Cabinet ministers should ask Suhakam for a clearer picture of what happened at the red shirt rally on Sept 16, DAP parliamentary leader Lim Kit Siang said.
Lim said that following Suhakam’s assessment of the rally, cabinet ministers should acknowledge the damage done by the red shirt rally to the country’s progress and Vision 2020.
“The cabinet should not be like the proverbial frogs in the well but must be brave to acknowledge that great damage had been done by the red shirt rally,” he said in a press statement today.
The commission had sent their officers to monitor the rally, he said, and had expressed regret on how the rally had turned non-peaceful when participants tried to push through police barricades.
Suhakam had also condemned the racially charged placards and slogans uttered by participants during the rally, adding that any such hostility should be prohibited by law.
“The right to peaceful assembly is not an excuse to perpetrate violence which will only make a mockery of the concept of peaceful assembly,” Suhakam chairperson Hasmy Agam ( photo ) had said.
There is nothing wrong with organising a rally to support Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak, Lim explained, but the rally should not have been allowed to turn into a racially-charged event.
The racist undertones of the rally had not only threatened social harmony but also undermined efforts to restore economic confidence in the country, he criticised, adding that Najib had appeared to actively endorse the rally after Sept 16.
“If the cabinet on Wednesday are not prepared to apologise for its shameful abdication of responsibility in giving the ‘green light’ for the divisive and racist red shirt rally, will the ministers step forward to tender separate individual apologies?” he asked.
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