A participant in the Jan 25 demonstration against the Datum Jelatek project claims that the provocation leading to some damage at the project site was caused by participants paid to do so by the developer.

Ariffin Abu Bakar made the claim after lodging a police report at the Ampang Jaya police headquarters today.

“I want to stress that I did not order the participants to act violently on that day.

“I believe that the participants were influenced by a group which was paid by the developers to make an extreme provocation that led to the participants acting violently,” Ariffin said.

In his police report, he also denied that right-wing group Perkasa was involved in the incident.

He urged the police to investigate the group of individuals who had influenced the participants in the demonstration - which was supposed to be a peaceful one - to act in a violent manner.

'10 entered the area with sticks, iron rods'

Ariffin said he became aware of this when a group of around 10 individuals entered the project area holding wooden sticks and iron rods, after the zinc barrier put up to cordon off the project site was torn down.

He said he knew who the group members were and that on the day of the incident, one of the individuals did not follow instructions to demonstrate peacefully.

“We asked them to leave the area but they did not listen. We felt that something was amiss and based on our investigations, we found that one of them works with the developer,” he said.

Malaysiakini is still trying to contact the developer to obtain its comments on this.

Meanwhile, Datum Jelatek action committee chairperson Salleh Samad has rejected the state government’s explanation that many bumiputera had applied for the Datum Jelatek project.

The project’s marketing campaign, launched in Hong Kong three years ago, was clearly aimed at turning the area into a “Chinese mainstream district”, Salleh said.

The inflow of Chinese citizens from Hong Kong, Singapore, Indonesia and Taiwan to the locality, he said, would cause Malays living in the area to become uncomfortable in leading their lives based on their culture.

“We have our own culture. Now, outsiders bring in a lot of projects that are not for us. Any development should no longer be for the rakyat but with the rakyat,” Salleh said.

Datum Jelatek is a development project consisting of four blocks of luxury condominiums, hotels, offices and a shopping complex on a 2.4-hectare plot of land next to the Jelatek LRT station.

Last Sunday, some 1,000 residents of Taman Keramat protested against the project and the zinc barrier surrounding the project’s perimeter was torn down by several participants.