Racial Tensions Rise in Malaysia

Smiles fading between Malays and Chinese

The political aspirations of Malaysia’s ethnic minorities are rising uncomfortably, threatening the country’s delicate racial balance, analysts in Kuala Lumpur say.

The minority communities’ political discontent over 40 years of entitlement programs given to ethnic Malays helped fuel the results of the 2008 national elections that saw the opposition gain power in five states and the federal territory of Selangor.

Existing tensions have been exacerbated in recent weeks by a number of issues, including the suspicious death on July 16 of Teoh Beng Hock, an aide to a top opposition Democratic Action Party (DAP) leader, whose body was found atop a building next to the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission headquarters. He had driven there voluntarily to be questioned over allegations of wrongdoing by his boss. No one saw him fall, but authorities say his death probably a suicide. The incident is only one of many unexplained deaths at the hands of law enforcement officials in Malaysia over recent years, but since the victim was Chinese, racial overtones have become unavoidable.

In addition, the MACC is believed to be investigating an unknown number of DAP lawmakers on corruption charges, leading to allegations that the ruling Barisan Nasional coalition is using law enforcement agencies for political purposes. Barisan figures, however, argue that the MACC is after their people as well.

"If you take UMNO as a perfect 10 on a corruption scale, I'd say that Keadilan and the DAP are at about mid-level," said a Malay businessman. "The triads are part of Malaysian realpolitik and have connections to both side of the political equation, especially when they are in power."

At the same time, the umbrella Pakatan Rakyat coalition, which made stunning gains against the ruling coalition in 2008, is fraying at the edges due to squabbling between the Malay fundamentalist Parti Islam se-Malaysia and the DAP, which is dominated by Chinese, over a variety of issues including an attempt by a DAP councilor to stop a PAS raid on beer supplies at a 7-Eleven, and the destruction of a pig slaughterhouse in the northern state of Kedah.

The infighting has become so intense that Lim Kit Siang, the venerable leader of the DAP, issued a statement warning that the alliance could become a “one-term wonder” if the spat isn’t settled.

Malaysia has existed in an uneasy racial mix since July 1969, when hundreds were believed killed in pitched battles between Malays, who make up more than half the population, and the Chinese, who make up about 25 percent. The Chinese continue to control most of the
country’s economic wealth despite the 1971 imposition of an affirmative action program for ethnic Malays called the New Economic Policy.

Anwar Ibrahim, the opposition leader, has called for an end to the NEP, charging that it has only enriched a handful of rent-seekers and cronies of the United Malays National Organisation.

“Overlaid with the current problems is rising ethnic awareness,” said a longtime political analyst with a Kuala Lumpur think tank. “Hope that a multi-racial opposition would dilute ethnicity in politics hasn’t happened. Instead, the opposite has happened. A group in PAS
feels ignored, or slighted, or exasperated and is now flexing its muscles in Pakatan. And this group finds common ground with UMNO, which is prompting growing rapprochement between the two political parties.”

Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak, who came to power in March, is attempting to pull together what one longtime political analyst called a “Singapore model” — economic liberalization coupled with political authoritarianism. Opposition rallies have been raided or declared
illegal on a regular basis, even down to busting up a birthday party.

The latest occurrence was an announcement Friday by Rais Yatim, the information, communications and culture minister, that the country is considering a “green dam”style Internet filter to stop access to undesirable websites, particularly pornography. Even the Chinese government has backed away from instituting such a policy in the face
of international criticism.

Najib’s tactics appeared to be working at first. He came into office even less popular than his predecessor, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, tarred by a wide range of scandals ranging from allegations of bribery during his stint as defense minister to questions over his involvement in the murder of a Mongolian woman jilted by his best friend. However, his economic policies pulled up public approval sharply for UMNO, the leading ethnic party in the Barisan.

However, continuing public fury over Teoh’s purported suicide cut into Najib’s good news, especially after the water cannons and truncheons came out at a massive (by Malaysian standards) demonstration on July 31 to protest the government’s continued use of the colonial-era Internal Security Act, which allows for detention without habeas corpus. The demonstration drew as many as 20,000 participants; some 600 were arrested amid a haze of tear gas in the crackdown.

“If you’re Chinese you’d like to believe the Malays killed him,” says a lawyer connected to UMNO. “But so many Malays die in police custody. Prior to this, the MACC investigated 22 UMNO MPs and 12 were charged.But as soon as the MACC investigates five Chinese, it’s the MACC targeting Chinese. The DAP has made this into a race issue. No, we have a serious race problem in this country. Perhaps that’s what everybody wanted – push the envelope to see what happens.”

Certainly, there is plenty of envelope-pushing on all sides. In a flamethrowing article earlier this week in the UMNO-owned Malay-language Utusan Malaysia last week, journalist Noor Azam called on ethnic Malays “not to be cowards anymore and rise up to face the challenges being posed by the Chinese and Indians in Malaysia.” The article accused the DAP of manipulating Malay leaders in the Pakatan Rakyat opposition coalition and warned that should it come to power, “Malay special rights and the NEP are no more.” He accused the opposition of stirring race hatred and called ethnic Malays “a race of stupid cowards, and people who are cowards will die before even their deaths.”

The temperature is set to rise higher during expected annual district and regional conclaves for UMNO, when the rhetorical pitch grows more intense. There is spreading anger among Malays over a remark by Jeff Ooi, a blogger and popular DAP activist from Penang, who called Jemaah Islah Malaysia, an Islamic missionary organization, extremist for advocating shariah, or religious law.

“That’s an insult to all Malays,” said the UMNO lawyer. “It’s an insult to all of Islam. All of us Malays would like shariah law.” The question is how the anger will play itself out in yet another by-election. The Pakatan Rakyat coalition has won five of six by-elections since the March 2008 national polls eliminated the Barisan’s longstanding two-thirds majority in the parliament.

On July 31, a PAS assemblyman from the Permatang Pasir district in Penang died of a heart attack. The lawmaker was PAS’s only representative in the Penang state. The by-election, for which the date has yet to be set, will determine whether the Pakatan coalition’s political strength is still rising.

In the most recent by-election, in the heart of opposition territory, the Pakatan candidate won by only 65 votes. Permatang Pasir is part of Anwar’s stronghold. If the opposition loses the seat, or even does badly, it will be an indication that its popularity is declining.





Asia Sentinel

MACC - You cannot operate from a vacuum

The Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) is angry, so I gather, because the Prime Minister has agreed to set up a Royal Commission of Inquiry into their interrogation procedures and methods they employ.

The MACC officers feel that they are not getting the support they believe they have a right to from the Prime Minister. There are two aspects about all of this that really trouble me:

One, on the question of the RCI, the MACC is being unacceptably presumptuous even to think that it has a right to determine whether there is any necessity or need for a group of independent eminent citizens to be appointed to look into the way our anti-corruption boys and girls conduct themselves. Their attitude is symptomatic of a deep problem inherent in the mental makeup of these MACC functionaries who seem to have great difficulty in understanding and accepting their place in the larger scheme of things.

There is also the fear that their much proclaimed professionalism cannot in truth bear close public scrutiny. I can understand their feeling of being abandoned like an unwanted diseased pet or a rag doll after the Teoh Beng Hock affair.

After all, haven’t we, by default, allowed them to develop a culture of their own, one of impunity?

However, circumstances have caught up with them, as they have a habit of doing, and now they are being held accountable for their actions, probably for the first time, and don’t they resent it?

They must now cooperate and support the work of the RCI. My advice for what it is worth is for them to focus on simply doing a better job and not straying into areas that do not concern them. As with all public servants, they have to remember that they must operate within the law because they are, after all, creatures of the law. They must expect the law to apply equally to them.

Another aspect that troubles me is that they expect, as a birthright, government support irrespective of the merit of their case or their actions. I can understand their feeling of being unfairly treated after all these years of doing little chores for the likes of Tun Mahathir Mohamad, Tun Abdullah Badawi and even the current Prime Minister.

This, mind you, is what is perceived by the public, rightly or wrongly, as the principal work of the MACC when they are not out scooping up ikan bilis. I know, of course, that this is not true, but try convincing the public. Perceptions may not have any basis in fact, but they are real.

The MACC must be prepared to put all of its actions under public gaze. We are not interested to know who they are investigating and why, but we have every right to expect them to act in strict adherence to the law, and in faithful observance of the principles of human rights and dignity.

If they have to use force and inflict torture in as part of their investigation procedure, then they are not in the wrong organisation.

I am of an age when I remember quite clearly the Japanese occupation and the methods the Japanese devised to interrogate their suspects. I will not go into any detail, but suffice to say they were not human.

Now, do not get me wrong. I am not suggesting that the MACC interrogators use similar methods, but there again the public perception is that questionable methods have been applied by the MACC. All this suggests that members of the community at large do not trust the MACC to do the right thing by the people they deal with.

Like their counterparts in the police, the MACC is part of the larger community within which they operate. How well they succeed in their assigned roles, duties and functions depends on public support, cooperation and confidence.

As we know, confidence is a fragile commodity. It is not something you can buy off a supermarket shelf. It is difficult enough to earn it, and even more difficult to retain it. People will want to be convinced that their trust will not be misplaced.

On current showing, I fear both the MACC and the Royal Malaysia Police have a lot of confidence building ahead of them.

The police, in spite of claims by the IGP and others to the contrary, have not changed one bit. The Royal Commission that inquired into the police service, for all practical purposes, might as well not have been appointed judging by the outcome.

The police will continue to be regarded, again rightly or wrongly, as an oppressive occupation force. I know this is not entirely true but it is up to the police to prove the public wrong by reversing these negative perceptions by being seen to act properly.

It will not be easy, but under the right leadership, it can be done. Part of the problem with the police leadership culture is that the top echelons of the service are not good listeners; they take criticisms personally.

There is also a highly developed tendency to assume that they know everything there is to know about policing. Being thirty years in the police or any service, merely means doing the same rotten things over and over again for thirty years. It surely is not a good enough qualification to lead a modern service with emphasis on integrity, efficiency and a heightened sense of the rights of the people they have to deal with in the course of their work.

We who pay the piper should be calling the tune, and not the other way round. The Minister of Home Affairs might want to get on the podium and wave the baton, or in this case a really big stick, to keep both the police and the MACC playing to a strict ethical tempo. It would be a nice change for once.

by Tunku Abdul Aziz

Maika Holdings shareholders just want their money back

Yet another protest against Maika Holdings by opposition politicians and shareholders has come and gone with the usual angry confrontation, condemnations, police barricades and submission of memorandum.

By now it is a familiar routine for most shareholders and their numbers have been dwindling over the years. Many are old and infirmed, others have died and some are frustrated by the endless infighting and keep away.

Maika was their ticket to a better life but for all intents and purposes it is now an eyesore.

There is a strong case here for the government to intervene and end the controversy, shareholders said, by doing a due diligence, ascertain the company’s NTA, try to salvage what is salvageable and pay shareholders, if possible, ringgit for ringgit.

“Just return the RM3, 500 I had invested and I would be happy,” said shareholder S. Kalaisundaram, 68.

“We all know it is over for Maika… we know it is dead. But just return the money,” he said at yesterday’s protest. “I have no work, no pension, no children to support me and the money is important.”

“Prime Minister Najib (Razak) should step in and end this controversy once and for all,” he said, expressing the general feeling of Maika shareholders.

Opposition politicians have for years rode on the community’s anger over the failure of Maika Holdings to win support but without offering a solution.

Yesterday’s protest was no different from previous demonstrations since the late 1980s when it was already known that Maika as a business venture had failed.

The protest was in part a tit-for-tat reply by the Pakatan Rakyat to the MIC’s protest against the DAP-led Pakatan Rakyat Penang state government over the Kampung Buah Pala issue.

When the PR protestors, nearly all Indian except for Selangor exco member Ronnie Liu, demanded to know why shareholders have not been repaid, MIC supporters from inside the fenced-off headquarters unfurled banners to question why the DAP had “betrayed” the Kampung Buah Pala villagers.

Both sides had anticipated each other and had came prepared with appropriate slogans and banners.

While they traded insults shareholders like Ramaiah, 78, from Perak, could only watch with frustration from the sidelines.

“They told me this time we could get our money back but we have to show our protest,” Ramaiah said, a retired factory hand who invested RM1, 000.

“It is the same each time… we shout until sore and we go back until the next protest,” he said, urging the government to step in. "All these people are at each other’s throats... what solution can they offer?"

As the confrontation continued outside, Maika Holdings CEO Vel Paari was giving a press conference on the 4th floor office of Maika Holdings, watched on one side by the skeleton staff of the company and on the other, his MIC supporters.

Paari was squarely blaming former MIC deputy president Datuk S. Subramaniam for all of Maika’s woes.

Incidentally his father Datuk Seri S. Samy Vellu was holding another press conference (after a meeting of the MIC central working committee) on the 1st floor attacking Penang Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng for "betraying" the Indians.

Prodded by the press, Paari gave depressing financial figures that showed the sorry state of Maika.

Its debts had ballooned from about RM19 million in the late 1990s to RM63 million as of today because of non-payment of interest, default charges and penalties.

Some of the loans were taken using Oriental Capital Assurance Berhad (OCAB) shares as collateral and one bank, Paari said, has issued a notice for foreclosure.

He agreed there was a danger Maika would lose OCAB if the loans are not settled.

“If Subramaniam had not got the injunction to stop the sale of OCAB in 2006 we would have by now sold OCAB and paid off all the Maika shareholders. I blame Subramaniam for the current mess,” Paari said.

“I had a firm offer of RM1.75 per share and it is all gone now,” he said.

Subramaniam’s Nesa Co-operative had obtained an injunction, still in force, to stop the sale because a higher price could be obtained and to keep OCAB in “Indian hands”.

As part of his campaign to get his team elected in the Sept 12 MIC elections, Samy Vellu is also using the “injunction issue” to attack Subramaniam who has tried to explain the “real” reasons why he went for an injunction.

Paari said “as matters stand now” (financially) Maika is unable to pay shareholders ringgit for ringgit.

Outside the MIC headquarters only a shaky fence separated the two groups that traded insults, unfurled banners and pushed and shoved each other.

Some of the most degrading insults in Tamil were exchanged by the two groups as riot police watched in exasperation.

At the end of the two-hour long confrontation a two page memorandum was handed to Paari, the CEO of Maika Holdings since 1999.

By 1999 Maika Holdings was in shambles, most of its business ventures had failed and it was weighted down by huge loans with only one jewel left – OCAB.

OCAB, Maika shareholders say, survived the rot because it was professionally managed and under the eagle eye of Bank Negara.

The confrontation yesterday was not about the shell of Maika Holdings but it was really about what to do with the profitable OCAB.

But with OCAB’s shares under mortgage and banks beginning to foreclose and with the Indian community wracked by massive infighting and unable to agree on anything much, shareholders are in danger of losing the insurance arm.

“Our only hope now is for the government to intervene,” said shareholder Kalaisundaram.

By Baradan Kuppusamy

Guan Eng washes his hands off Buah Pala after residents reject homes

Penang Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng said today he would have no further meetings with the residents of Kampung Buah Pala after they rejected an offer of a double-storey terrace house for each family.

He said the demand by residents for compensation of RM3.5 million each instead of the double-storey house negotiated by the states was unacceptable.

“Perhaps the residents should ask around to see if Penangites would support their demand.

“We understand their predicament but there is only so much the government can do to help them,” he said today.

The Kampung Buah Pala issue has dogged Lim’s administration in recent weeks after the issue was turned into a racial dispute with Hindraf leaders accusing the state of helping to destroy what they claim was an Indian heritage area.

The controversy took a farcical turn with Hindraf recently saying it had made an appeal to Unesco to revoke Georgetown’s heritage city status for allowing Kampung Buah Pala – a settlement of cowherds – to be destroyed.

Kampong Buah Pala sits on former plantation land which the former colonial owners had given in trust to its former workers to live on when they left the state.

The British colonial government acted as trustees, but the land was signed away back to the state during independence, and the descendents of the original settlers had been allowed to stay on what had become temporary occupational license (TOL) land.

During the previous Barisan Nasional (BN) administration, the land was sold, and the current owners won a court decision recently to evict the villagers in order to develop high-rise apartments.

Lim said today that he believed the Penang public was angry at the latest development in the controversy since the villagers had rejected the offer from the developer.

“Don’t forget we’re trying to offer you a house.

“Now we even have people from Selangor speaking on behalf of the residents. Maybe they can fight for them and demand for a RM3.5mil house.

“Those outsiders, they have their own houses to go back to. Even some of the residents’ association members have other houses,” he said.

Commenting on the residents’ reasons for not accepting the offer, he explained that they appeared to be unhappy with a clause inserted in the proposed agreement which was meant to protect the rights of the developer.

The clause in question states that the agreement would be null and void if it could not obtain the state government’s approval to build the houses.

“If they want to build and the state government does not allow, they will then be sued by the residents.

“Do you think we will reject or revoke building plans for the 24 houses when we are the ones who found the formula to resolve the issue?” he said.

The Malaysian Insider

For MIC, a no-holds-barred campaign for party’s future

An open, bitter and desperate battle has erupted between supporters of MIC president Datuk Seri S. Samy Vellu and his arch rival Datuk S. Subramaniam, who is contesting the deputy presidency in the Sept 12 party elections against Samy Vellu's nominee, incumbent deputy president Datuk G. Palanivel.

The war is being fought between supporters of Samy Vellu led by his son Vel Paari and supporters of Subramaniam led by millionaire businessman and philanthropist Oms Thiagarajan and others in Subramaniam's camp.

The battle, which started last week, is being waged in the pages of the rival Tamil dailies — Samy Vellu’s Tamil Nesan and Subramanian’s Makkal Osai.

The circulation of both dailies has jumped dramatically and readers are having a field day enjoying the juicy revelations of one side against the other.

A lot is being revealed — secret meetings at the PJ Hilton, the death of a young woman lawyer who was a close friend of K. Sujatha, the woman romantically linked with Paari who died after drinking weedkiller.

Plots, sex, murder and mayhem — everything is being freely alleged without caution to legal suits by the rivals camps against each other.

Yesterday, Subramaniam broke his silence by saying that if the mud slinging continued he “would be forced to retaliate”.

Palanivel is keeping a stony silence

At the core of the muckraking is political desperation, MIC insiders said.

For the first time in his 30-year hold on the MIC, Samy Vellu is unsure whether the MIC election results will play out the way he has written it.

“His grip on the party has weakened after March 8, after he lost Sungei Siput and after he lost the Works Ministry he lost the golden pot,” said a former MIC vice-president. “They (Samy and his camp) are desperate… they feel they are losing control and that the election is slipping away.

“You can see their desperation in the way the MIC campaign has turned out — people who criticise Samy Vellu or go against the written script are disciplined, threatened and issued with show-cause letters of expulsion,” the MIC leader said.

“Sometimes disciplinary letters are hand delivered within 24 hours of the alleged offence,” the MIC leader said, citing the case of Kelana Jaya MIC division vice-chairman P. Subramaniam who announced he was contesting as vice-president on Thursday.

He was issued a show-cause letter for alleged tarnishing the party image for saying “we need wise men, not yes-men” in the MIC.

The newspaper war first started when Paari fired the first salvo in the Tamil Nesan on Aug 28 by accusing Subramaniam of being a liar and traitor for taking an injunction (in 2006) to stop Maika Holdings from selling its profitable insurance arm to pay off shareholders.

Paari gave a lengthy full-page explanation arguing that he had a buyer and was able to pay RM1.75 per share until Subramaniam, out of personal avarice, scuttled the whole affair.

While Subramaniam maintained a studied silence over the accusation, his people and others retaliated by saying that Maika was ruined by Samy Vellu and his son and not by Subramaniam or the Subra-controlled Nesa Cooperative that applied for the injunction, which is still in force.

In fact they saved Maika Holdings, they claim.

In another article, Paari fingered Oms Thiagarajan, alleging the Klang-based millionaire had secretly met him at the PJ Hilton and begged him to intervene with his father to "save" Subramaniam and "ditch" Palanivel.

Paari also alleged that Thiagarajan had paid the wages of about RM5,000 a month for P. Selvarani, the lawyer who before her death was working at the legal firm owned by Hindraf founder P. Uthayakumar.

Paari alleged that Thiagarajan "cried "uncontrollably on hearing Selvarani had died and in the process dragged Kapar MP S. Manikavasagam into the controversy, alleging that the PKR MP had begged him to settle "some matters" he had with the police.

Thiagarajan shot back in Subramaniam's Makkal Osai by admitting he had paid Selvarani's wages but denied other allegations like he was the man behind a campaign by Manikavasagam to discredit Paari over Sujatha’s death.

Manikavasagam also waded into the controversy by rubbishing Paari’s claim that he had begged him for help. He also lodged a police report.

Selvarani fell to her death in June 2008 from her 17th-floor apartment in Bukit OUG. She was only 29 and was due the next week to take up a posting with the UN.

Police classified the case as sudden death but in his articles Paari speculated whether somebody could have pushed her down.

The upshot of the week-long muckraking, MIC insiders said, is the fact that Samy Vellu’s campaign is not going as smoothly this time as before.

Samy Vellu has put up his line-up called the “president’s team” and is touring the country to drum up support. Numerous candidates left out are entering the field to oppose his team, including his blue-eyed boy Datuk S. Sothinathan who is contesting for deputy president.

“The rank-and-file mood is ugly against the president’s team,” MIC insiders said, adding various different strands in the MIC have come together to support Subramaniam’s candidature and his upcoming line-up.

The mudslinging, they said, is to be seen in this context.

Thiagarajan was openly using his money, influence and nationwide network to drum up support for Subramaniam, party insiders said, adding this was the reason why he was attacked by Paari in the Tamil Nesan.

“He is a credible person because he financially supports numerous charities, Tamil schools and Tamil organisations,” said Klang businessman and MIC branch chairman K.P. Samy.

“I think his campaign for Subra was effective and that’s why they picked on him… they want to damage his credibility,” Samy told The Malaysian Insider.

The heated campaign and muckraking have just started and are set to get worst ahead of nomination on Aug 22.

Both sides are planning a huge gathering of their respective supporters on that day to show their clout.

By Baradan Kuppusamy

A Heritage Denied Decades of official discrimination have turned Malaysia's ethnic Indians into a disgruntled underclass

Multiracial malaysia has three heritages to celebrate: Malay, Chinese and Indian. In the Bujang Valley in northern Kedah state, Malaysia's Indian roots are visible. An ancient kingdom existed there, of Hindu and Buddhist beliefs, dating back to the 4th century. It was a trading and migration port, within sailing distance of India, and it eventually became part of Sumatra's mighty Sriwijaya Empire. Since the site was rediscovered by explorers in the 1930s, more than 50 temple ruins have been excavated in the valley, making it Malaysia's richest archaeological treasure trove.

But an Indian Malaysian visiting the Bujang Valley might come away feeling demeaned rather than proud-and that would be no accident. The government has spruced up some ruins and built a museum beside them to showcase Bujang's archaeological finds. The ochre ruins are classically Indian in design, neat, dull-and there is nothing to tell the visitor how grand the originals may have been. The museum has Buddhist and Hindu statues behind glass-cows, Ganeshas, lingams-but the official literature does its best to downplay, even denigrate, the Indian impact on the region. A board on the museum wall describes an "old Malay kingdom" in the Bujang Valley that had "contact with various people of different cultural origins and environments." The museum's brochure is even more explicit. It states that maritime trade led to the "indianization" of the Bujang Valley. The indigenous culture, it says "was eventually adulterated."

If that sounds like a wan cheer for Malaysia's Indian heritage, it's a sentiment familiar to most of the country's 1.8 million people of Indian descent. Affirmative action-type quotas for the Malay population, along with a political system controlled by the Malays and Chinese, make many Indian Malaysians feel like third-class citizens. The result is an increasingly aggrieved population, and a timid one, that isn't very happy about its place in society. "I'm not sure I can see a future in this country for my children," says an Indian-Malaysian businesswoman in Kuala Lumpur who asks not to be named. "We'll give it another few years. If things have not improved, we'll leave for Europe."

Race is the big divide in Malaysia, as it has been ever since the watershed race riots of 1969. In his 20 years in power, Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad has tried to uplift the Malays, who make up 55% of the 22 million population, and guarantee them a large percentage of available business opportunities. The second-largest group, the Chinese, were supposed to lose their disproportionate grip on the country's economy. But it may be the Indians who were the real losers. Most were imported a century ago to work the rubber plantations and tin mines, and they still dominate the bottom rungs of the social ladder. "Indians have neither the political nor the economic leverage to break out of their vicious cycle of poverty," says Selvakumaran Ramachandran, an Indian-Malaysian academic who works for the United Nations Development Program. "If their problems are not arrested and reversed, it is almost certain they will emerge as an underclass."

Already, Indians have the lowest share of the nation's corporate wealth: 1.5%, compared to 19.4% for the Malays and 38.5% for the Chinese. Not surprisingly, Indians claim the highest rate of suicide of any community. Violent crime is becoming Indian turf. In 1994, 128 of the 377 murders committed in Malaysia were by Indians. Some 15% of the Indians in the capital are squatters. "I have a feeling," says P. Ramasamy, a political science professor at the National University, "that if something is not done soon, something is going to really blow."

The Indians' main problem is numerical. With only 8% of the country's population, they don't have enough clout to alter pro-Malay business or employment policies, or even stand up to Malay chauvinism of the sort exhibited at the Bujang Valley museum. The Chinese community has a slew of ambitious political leaders. The Indian community's politics are dominated by the Malaysian Indian Congress (mic) and its leader of more than two decades, S. Samy Vellu, who happens to be the only Indian in Mahathir's cabinet.

When the government wants to dispense largesse to the Indian community, it usually does so through Samy Vellu, as a recent scene at mic headquarters demonstrated. Indian parents and their children came to hear Samy Vellu describe a new government scheme for student loans. It was a "very special allocation" made through the generosity of the Prime Minister and the Education Minister, he said. To qualify, families had to earn less than $5,300 a year. A young Indian woman in the crowd admitted that her father made more than the stipulated amount. "Can I still apply?" she asked. "Don't worry," Samy Vellu assured her. "Come see me afterwards and I will make sure you can get it." Obviously impressed with the minister's magnanimity, the crowd of 500 applauded warmly. "Whatever we get," says a senior Indian journalist, "we can get only through the mic. That's how the system works."

One area in which Indians have prospered is the professions, particularly medicine and law, and Indian names stud the rolls of professional societies. Many of this group hail from white-collar families who worked in Malaysia when it was a British colony. Yet even with that background, an Indian Malaysian can find it difficult to become a doctor or lawyer. Local university seats and scholarships to study overseas are all awarded by a racial quota system. Even when someone gets a degree, discrimination is frequent. Indian doctors, for instance, complain that they are increasingly excluded from the lists of approved doctors whom civil servants or company employees can use. "I wish you Americans would invade-just for a while," a small-town Indian doctor tells a visitor. "Then I would have a fairer chance of working in this country of ours."

So far, Indians have resigned themselves to their plight. But some rumbles are being heard. Last October, five Malaysian men were attacked and killed one night in the town of Kampar, 150 km north of Kuala Lumpur. Their charred remains were found in a torched pickup truck. The police arrested 13 cattle ranchers of Indian descent. The ranchers had complained for two years of people poaching their cows, but apparently the local police had done nothing to help. The 13 ranchers have yet to be tried, and poaching has reportedly ceased in that area. The defendants are quietly regarded as heroes among the Indian community. "Malaysia cannot afford to have about 8% of its population feel alienated," warns R.V. Navaratnam, a prominent businessman. "Malaysian unity can be as strong only as its weakest link-which is the Malaysian Indian community."



By anthony spaeth
Bujang Valley
Time Asia