Perkasa calls for action on Bersih leaders
KUALA LUMPUR, May 5 – Malay rights group Perkasa has urged the government to take action against the organisers of last Saturday’s Bersih 3.0 rally, Bernama Online reported today.
Its president Datuk Ibrahim Ali said that the government should not only go after the protesters and let the Bersih organisers escape the consequences.
“It is important for the authorities to take action and prosecute leaders of the rally,” he said today.
He added that public confidence in the government would dip if only rally participants were charged.
The peaceful Bersih sit-in protest turned chaotic when police fired teargas and chemical-laced water at the crowd when some protesters breached the barricades at Dataran Merdeka.
After the rally ended, a group of unruly protesters defied police orders to disperse.
They taunted the police and attacked them with glass bottles, mineral water bottles and broken concrete slabs.
The violence last Saturday has resulted in finger-pointing by all parties involved, including Datuk Seri Najib Razak’s recent statement that the chaos could have been avoided if Bersih organisers had accepted the government’s offer to use Stadium Merdeka.