‘Tian was running away from riot police’
By Teoh El Sen, FMT
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.
