MIC Urges Indians To Ignore Protest Rally To Highlight Racial Discrimination

The MIC today advised the Indian community against joining an illegal rally expected to be held here on Sunday purportedly to champion their cause.

The party's secretary-general, Datuk Dr S. Subramaniam, said the non-governmental organisation planning the rally was only interested in playing on their emotions to garner the community's support in the next general election.

"The NGO has disseminated SMS for over a week on the gathering, saying it would change the fate of Indians in the country. They claimed in the SMS that the Barisan Nasional (BN) government did not endeavour to resolve the problems of the Indian community, and cited Tamil schools and Hindu temple construction as issues.

"They are merely trying to fan the emotions of the Indians and get them to hate the government and create chaos which can undermine peace. The MIC asks the Indian community not to believe the SMS because it was disseminated merely to cause uneasiness among the Indians," he told a news conference at the lobby of Parliament House.

Subramaniam said the illegal gathering, purportedly to be held in front of the British Council, would allegedly culminate in the handing over of a memorandum to the British government seeking its help to sue the Malaysian government for allegedly failing to take care of Indians in the country.

Meanwhile police in Seremban raided the office of lawyer and Hindu Rights Action Force (Hindraf) head P. Waythamoorthy at Kemayan Square yesterday for allegedly possessing seditious materials. The 10-man team arrived at Waythamoorthy’s office at about 3.30pm and spent more than an hour searching for documents. Waythamoorthy said the police had a search warrant, but the raid was an attempt to intimidate him and others not to attend a mass gathering this Sunday outside the British High Commission. Waythamoorthy said the policemen took away several documents from his office including copies of letters he had written to the United Nations secretary-general, the Prime Minister and the Inspector General of Police on matters relating to the plight of the Indian community. He said the police also took photographs at this office, adding that this was not provided for under the warrant conditions. His brother Uthayakumar’s office in Bangsar, Kuala Lumpur, was also raided at the same time. City CID chief Senior Asst Comm 11 Ku Chin Wah said: "The raid follows a report lodged by a civilian at the end of July regarding a book deemed to be seditious." (Bernama, The Star)

***** My, my! What super efficiency the police is all of a sudden displaying. The handing over of a memo is not in itself a big deal. It can be done by a few people or by a huge crowd of protesters.

But the way the government is going to handle this small problem is one issue. Are they going to clobber the demonstrators into submission and disperse them brutally? After all they're 'only Indians' who don't have much clout anyway. There's a big difference between 30,000 PAS supporters and a ragtag group of discriminated and deprived Indians.

While the British government can do precious little to help this down-and-out community, the very handing over a note of appeal to a foreign mission has immense political significance. It can be construed as a slap on the face for our kerajaan because a section of the citizens of this once fair land called Malaysia has so totally lost confidence in the government that they have to desperately seek the help of our erstwhile colonial masters.

I personally feel that nothing much will come out of it, but it is a good move. The protest explicitly implies that even powerless Indians won't continue taking the cruel practice of apartheid lying down. The community is fed up with the stale propaganda without substance being spread year in and year out by the MIC, on behalf of its racist abang, Umno.

The BN can forget about Indian votes in the next general elections. What difference does it make to the poverty stricken Indian if there are any MIC reps in the government or not? Of what use has this political party been thus far, except to enrich the leaders and their cronies? If in the process of exercising their voting rights rationally, they contribute to the defeat of a couple of Umno candidates in marginal areas that would be sufficient retribution for the way that the leadership has been treating them these past few decades, and will send a strong message that the government cannot take Indian votes for granted while steadily and unconscionably impoverishing them in the name of leveling the playing field.
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