PUTRAJAYA, July 17 — Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak debunked today claims that the National Civics Bureau (BTN) has a Malay supremacist propaganda that promotes ill will among the country’s ethnicities and is to blame for the recent racially-charged riots that broke out at Low Yat Plaza.

He was asked to comment on calls to dismantle the federal agency under the Prime Minister’s Department for allegedly deviating from its original goal to bring the different races and religions closer together.

“Actually it is just a lie, very much a lie,” he told reporters during the Raya open house celebrations at his official residence here.

Several opposition lawmakers and social activists have blamed BTN for the unrest at Low Yat last Sunday that resulted in a handphone store and some vehicles smashed up following unsubstantiated rumours on social media that an ethnic Chinese trader had cheated his Malay customer.

The mob attack resulted in at least five people hurt, including two journalists with a Chinese-language paper, but police were quick to deny the incident as racially-motivated.

BTN has been repeatedly accused of conducting “brainwashing” activities, reinforced by sporadic leaks of their closed-door events.

A senior BTN official caused an uproar back in 2010 when word leaked that he had used the terms “si mata sepet” and “si botol” at a closed-door Puteri Umno gathering to describe the Chinese and Indians respectively.

The terms are considered derogatory with “si mata sepet” meaning slit-eyed and “si botol”, alcoholic, in Malay.

Many Malay progressives including DAP’s Dyana Sofya Mohd Daud and former ambassador Datuk Noor Farida Ariffin have also called for the abolishment of the agency for allegedly promoting racism.