KUALA LUMPUR, Feb 16 — Pakatan Rakyat (PR) leaders distanced themselves today from a video threat to attack Malaysian courthouses by a group claiming to be Islamic State (IS) members, saying the four masked men in the clip were likely pranksters.
PKR vice-president N. Surendran pointed out that the men calling themselves “ISIS Malaysia 69” had mentioned “mercun” or firecrackers when they threatened to set off explosives at courthouses this Wednesday.
“They look like a bunch of pranksters to me,” said the Padang Serai MP, who added that he was not worried by the threat of violence from the men in the video.
“There, they seemed like they were building up to something, but in the end, all they said was that they were going to set off some fireworks.”
“It’s just a silly act by a bunch of silly boys,” he told Malay Mail Online over the phone.
His sentiments were echoed by another PKR vice-president, Chua Tian Chang.
“I think it’s a hoax,” Chua said, before adding, “I don’t take this seriously. I’m not worried about it at all.”
PAS lawmaker Khalid Samad suggested that the video could have been produced by pro-government troublemakers out to frighten Malaysians to justify what he called “the draconian anti-terrorism act they want to see passed in Parliament.”
The Shah Alam MP was referring to the newly proposed anti-terrorism Bill that Putrajaya is expected to table in the next parliamentary sitting in March.
Khalid added that “the only way to curb terrorism is to show how democracy can reflect the wishes of the people.”
“And often, the more authoritarian the government is, the more terrorism there is. So the government’s anti-terrorism act may, in fact, increase terrorism,” he said.
The PR parliamentarians were also unanimous in rejecting the video’s violent undertones, as well as the apparent sympathy for ISIS, which is the acronym for the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.
“If you are unhappy about something, you should be organising peaceful protests or doing something useful instead,” said Surendran.
“We will never support this action,” PAS deputy president Mohamad Sabu said.
“We have to fight through democratic way [sic]. We do not support armed struggle for any reason,” he added.
Khalid said that the opposition were not happy with the state of the judiciary and the current practice of democracy in the country, but stressed that they would not use it as an excuse to force change.
He added that his colleagues in Islamist PAS, including those in the conservative ulama wing, were not likely to be supportive of such a “radical or militant” approach to reach their goals.
But a former Kedah PAS member Mohd Lotfi Ariffin was reported to have joined the IS militant movement to fight in the Syrian conflict last year.
The party has said it expelled Mohd Lotfi before he joined the war in the Middle East, but upon his death, he was hailed as “a martyr” by PAS’s ulama wing, including PAS central committee member Nik Abduh Nik Aziz, the son of its late spiritual adviser Datuk Nik Abdul Aziz Nik Mat.
In a video uploaded yesterday on video-sharing site YouTube, four masked men claiming to be members of ISIS threatened to stage an attack on Malaysian courthouses with explosives at 11.30pm on Wednesday to symbolise their loss of faith in democracy.
Three men are seen standing in front of a Malaysian flag, with one holding up what appears to be a Molotov cocktail.
The fourth man is seated and appears to be reading from a script, which bears the picture of a local actress.
“To whichever party that has been in power for too long, we the Malaysian youth, in 2015, announce the outcome of trickery and manipulation in democracy,” said the man, who spoke in Malay.
“We will set off ‘mercun’ (fireworks) in courts as a symbol of the destruction of one of the tools used in the democratic system. We have just started and we will go even further. The more damaged the democracy that you destroy, the more we will fight,” he added.
The man, however, did not specify what had triggered their plan to set off explosives at the Malaysian courts.
On social media, Malaysians dismissed the video threat as a hoax, noting the face of the Malaysian actress on the back of the masked man’s script.
