‘Tian was running away from riot police’

PKR's version of the police video is that Tian Chua was running away and the police have twisted it to say he was charging at them.

PETALING JAYA: PKR today came to the defence of its vice-president Tian Chua by saying that he was actually running away from the riot police, and not charging at them, during the July 9 Bersih rally.

Subang MP R Sivarasa explained that Tian Chua was running away from the police rather than attacking them during an incident at an underpass at KL Sentral.

“Police seem to be focusing on Tian Chua running out of the underpass, trying to suggest that he was charging at the police and therefore they fired tear gas. But the videos show that that’s a complete lie,” said Sivarasa.

“What Tian Chua was doing was that he was trying to get out of the space as quickly as possible. When coming out of the tunnel you can see from the video he was running to the right, out of the path of the tear gas.”

Sivarasa said if Tian Chua had any intention to attack the police, he could have come directly face-to-face with the light strike force.

Sivarasa was speaking to the press at the PKR headquarters today where the party showed some video clips taken from the day of the rally, which strengthened its claim that the police acted in a brutal manner in dispersing the protesters.

Last week, the police made public their own video clips to show that they were provoked by the protesters. They also claimed that Tian Chua had charged at them.

Pointing to two video clips today, Sivarasa said these clips showed that Tian Chua had veered to the right and was immediately detained by the police together with others who followed him.

“It was a foolish statement by the police and some bloggers had repeated it. Tian Chua knew the police were going to shoot tear gas and had made a judgment call to get out of the firing line.

“The moment he moved, the shooting started and he was able to escape,” said Sivarasa.

Lies and distortion

PKR vice-president N Surendran, who was also present at the press conference, said that it also does not make sense that police had continued shooting about 10 more canisters when Tian Chua and the charging group had already moved to the side.

“The police’s lie and distortion was spread by others, including bloggers who accepted the lie. Our problem is not with the bloggers but the police who started this false version,” he said.

Yesterday, Bersih 2.0 steering committee member Haris Ibrahim questioned Tian Chua’s alleged aggressive actions during the confrontation with the police in the tunnel.

The blog post entitled, “Confirmed: Tian Chua was a bad, bad boy!” demanded an explanation from the Batu MP as to why he had led a charge of a few protesters towards the police.

Haris had also posted a clip (above) showing Tian Chua counting down from three to one and leading a charge straight at the riot police who then fired at them.

In response, Tian Chua stated in a statement yesterday that the edited video which showed him leading the demonstrators did not give the true picture of what happened at the tunnel that day.

He added “the witch-hunt whether on me or other participants cannot absolve the guilt of brutality on July 9”.