Defections, disorganization dog Malaysia's opposition party
Malaysian opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim, under the stress of a long-running trial accusing him of sexual perversion, is under increasing strain as the point man for his Parti Keadilan Rakyat, or People's Justice Party as he continues to be harried politically as well.
"Some analysts would point out that Anwar has to get PKR's house in order," a think-tank analyst in Kuala Lumpur told Asia Sentinel. "There is growing frustration within Anwar's coalition and his own party." In particular, PKR has lost five members of parliament and five statehouse members to defections in the two years since the Pakatan Rakyat opposition coalition stunned the Barisan Nasional, or ruling national coalition by breaking its two-thirds hold on parliament. By contrast, Parti Islam se-Malaysia and the Democratic Action Party have only lost one each.
With a number of PKR state assemblymen now wavering and clearly considering defecting, it is possible that the opposition coalition could lose the states of Selangor and Kedah, which they won in the 2008 election. The state of Perak has already been reclaimed by the Barisan although critics say it was through skullduggery rather than legitimate political action.
"Because it is Anwar's party, Keadilan was supposed to be the anchor, but it has been weak from the very start," said a source in Kuala Lumpur. Parti Keadilan is largely made up of young, urban professional ethnic Malays.
"The problem is that Keadilan, like Anwar himself, are mostly ex-members of (the United Malays National Organization) and a lot of them are in there for a quick buck – like Umno itself, I guess. Anwar is bogged down with his legal sodomy case-but more importantly, there is a loss of confidence in his leadership."
What should have given a wakeup call to both Anwar and his colleagues in the opposition Democratic Action Party, which is largely ethnic Chinese, was an announcement earlier this week that Parti Islam se-Malaysia the fundamentalist Islamic party with its roots in the rural northeast, will take in non-Muslim members and even allow them to stand as PAS electoral candidates.
As Asia Sentinel first reported last November, it is PAS that is capitalizing on the situation, rather than the Barisan Nasional, or ruling national coalition. Despite defections, the opposition coalition has won eight of 11 by-elections since the March 2008 general election. The latest was in Sarawak on May 16 when, despite three visits by Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak and a cornucopia of educational goodies, voters again turned away from the Barisan, an indication that the Barisan and particularly UMNO continues to suffer from perceptions of corruption and political favoritism to cronies.
PAS's latest move, announced last week, was to allow members of its Supporters Club to become full members of the Islamic party, with the right to attend annual meetings as delegates. The Supporters Club has some 20,000 members, almost all of them Chinese, who have turned away from the Barisan Nasional. According to the think tank source in Kuala Lumpur, PAS may have more Chinese voters than the DAP
The Chinese, says the source, -- an ethnic Chinese as well -- are comfortable with PAS despite the Islamic party's emphasis on fundamentalist Islam because, unlike the Barisan and particularly UMNO, PAS has no designs on the Chinese business community's ownership of the economic sinews of the country. The country's New Economic Policy, in place for four decades, has been designed to transfer as much as 30 percent of the economic activity of the country to ethnic Malays.
"The proof is that we recognize supporters as our official party wing," PAS leader Abdul Hadi Awang told his party's newspaper Harakah Daily. The Islamic party has already placed a non-Muslim in a Terengganu constituency to contest as a PAS candidate.
"Whether this is for real or a political gambit, it is hard to say," the analyst said. "But it does suggest PAS is going after the Chinese vote."
That isn't to say there won't be tension. There are plenty of Islamic firebrands in PAS who detest Chinese dietary freedom – to eat pork and drink beer, for instance -- and lack of discretion in dress for women. There have been attempts by PAS to limit beer sales in some communities. Nonetheless, the source said, PAS may have even wider resonance among voters than the Chinese-oriented Democratic Action Party, another leg of the opposition coalition.
In the meantime, Anwar and Parti Keadilan have come under constant criticism for the quality of the candidates they have fielded and for disorganization and political infighting in the party itself. Abdul Hadi Awang and DAP national chairman Karpal Singh, among others, have urged Anwar to look into the weaknesses in his party that have caused the defections. Anwar has repeatedly spoken of the need to find better candidates.
Anwar has been under a cloud since June of 2008, when a then-24-year-old former aide, Mohd Saiful Bukhari Azlan, filed charges accusing the 62-year-old opposition leader of forcible sodomy. Sodomy in Malaysia is punishable by caning and up to 20 years in prison. The charges have since been reduced from forcible rape to consensual sex, which is still illegal under Malaysian law. The trial has droned on in a Kuala Lumpur courtroom for months, with Anwar's lawyers seeking delay after delay that has frustrated his followers, a growing number of whom say the trial so far appears to have been conducted on its merits rather than the previous sodomy charges brought against him in 1998 that put him behind bars for six years.
AsiaSentinel.com
Saturday, May 29, 2010
Friday, May 28, 2010
The Height of Racism in Malaysia – Educational Discrimination
It is so heart-wrenching to watch Sugentha Subramaniam’s interview carried on Human Rights Party Malaysia website today. The tears swelling in her mum’s eyes and the pain of discrimination on her face was not unnoticed! Yes! It is that time around again, when we get to hear all the heart breaking stories of Indian students being denied scholarships and university places despite the fact that they are equally bright or far brighter than their Malay counterparts!
Year in year out, for the past twenty years or so, it is the same story! It is an annual phenomenon for the Indian students. Deserving Indian students are denied their rightful places in the local universities. Nevertheless, ironically, Malaysian public universities are offering thousands of places to foreign students from Iran, Iraq, Indonesia, Thailand, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Bosnia, Africa and many other Islamic countries. Many of these students are here on some Islamic scholarships, grants and fellowship awards offered by Malaysian government! Subsequently, there are many Muslim lecturers from around the world in the Malaysian public universities whose places were robbed off the Indians, pushed to the private educational institutions! Where do the Indian students stand in their own soil? What is MIC doing, what is PKR, DAP and PAS doing, GOD knows! I have no words to console Sugentha and many other such bright and deserving Indian students whom have been denied their rightful places in the higher learning institutions in Malaysia.
Who will not be in tears and pain over such blatant educational discrimination in a country that has flourished in every direction possible, except racial equality! No study will be able to examine all the nuances of racial discrimination taking place in the Malaysian education system. Discrimination in education is so blatant on the Indians! From Tamil schools being denied lands to transform them into fully-aided government schools, to denial of university places for the bright Indian students, name it, all forms of educational discrimination is there for them!
Education is one of the many important civil rights issues affecting the Malaysian Indians today! Racial discrimination in education arises from actions of institutions or individual state actors, their attitudes and ideologies, or processes that systematically treat students from different racial/ethnic groups disparately or inequitably.
The effect is detrimental to the lives of the victims as one can imagine! Access to good education is the key to good jobs, quality housing, healthy life and political influence. Such discriminatory policies in education will limit or bock all opportunities for intellectual growth among Indians in all fields! The UMNO-led BN government has very systematically, and very deliberately, written and implemented educational policies to massacre the bright Indian community from flourishing, to subsequently end up as factory workers and private company clerks with yet another form of blatant discrimination to prosper and grow! They will be completely wiped out from the mainstream development in this country in no time soon!
Zafiris Tzannatos (2009) in his journal, “Reverse racial discrimination in higher education in Malaysia: Has it reduced the inequality and what cost to the poor?” reported that in the last twenty years, economic and social policy in Malaysia has been dominated by discrimination in favour of the Bumiputras and against the Chinese and the Indians. The preferential treatment of the Bumiputras is pursued in association with other objectives. In no other area of public policy has reverse discrimination been more acute than in higher education. His paper shows that past and present educational policies in Malaysia have resulted in allocation inefficiency. The prime beneficiaries of such policies have been better-off Bumiputras!
That’s right! The better-off Bumiputras, UMNO Bumiputras precisey!
By definition and purpose, education is the development of human capital towards meeting the individual and social needs of learners and their societies (Apple, Michael W., 2009). Sugentha and many other such bright Indian students with straight As could have well been the most precious human capitals for this country they call home! Alas! Higher education has now become limited to the fiscally advantage portion of the society, the better-off UMNOputras and financially sound Chinese, certainly not poverty stricken Indians! Hence, an Indian student like Sugentha can only dream of becoming a doctor!
The importance of education is clear to people from all over the world. And most certainly, the UMNOputras know the value of good education! Thus, they have hijacked most of the universities’ and other higher learning institutions’ places for mostly Malay-Muslims only! They know, if they allow too many Indians to graduate as doctors, lawyers, engineers, teachers, chemists, scientists, accountants, etc…..they will become too smart to control! It is better to keep them stupid in cow-shade like Tamil schools and block all opportunities for their further education, including derecognising the universities where they are furthering their (medical) studies and denials of loans for courses famous among Indian students!
Education is an essential human right and every child in the world is entitled to it, EXCEPT Indian children in Malaysia. UNICEF strongly believes that education, like all human rights, is universal and inalienable—everyone, regardless of gender, religion, ethnicity or economic status, is entitled to it. It is critical to our development as individuals and as societies, and it helps pave the way to a successful and productive future. Education enhances lives. It ends generational cycles of poverty and disease and provides a foundation for sustainable development. A quality education better equips girls and boys with the knowledge and skills necessary to adopt healthy lifestyles, and take an active role in social, economic and political decision-making as they transition to adolescence and adulthood. In addition, a rights-based approach to education can address some of societies’ deeply rooted inequalities. These inequalities condemn millions of children, to a life without quality education – and, therefore, to a life of missed opportunities.
Indians in this country must wake-up! Wake-up to the reality that good education is not free for their children in this country anymore! They face a very powerful and pernicious discrimination in all areas of education. In Tamil schools, they struggle to get chairs and tables from their own pockets for their children to sit and study, as the UMNO government or MIC, DAP, PAS or PKR couldn’t care less! What more to say on the pathetic land for Tamil schools issue. In secondary, their children need to battle all sorts of racism, from being called ‘Keling / black’ to being slapped or head shaved for some petty offences! Then, if at all they didn’t drop out and pull through, higher education, especially, good courses like medicine, engineering, pharmacy, accounting, teaching, computer studies, English courses, etc. will be just a dream! They can only make it a reality if and only if, they have good bank-balance to finance their children’s education or some properties to sell or mortgage in the bank! Good education is not free for the Indian children, the most disadvantaged, excluded and vulnerable, in this country!
To realise the educational benefits, and to bring about essential structural changes that are necessary to achieve social justice and equal education for the Indian children, Indians must get together and make HRP’s Indian Political Empowerment Strategy a reality! There is no other political party or NGO or social movement that looks into the nuances and nitty-gritty of the educational discrimination on Indians in Malaysia and offers a solution to it as HRP/Hindraf do!
Yes, the ONE and ONLY solution to all these acute discriminations practised by the UMNO-led government is Indian Political Empowerment Strategy! Empower your own selves and elect Indian lawmakers on Indian majority votes and send them to parliament to fight for your rights, failing which, you can kick them off the next time around! Absolutely practical strategy and you, the vast majority Indians, whom the ‘masters’ ought to duly serve, will have the power in your hands, as per the Indian Political Empowerment Strategy! You vote for your own selves!
Education is our unalienable right and we do not need to beg the authorities to give it to us! Nor is it begging to demand our birth rights! Only some so called ‘elite group fools’ will question us on why we are begging the government to help us instead of us helping ourselves by tapping the financial resources readily available from the ‘rich Indians’ whom we have never heard of. Why are they not coming forward to help students like Seguntha? What are they waiting for? Where are they? Who are they?
The truth is UMNO or MIC or DAP, PKR or PAS politicians or any other rich Indians will never care two hoots about the poor and downtrodden Indians nor will they make any effort to amicably solve the critical Indian issues to compensate for the past and present injustices towards Indians!
We have to empower ourselves and pursue our happiness on our own! We do not want any more Seguntha stories! Let this be the last! It is only possible with the Indian Political Empowerment Strategy!
Iraiputran
Year in year out, for the past twenty years or so, it is the same story! It is an annual phenomenon for the Indian students. Deserving Indian students are denied their rightful places in the local universities. Nevertheless, ironically, Malaysian public universities are offering thousands of places to foreign students from Iran, Iraq, Indonesia, Thailand, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Bosnia, Africa and many other Islamic countries. Many of these students are here on some Islamic scholarships, grants and fellowship awards offered by Malaysian government! Subsequently, there are many Muslim lecturers from around the world in the Malaysian public universities whose places were robbed off the Indians, pushed to the private educational institutions! Where do the Indian students stand in their own soil? What is MIC doing, what is PKR, DAP and PAS doing, GOD knows! I have no words to console Sugentha and many other such bright and deserving Indian students whom have been denied their rightful places in the higher learning institutions in Malaysia.
Who will not be in tears and pain over such blatant educational discrimination in a country that has flourished in every direction possible, except racial equality! No study will be able to examine all the nuances of racial discrimination taking place in the Malaysian education system. Discrimination in education is so blatant on the Indians! From Tamil schools being denied lands to transform them into fully-aided government schools, to denial of university places for the bright Indian students, name it, all forms of educational discrimination is there for them!
Education is one of the many important civil rights issues affecting the Malaysian Indians today! Racial discrimination in education arises from actions of institutions or individual state actors, their attitudes and ideologies, or processes that systematically treat students from different racial/ethnic groups disparately or inequitably.
The effect is detrimental to the lives of the victims as one can imagine! Access to good education is the key to good jobs, quality housing, healthy life and political influence. Such discriminatory policies in education will limit or bock all opportunities for intellectual growth among Indians in all fields! The UMNO-led BN government has very systematically, and very deliberately, written and implemented educational policies to massacre the bright Indian community from flourishing, to subsequently end up as factory workers and private company clerks with yet another form of blatant discrimination to prosper and grow! They will be completely wiped out from the mainstream development in this country in no time soon!
Zafiris Tzannatos (2009) in his journal, “Reverse racial discrimination in higher education in Malaysia: Has it reduced the inequality and what cost to the poor?” reported that in the last twenty years, economic and social policy in Malaysia has been dominated by discrimination in favour of the Bumiputras and against the Chinese and the Indians. The preferential treatment of the Bumiputras is pursued in association with other objectives. In no other area of public policy has reverse discrimination been more acute than in higher education. His paper shows that past and present educational policies in Malaysia have resulted in allocation inefficiency. The prime beneficiaries of such policies have been better-off Bumiputras!
That’s right! The better-off Bumiputras, UMNO Bumiputras precisey!
By definition and purpose, education is the development of human capital towards meeting the individual and social needs of learners and their societies (Apple, Michael W., 2009). Sugentha and many other such bright Indian students with straight As could have well been the most precious human capitals for this country they call home! Alas! Higher education has now become limited to the fiscally advantage portion of the society, the better-off UMNOputras and financially sound Chinese, certainly not poverty stricken Indians! Hence, an Indian student like Sugentha can only dream of becoming a doctor!
The importance of education is clear to people from all over the world. And most certainly, the UMNOputras know the value of good education! Thus, they have hijacked most of the universities’ and other higher learning institutions’ places for mostly Malay-Muslims only! They know, if they allow too many Indians to graduate as doctors, lawyers, engineers, teachers, chemists, scientists, accountants, etc…..they will become too smart to control! It is better to keep them stupid in cow-shade like Tamil schools and block all opportunities for their further education, including derecognising the universities where they are furthering their (medical) studies and denials of loans for courses famous among Indian students!
Education is an essential human right and every child in the world is entitled to it, EXCEPT Indian children in Malaysia. UNICEF strongly believes that education, like all human rights, is universal and inalienable—everyone, regardless of gender, religion, ethnicity or economic status, is entitled to it. It is critical to our development as individuals and as societies, and it helps pave the way to a successful and productive future. Education enhances lives. It ends generational cycles of poverty and disease and provides a foundation for sustainable development. A quality education better equips girls and boys with the knowledge and skills necessary to adopt healthy lifestyles, and take an active role in social, economic and political decision-making as they transition to adolescence and adulthood. In addition, a rights-based approach to education can address some of societies’ deeply rooted inequalities. These inequalities condemn millions of children, to a life without quality education – and, therefore, to a life of missed opportunities.
Indians in this country must wake-up! Wake-up to the reality that good education is not free for their children in this country anymore! They face a very powerful and pernicious discrimination in all areas of education. In Tamil schools, they struggle to get chairs and tables from their own pockets for their children to sit and study, as the UMNO government or MIC, DAP, PAS or PKR couldn’t care less! What more to say on the pathetic land for Tamil schools issue. In secondary, their children need to battle all sorts of racism, from being called ‘Keling / black’ to being slapped or head shaved for some petty offences! Then, if at all they didn’t drop out and pull through, higher education, especially, good courses like medicine, engineering, pharmacy, accounting, teaching, computer studies, English courses, etc. will be just a dream! They can only make it a reality if and only if, they have good bank-balance to finance their children’s education or some properties to sell or mortgage in the bank! Good education is not free for the Indian children, the most disadvantaged, excluded and vulnerable, in this country!
To realise the educational benefits, and to bring about essential structural changes that are necessary to achieve social justice and equal education for the Indian children, Indians must get together and make HRP’s Indian Political Empowerment Strategy a reality! There is no other political party or NGO or social movement that looks into the nuances and nitty-gritty of the educational discrimination on Indians in Malaysia and offers a solution to it as HRP/Hindraf do!
Yes, the ONE and ONLY solution to all these acute discriminations practised by the UMNO-led government is Indian Political Empowerment Strategy! Empower your own selves and elect Indian lawmakers on Indian majority votes and send them to parliament to fight for your rights, failing which, you can kick them off the next time around! Absolutely practical strategy and you, the vast majority Indians, whom the ‘masters’ ought to duly serve, will have the power in your hands, as per the Indian Political Empowerment Strategy! You vote for your own selves!
Education is our unalienable right and we do not need to beg the authorities to give it to us! Nor is it begging to demand our birth rights! Only some so called ‘elite group fools’ will question us on why we are begging the government to help us instead of us helping ourselves by tapping the financial resources readily available from the ‘rich Indians’ whom we have never heard of. Why are they not coming forward to help students like Seguntha? What are they waiting for? Where are they? Who are they?
The truth is UMNO or MIC or DAP, PKR or PAS politicians or any other rich Indians will never care two hoots about the poor and downtrodden Indians nor will they make any effort to amicably solve the critical Indian issues to compensate for the past and present injustices towards Indians!
We have to empower ourselves and pursue our happiness on our own! We do not want any more Seguntha stories! Let this be the last! It is only possible with the Indian Political Empowerment Strategy!
Iraiputran
To the critics of Hindraf and Uthayakumar
Haris Ibrahim alleges 'communalism' and was quoted as saying he was particularly turned off by Uthaya's e-mail statement on the shooting of Aminulrasyid.
Looking through the Human Rights Party (HRP) website, I found these statements below; Uthaya's article headlines within inverted commas and my comments added in brackets.
(1) 'No justice for six Indians shot dead by police in one transaction. Policeman shot dead Malay-Muslim in a rare case instantly prosecuted'. [Can readers name another Indian besides Kugan who has been a victim of police brutality? They're largely namelesss to the mainstream media and yet according to Suaram director Dr Kua Kia Soong, 'Indians are a minority in this country but they form the majority when it comes to statistics on deaths in police custody or police killings.']
(2) 'Murder probe for odd Malay youth shot dead by police, criminal tag for hundreds of Indian youths killed by police!' [Exaggerated maybe, but is the 'criminal' tagging true though?]
(3) 'Deputy Home Minister visits Aminulrasyid's home. But zero such visits to any Indian shot dead by police & murder in police custody case.'
(4) 'Shot dead by police Home Ministry panel at work and media headlines. But zero for Indians victims.' [Last November, five Indian youths were shot dead by police in Klang. Of these 'suspected armed robbers' aged between 17 and 24, three were brothers. If you can't picture their mother's grief at three coffins lying side by side, perhaps you might recall the fourth victim's sister who committed suicide by drinking paraquat. Her name was Seetha.]
I won't refute that Uthaya has been race-specific in his crusade to highlight grievances but would it do justice to the real situation if he hadn't, and instead employed a blanket description of 'Malaysian' shot dead?
Kua summed up Suaram's 'Policing the Malaysian Police' 2005 report, a portion of which found, 'The marginalised Indians who make up some of the poorest and most oppressed sections among West Malaysians have been portrayed in a racist light. Yet Indians have been the main victims of racial killings such as at Kampung Medan in 2001, deaths in police custody as well as trigger-happy police shootings.'
Rebutting the 'communalism' accusation generally, R Shan in an earlier article in the HRP website wrote: 'Whenever an Indian issue is raised, it is classified as racist and not as a community issue, even when it is the truth and reality.'
Shan also pointed out that the first case handled pro bono by Uthaya on custodial death was 10 years ago – KL High Court civil suit (SI-21-61-2000) – for Mohd Anuar bin Sharip's family who approached Hindraf as a last resort. Hindraf's next case was the second postmortem of Ho Kwai See who died after eight days in police detention.
In the latter half of its story, Malaysiakini quoted blogger Salahuddin Hisham as saying, 'When you [Uthaya] highlighted the plight of the estate workers, do you know that there are also Javanese and Chinese workers in the estates? There are also the Chinese, Malay, and people of other races who are poor, not just Indians.
I'm presuming the Javanese he mentions are Indonesian. Whereas the Malay First-ers crave a monopoly on victimhood, poverty and suffering, Hindraf's harshest critics are the nationality-loving Malaysian First-ers who discount that race matters.
To Salahuddin's contention that it is not just the Indian community that needs special attention, I would counter that their urgent distress signal is not getting the attention it deserves.
Salahuddin is indeed correct that there are the poor from every community. However, the Malays live on land that belongs to them and they have their kampung to call home or return to, and there is Malay Reserve Land. On the other hand, when the plantations were dismantled, Indians who lost their estate jobs were turned out homeless to become urban squatters. They have not been the beneficiaries of government land programmes such as Felda, Felcra, Risda and others.
Unlike Malays, the Indians have no social safety net and receive little notice or help from the welfare departments. Furthermore, what is the evidence of your own eyes? I see vagrants sleeping on the five-foot way and they have consistently been Indian men.
I see Indian small vendors selling newspapers and sweets, and what they sell in sidewalk stalls fetch meagre profit like flowers and jasmine garlands at RM1 a strand.
I see that road sweepers, car washers and parking attendants are Indians, garbage collectors are Indians (and Indonesians), cleaners and labourers are Indians (and Indonesians). The Indians have been in this land for generations and their status no better than illegal immigrants.
The primarily English-speaking Malaysian First-ers like to think they are superiorly beyond or above ethnicity and choose to hold themselves aloof from Hindraf. They complain that Hindraf is confrontational, abrasive, hyperbolic, sectarian and always talking about Indians alone, plus the clincher – 'Hindraf is racist'.
Nonetheless, I would urge Malaysians to reassess this 'racist' label that they apply so cavalierly as well as to put Hindraf's struggle in proper context.
Our Malaysian constitution has Article 153 guaranteeing the Malay special position and granting quotas. The Umno-led government has since Independence (Mara was established before 1969) unremittingly implemented NEP-like policies that favour solely one race. This race-oriented structure of state has ultimately stranded Indians at the bottom of the heap.
While one may question his methodology like Haris does, still, Uthaya has spent a lot of time pondering on the Indian condition during his ISA detention of more than 500 days.
For his dues paid in Kamunting, surely we can give Uthaya this much, that is to weigh the substance, ie, merit of the argument and not be too distracted by the form. The form of Hindraf is arguably narrow – Hindu Rights Action Front – but then again, people don't similarly demand that Sisters in Islam must take up the cudgels for Christians, Buddhists, Sikhs, etc or fight for men's rights in order to be viewed as inclusive.
I'm well aware that Hindraf does not endear itself to Malaysians who prefer politically correct posturing such as Yasmin Ahmad's huggy-feely Petronas ads or Anas Zubedy's feel-good publicity campaigns. But if Hindraf's critics are really so Malaysian-First, why do they read foremost in English? If one were to read more in Malay, you'd realise how negative and belligerent the stereotyping has been of Indians in our unique 'agama dan bangsa'-permeated environment.
Uthaya reluctantly agreed to came to the BUM gathering – which he already anticipated to be 'hostile' – to try to dispel the entrenched prejudices. What eventually transpired can only convince HRP that they're banging their heads against a wall of indifference.
It's undeniable that Uthaya and his colleagues have alienated even 'friends' (individuals, organizations and alternative media) sympathetic to the Indian cause. This being the case, perhaps we would all be better off going our separate ways whilst minding the Indian saying – 'If you can't help, don't hinder'.
Although Hindraf and its political arm HRP might be unpalatable to you, nonetheless the issues they raise are entirely valid. Once you grasp the gravity of the message, you could perhaps get some inkling as to why the messenger has lost patience with Malaysians. The official set-up of this country assuredly makes us one of the most race-obsessed in the world but it is paradoxically Hindraf and not bumiputera-ism that is taken to task.
Helen Ang
Looking through the Human Rights Party (HRP) website, I found these statements below; Uthaya's article headlines within inverted commas and my comments added in brackets.
(1) 'No justice for six Indians shot dead by police in one transaction. Policeman shot dead Malay-Muslim in a rare case instantly prosecuted'. [Can readers name another Indian besides Kugan who has been a victim of police brutality? They're largely namelesss to the mainstream media and yet according to Suaram director Dr Kua Kia Soong, 'Indians are a minority in this country but they form the majority when it comes to statistics on deaths in police custody or police killings.']
(2) 'Murder probe for odd Malay youth shot dead by police, criminal tag for hundreds of Indian youths killed by police!' [Exaggerated maybe, but is the 'criminal' tagging true though?]
(3) 'Deputy Home Minister visits Aminulrasyid's home. But zero such visits to any Indian shot dead by police & murder in police custody case.'
(4) 'Shot dead by police Home Ministry panel at work and media headlines. But zero for Indians victims.' [Last November, five Indian youths were shot dead by police in Klang. Of these 'suspected armed robbers' aged between 17 and 24, three were brothers. If you can't picture their mother's grief at three coffins lying side by side, perhaps you might recall the fourth victim's sister who committed suicide by drinking paraquat. Her name was Seetha.]
I won't refute that Uthaya has been race-specific in his crusade to highlight grievances but would it do justice to the real situation if he hadn't, and instead employed a blanket description of 'Malaysian' shot dead?
Kua summed up Suaram's 'Policing the Malaysian Police' 2005 report, a portion of which found, 'The marginalised Indians who make up some of the poorest and most oppressed sections among West Malaysians have been portrayed in a racist light. Yet Indians have been the main victims of racial killings such as at Kampung Medan in 2001, deaths in police custody as well as trigger-happy police shootings.'
Rebutting the 'communalism' accusation generally, R Shan in an earlier article in the HRP website wrote: 'Whenever an Indian issue is raised, it is classified as racist and not as a community issue, even when it is the truth and reality.'
Shan also pointed out that the first case handled pro bono by Uthaya on custodial death was 10 years ago – KL High Court civil suit (SI-21-61-2000) – for Mohd Anuar bin Sharip's family who approached Hindraf as a last resort. Hindraf's next case was the second postmortem of Ho Kwai See who died after eight days in police detention.
In the latter half of its story, Malaysiakini quoted blogger Salahuddin Hisham as saying, 'When you [Uthaya] highlighted the plight of the estate workers, do you know that there are also Javanese and Chinese workers in the estates? There are also the Chinese, Malay, and people of other races who are poor, not just Indians.
I'm presuming the Javanese he mentions are Indonesian. Whereas the Malay First-ers crave a monopoly on victimhood, poverty and suffering, Hindraf's harshest critics are the nationality-loving Malaysian First-ers who discount that race matters.
To Salahuddin's contention that it is not just the Indian community that needs special attention, I would counter that their urgent distress signal is not getting the attention it deserves.
Salahuddin is indeed correct that there are the poor from every community. However, the Malays live on land that belongs to them and they have their kampung to call home or return to, and there is Malay Reserve Land. On the other hand, when the plantations were dismantled, Indians who lost their estate jobs were turned out homeless to become urban squatters. They have not been the beneficiaries of government land programmes such as Felda, Felcra, Risda and others.
Unlike Malays, the Indians have no social safety net and receive little notice or help from the welfare departments. Furthermore, what is the evidence of your own eyes? I see vagrants sleeping on the five-foot way and they have consistently been Indian men.
I see Indian small vendors selling newspapers and sweets, and what they sell in sidewalk stalls fetch meagre profit like flowers and jasmine garlands at RM1 a strand.
I see that road sweepers, car washers and parking attendants are Indians, garbage collectors are Indians (and Indonesians), cleaners and labourers are Indians (and Indonesians). The Indians have been in this land for generations and their status no better than illegal immigrants.
The primarily English-speaking Malaysian First-ers like to think they are superiorly beyond or above ethnicity and choose to hold themselves aloof from Hindraf. They complain that Hindraf is confrontational, abrasive, hyperbolic, sectarian and always talking about Indians alone, plus the clincher – 'Hindraf is racist'.
Nonetheless, I would urge Malaysians to reassess this 'racist' label that they apply so cavalierly as well as to put Hindraf's struggle in proper context.
Our Malaysian constitution has Article 153 guaranteeing the Malay special position and granting quotas. The Umno-led government has since Independence (Mara was established before 1969) unremittingly implemented NEP-like policies that favour solely one race. This race-oriented structure of state has ultimately stranded Indians at the bottom of the heap.
While one may question his methodology like Haris does, still, Uthaya has spent a lot of time pondering on the Indian condition during his ISA detention of more than 500 days.
For his dues paid in Kamunting, surely we can give Uthaya this much, that is to weigh the substance, ie, merit of the argument and not be too distracted by the form. The form of Hindraf is arguably narrow – Hindu Rights Action Front – but then again, people don't similarly demand that Sisters in Islam must take up the cudgels for Christians, Buddhists, Sikhs, etc or fight for men's rights in order to be viewed as inclusive.
I'm well aware that Hindraf does not endear itself to Malaysians who prefer politically correct posturing such as Yasmin Ahmad's huggy-feely Petronas ads or Anas Zubedy's feel-good publicity campaigns. But if Hindraf's critics are really so Malaysian-First, why do they read foremost in English? If one were to read more in Malay, you'd realise how negative and belligerent the stereotyping has been of Indians in our unique 'agama dan bangsa'-permeated environment.
Uthaya reluctantly agreed to came to the BUM gathering – which he already anticipated to be 'hostile' – to try to dispel the entrenched prejudices. What eventually transpired can only convince HRP that they're banging their heads against a wall of indifference.
It's undeniable that Uthaya and his colleagues have alienated even 'friends' (individuals, organizations and alternative media) sympathetic to the Indian cause. This being the case, perhaps we would all be better off going our separate ways whilst minding the Indian saying – 'If you can't help, don't hinder'.
Although Hindraf and its political arm HRP might be unpalatable to you, nonetheless the issues they raise are entirely valid. Once you grasp the gravity of the message, you could perhaps get some inkling as to why the messenger has lost patience with Malaysians. The official set-up of this country assuredly makes us one of the most race-obsessed in the world but it is paradoxically Hindraf and not bumiputera-ism that is taken to task.
Helen Ang
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