KUALA LUMPUR, July 9 — DAP chairman Lim Guan Eng said that local Chinese daily China Press had clarified that its report on his remarks was mistranslated by the news portal MalaysiaNow.
Lim went on to say that Perikatan Nasional (PN) would be lodging false police reports against him if they were basing it on the “false facts” in the mistranslated report.
“Today, China Press published a special report that MalaysiaNow was mistaken in the translation of its report because I never mentioned Chinese temples or Buddhist temples in my speech.
“This confirms my statement yesterday that my speech in Mandarin had been twisted to be ‘PN intends to destroy Buddhist or Chinese temples’. What I was referring to was Hindu temple, where there was a case of a Hindu temple demolished in 2020 in Kedah,” the Bagan MP said in a statement today.
China Press had on July 7 reported Lim’s speech where he reportedly claimed that Hindu temples risk being demolished by the “green wave” if it does not like the sight of such temples.
In its July 8 translation, MalaysiaNow cited Lim as allegedly suggesting that Buddhist temples were at risk of destruction if the “green wave” arrives in Penang.
MalaysiaNow’s July 8 article currently carries an “editor’s note”, where the portal claimed that China Press had amended its quote in the news report to add the word “Indian” before the word “temples” and to remove the word “Buddha”.
In an article dated yesterday on the website of China Press, the newspaper said MalaysiaNow had inaccurately translated its news report which it insisted did not mention Buddhist temples or Chinese temples.
In the same article, China Press reproduced the sentence from its news report and also published Lim’s full remarks based on an audio recording.
The “green wave” — named after PAS’s party colour — was coined to describe the rise in Malay-Muslim conservatism espoused by the Islamist party and its PN partner Parti Pribumi Bersatu Malaysia (Bersatu).PN Youth chief Ahmad Fadhli Shaari was today reported to have directed PN youths to lodge police reports against Lim over his remarks, describing the latter’s remarks as racially provocative.
“If Ahmad Fadhli wishes to order PN Youth machinery nationwide to lodge police reports against me based on wrong facts, they can be considered to have committed a crime, which is making a false police report under Section 182 of the Penal Code,” Lim said, before challenging Ahmad Fadhli on whether he would dare to make a false police report against him.
In the same statement today, Lim also accused PN of allegedly maliciously using defamation to make politically-motivated false allegations against him based on his speech.
Yesterday, Lim regretted that his speech in Mandarin had allegedly been intentionally twisted and portrayed as if he was fanning racial and religious sentiments, saying that it had never crossed his mind to use “3R” (race, religion, royalty) issues to garner votes as he believes those issues would jeopardise the harmony of Malaysia’s multiracial and multireligious community.
