Screenshots

UPDATED VERSION. Not one shot. Not two shots.

FOUR shots. The plain-clothed police officer, who shot live bullets at the ceramah crowd in the Batu Buruk Incident last Saturday night, had fired a total of four shots.

Terengganu police chief SAC I Ayub Yaakob confirmed this when contacted by Malaysiakini this evening.

Significantly, Ayub also changed his script. According to Malaysiakini, he now clarified that the shooter was not Federal Reserve Unit (FRU) personnel Azmi Hussein, 35, as reported previously, but a 25-year-old general duty police officer identified as constable Abdul Wan Aziz.

Earlier, Ayub maintained that only one bullet was fired. However, his report was doubted and questioned as two people were being treated in the hospitals for gun wounds, one in the chest, and the other in the shoulder.

PAS deputy president Nasharudin Mat Isa today accused Ayub for contradicting himself when explaining why shots were fired when dispersing the crowd at the ceramah. Quote:

“One contradicting statement was on the number of shots fired. The first report was one, then it come up to two and today if you read the papers, it was four,” he said.

“So which is which? The CPO is contradicting himself it shows that there are things developing there which are really vague. We’re monitoring the whole process.”

ORIGINAL POSTING

I was on assignment in Pulau Perhentian last week, putting up a night in Kota Baru on Friday, and I happened to be staying in the same hotel as the Agong, who was there for a polo match.

Security was tight but it was an ampun kurnia for a lay person like me as I had total peace of mind by having the grace to tumpang the extra security reserved for the king, though I must hasten to say that KB is probably the safest town in the country right now.

I was relating to my friends, poking them to imagine how the mere presence of mean machines like helicopters in tranquil Pulau Perhentian could elicit steely contrasts to the moods of the candid shots many a photographer would relish

More pictures in LensaMalaysia.

And then the following night, live bullets were fired at the ceramah crowd in Kuala Terengganu, the throne of our reigning Agong as the state's sultan!

I have blogged about the Batu Buruk Incident in considerable details, hoping to know if this country is now a brutal police state where civilians can now be sprayed live bullets that easily.

Urgent motion rejected

It's now known that an urgent motion to debate the bloody Batu Buruk incident was rejected by the Dewan Rakyat speaker Ramli Ngah Talib today.

Quote Malaysiakini:

Ramli agreed with MP Salahuddin Ayub (PAS-Kubang Kerian), who brought the motion, that the matter was of public interest but ruled that it was not an urgent matter that needed to be debated and discussed in the House.

In the motion, Salahuddin said that the incident, which resulted in scores hurt and two men shot by a police fire, should be debated as it involved public interest.

He said that the Internal Security Ministry should explain as to why a live bullet was used to disperse the crowd.

“This House must be given the necessary and just opportunity to discuss and debate on the tragedy so justice can prevail,” he said in the motion.

“The Internal Security Ministry must explain to the people of Malaysia why live bullets were fired upon unarmed civilians,” added Salahuddin.

He blamed the police of being ‘trigger happy’ and lacking respect for the lives and safety of the public.

I am glad that the Batu Buruk Incident, a case of lawlessness exemplified by both the Police and the rioting civilians, has attracted the attention of human rights lawyer, Malik Imtiaz Sarwar. Being a lawyer, he can surely articulate better than me from the legal point and human rights point of view over the matter.

'Not Urgent, Mr Speaker?'

Despite his busy schedule, Imtiaz has written four blog entry over the last two days:

1 ) Of Peaceful Gatherings, The Freedom Of Speech And Live Ammunition

2 ) Seriously, Mr Deputy Prime Minister

3 ) Riot? What riot?

4 ) Not Urgent, Mr Speaker?

Imtiaz's latest blog entry resembles another open letter to the Parliament Speaker, for before this, Imtiaz has written his first Open Letter to Ramli Ngah Talib on August 28, also on the latter's rejection of an urgent motion to debate the RM4.6 billion PKFZ debacle.

In today's piece, Imtiaz said:

Two Malaysians were shot for making the mistake of assuming that they had a right to defend their constitutional right to free choice. A right to defend themselves against the violence used to quash their freedoms. We are told that they were shot as a matter of self-defence. The question is whose?

Does it matter that they and the hundreds who were trampled under jack-boots, pummeled with batons, pulverized by high pressure water jets laced with chemical additives even as they struggled against the tear-gas did not have the means to defend themselves? Does it matter that the police waged a campaign of aggression as a part of a strategised campaign and given the means to participate? [...]

And does it matter that the tragedy of Pantai Batu Buruk would not have happened if the powers that be had allowed these Malaysians to do what it is that they had come to do? To listen.

Malaysians are not the enemy. Our blood, sweat and tears nourish the soil we stand on. Tanah tumpahnya darah ku. The blood shed - be it from having been beaten by batons, or pummeled with fists, or kicked with boots and now from a gunshot - is being shed by Malaysia. For when we bleed it is the nation that bleeds.

Guns, water-cannons, tear-gas canisters, batons, shields, sticks and stones. Prosecutions, jail, detention without trial. They cannot, must not be allowed to, stand in the way of truth.

Freedom is our birthright. Malaysian blood is being shed over that freedom. Is that not a matter of urgency?

Malaysians should wake up to this amount of disquiet. It matters more now, because Terengganu, the place where live bullets were sprayed on civilians, is also the homestate of our reigning Agong.

Rational thinking convinces me it's unlikely that the Agong wouldn't be saddened by the incident in which his subjects were seriously hurt. We civilians are.