courthouse if the demonstrators were there at the time the verdict was announced.  It is evidently clear that the riots happened not because the police used brutal force on demonstrators but because they were prevented from assembling in front of the courthouse and also due to the fact that they were against the guilty verdict and sentence imposed to Anwar.