Anti-Rajapaksa Protests in Kuala Lumpur Coordinator Satees Muniandy said it denounced the assault on Sri Lanka High Commissioner to Malaysia Ibrahim Sahib Ansar and the chief monk of a Buddhist temple in Sentul.
Ibrahim was attacked by a group of unidentified men at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport yesterday.
Satees, who is also a Seberang Prai municipal councillor, said there were agent provocateurs behind the scenes of the protests, who had been motivated by the mass murder of Tamils in Sri Lanka “to create a scene”.
He said there were some people who threw plastic bottles at riot policemen during the protests. He said these people were not part of the protest group either.
“We have made it clear from the first day that we reject any form of violence in our protests and condemn all these incidents,” he said in a statement.
Satees said it was appalling that Malaysia’s top leaders and ruling party Barisan Nasional ignored calls to stop Rajapaksa from attending a political summit in Kuala Lumpur.
Satees said despite many police reports calling on Rajapaksa to be banned from entering the country, police had ignored them.
“Although the ugly incidents are something that we strongly condemn, we still feel the Malaysian Government and the authorities are somehow to be held responsible for the unwanted incidents.
“All these could have been avoided if the Malaysian Government and police had listened to the united voice of the Malaysian Indians in the matter,” Satees said.
Meanwhile, Penang Deputy Chief Minister II P Ramasamy said those who assaulted the Sri Lankan diplomat recently must be brought to book immediately.
Ramasamy said the attack by a group of men against Ibrahim was uncalled for as he was not behind the genocide of Tamils in Sri Lanka.
“Police must charge the people involved in this incident immediately,” he said at a press conference today.
The protest in Kuala Lumpur from Sept 1 to 3 was organised following Rajapaksa’s invitation to the International Conference of Asian Political Parties which was held at Putra World Trade Centre, Kuala Lumpur.
Malaysian Tamils accuse him of the massacre of 100,000 people during Sri Lanka’s 26-year civil war between the majority Sinhalese and the Jaffna Tamil community.
Rajapaksa’s presence has drawn flak from various quarters, including from Ramasamy, who said the former “unleashed terror on innocent Tamils in the north and east of Sri Lanka during the civil war”.
The civil war, which broke out in 1983, lasted 26 years, before the Sri Lankan military defeated the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (Tamil Tigers) in 2009.
Both factions were accused of human rights violations, where instances of starvation, torture, recruitment of child soldiers and civilian-targeted attacks, including suicide bombings, were rampant.
The UN Human Rights Commission had last year urged the government to investigate the disappearances of civilians, including those of people alleged to have been secretly abducted by state-backed groups and paramilitary units.