poobalan.com

If the cabinet is truly serious about addressing the long-standing grievances of the Indian Malaysian community, it should back a proposal for a parliamentary select committee. 

Parliamentary Opposition Leader Lim Kit Siang, who issued this call after earlier mooting the idea, said the ‘committee on the marginalisation of the Indian community’ should have three months to come up with a report.

He described the Hindraf rally in Kuala Lumpur on Sunday, which drew some 30,000 Indian protestors from all over the country, as a “cry of desperation”. 

The rally was in support of a US$4-trillion class-action suit filed against the British government for bringing the Indians here as indentured labourers and exploiting them for 150 years.

“The Barisan Nasional leaders, led by Deputy Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak, should stop their truculent and confrontational responses to the demonstration,” Lim said in a statement today.

“Instead of threatening all sorts of dire consequences against the Hindraf organisers and supporters, the cabinet should acknowledge the legitimacy of the long-standing grievances of the Indian community (which is) becoming the most marginalised group.”

Other ways of showing that the government is serious, he said, is by releasing all 136 Hindraf supporters arrested during the demonstration and not to charge the organisers. 

The government should also hold an open inquiry into allegations of excessive force by the police, which saw water cannon being deployed and teargas being fired during the six-hour stand-off with protesters. 

Urgent issues

In listing the issues that the select committee should address, Lim added that it should be sufficiently empowered to make recommendations on: 

• Increase in the number of Indian youth dying in police custody
• Worsening socio-economic inequality between the Indian poor and rich and between other communities
• Ineffective redress of social ills in the community
• Policy on financial allocation for Tamil schools
• University intake policy, which is a major source of distress for the community
• State unwillingness to help resolve the Maika scandal
• Closure into the Kampung Medan killings, as a public inquiry has not been held into the racially-motivated incident of 2001
• Low-cost housing needs of the Indian poor
• Aggressive displacement of the Indian rural poor due to the breakdown of the plantation economy
• Rampant demolition of Hindu temples and disregard of the religious rights and sensitivities of the Indian community