I made it a point to attend the gathering organised by HINDRAF (Hindu Rights Action Force) to hand over the 18-point memorandum produced from a forum held recently in KL. It was supposed to be at 10am today (Sunday August 12th) at the PM's residence in Putrajaya. Partly to see the support of the community and also to take some photos (view them at the end of the article.)
I reached the PM's residence at Precinct 10 at 9.20am only to find it very quite, just as it was supposed to be on a Sunday morning! Then it crossed my mind that the organisers possibly got confused with PM's residence and office. So, I rushed off to Dataran Putra. Reached it in 10 minutes time. There were a handful of people, probaby numbering around 50 only. They were gathered at the shady area between the mosque and PM's office. The organisers were using a hailer to get people to register themselves. There was a chartered bus dropping of some of the participants.
The weather was not hot due to the hazy conditions. As the clock ticked, the crowd began to swell. The dataran is a popular tourist destination, thus there were about 100 – 200 curious onlookers wondering what was going on. By 10.30am, the crowd could be easily about 500-600 people. The organisers began to hand out banners and posters to the crowd, and try to marshal them into position at the roundabout exit towards the PM's office. By this time, the police were alerted, and some of the crowd control officers began to line out outside the entrance to PM's office complex.
By 11am, the crowd has doubled to about 1200 people. There were rumours that the police had blocked the roads leading towards the dataran and some 10 bus are unable to reach the location.
The event proper started with a prayer, after which the organisers explained the purpose of the gathering today, which was to hand over the 18-point memorandum to PM. Unfortunately, as it was made known, the PM is away. This was followed by slogan chanting and singing of motivational songs. The media had a field day covering the event. I think few foreigners representing Al-Jazeera, and possibly BBC was there as well. Saw Nanban and MKini people too. There were also plainsclothes police mingling with the crowd, taking photos and video as well.
The organisers the explained that the crowd will march from the entrance of the PM's office and walk one round around the roundabout. Before beginning, the media was invited to take photos of the crowd with the PM's majestic office complex as the background.
The walk took about 30 minutes, by which the crowd has become about 1500 people. The roundabout were full of cars on both sides, which made the march slower. The crowd made their way around the roundabout and came full circle at the entrance to PM's office again. The crowd marched until they were about 15 metres from the gates, and separated by a row of police personnel. The crowd were then asked to sit on the pavement, while the organisers read out the details of the 18-point memorandum which included among others:
– tamil schools to be made full government-aided
– increase participation of senior government officials to 20% of the positions available
– allocate permits for taxi, lorries etc
– to allocate land for agriculture for indians
– to stop temple demolition
– to provide equal rights in all areas
– minimum wage of RM1000
– to provide proper housing for the poor.
– to help all poor families with racial barriers.
– to enact a minorities rights protection act.
– to initiate a royal commission on rights violation.
– to end special privileges.
– provide RM1million compensation for each dead person's family in the Kg Medan Massacre
I didn't not manage to catch all the points since the hailer was not powerful enough to reach the crowd. Copies of memorandum was being sold and quite a number bought them for RM5 each.
The organisers also highlighted that for the pass 50 years, no one had fought for the Indian communities’ rights. The politicians had failed the communities, thus it is up to the community to fight for itself. They also highlighted that for the last 200 years, Indians has toiled in rubber estate and railway tracks to develop the country, but in return only got displaced and rewarded with low-cost houses or longhouses, and pitiful amount of cash, compared with the FELDA schemes which receive millions in allocations. The talk on various discriminations went on for about 15 minutes.
While the talk was going on, the organisers were informed that the police will send an Indian policeman to receive the memorandum, but this was rejected by the organisers. They mentioned that they had already sent a letter to the PM informing about the gathering and since the PM had many assistants and political secretaries, he should have assigned one to be there. In the end, one of the secretaries, Hj Ahmad Yaakob came out accompanied by about 20 security officers and received the memorandum at about 12.30pm. Good thing he did, because it was getting cloudy and skies were turning dark. The organisers announced that they have asked for a meeting with the PM within a week before 31st August to discuss the memorandum. The crowd then dispersed as it started to rain.
Overall I think the police did not expect such a big crowd on a Sunday. It really made an impact as there were many media representative as well foreign and local tourists. The organisers could have provided maps or clarified about the venue so that a bigger crowd could have come. I think some were like me and went to PM's residence instead of the office. This kind of event should be organised regularly to build a stronger voice for the community. I was surprised with the crowd since my expectation was about 1000 people only, but the whole place was crowded. This will definitely make some of the political parties squirm in their seats.
The rakyat have realised that without making some noice or getting the media involved, nothing works. We have seen the protest in JB about increasing crime rates. We have seen people picketing on being cheated by property developers. We have seen many environmental issues being highlighted. So, I'm not surprised that we are going along the path of the developed countries who see public demonstation as a way of getting the governments' attention.
View the photos at Picasa
Update: More photos taken by organisers here and videos at YouTube and MKini too.