Fearless Indians fight for rights (Malaysiakini)

by K Kabilan (from Malaysiakini)
Nov 26, 07 4:17pm +0800 GMT

“Let’s see how makkal sakti (Tamil for ‘people power’) works now,” was Hindraf chairperson P Waythamoorthy’s reaction, just after he and two other key leaders were arrested 48 hours before the rally planned by the Hindu Rights Action Force (Hindraf).

And on Sunday, the people - almost all from the Hindu community - responded impressively by taking part in the rally which attracted an estimated 30,000 from all over the country.

Waythamoorthy (right) and his brother Uthayakumar (left)are the prime movers behind Hindraf. Apart from often being the first to react with a grassroots presence whenever an incident involves the community, they have also held a successful nationwide roadshow to remind Indians of their rights.

In the process, Hindraf has tapped the anger within the community, and it was shown by those who participated in the rally and the thousands of others who were prevented by the police from entering Kuala Lumpur.

The real heroes, though, were the protesters.

This was a crowd which is angry with the way Indian Malaysians are being treated. They are fed-up with being downtrodden. They are frustrated with being treated as third-class citizens in their own country.

So, they had no hesitation about accepting Hindraf’s invitation to come to Kuala Lumpur to express their anger despite the prior warnings issued by the polic and political leaders - and in defiance of a restraining order that could see them jailed for contempt of court.

As many told Malaysiakini, the most recent demolition of a Hindu temple in Klang was the catalyst for their presence.

‘Hear our voice’

Many of the protesters were out-of-towners. They have been deprived of a forum and the opportunity to say their piece. Many are also MIC supporters, now with full regret that the only Indian-based party in the Barisan Nasional has been helpless in stopping temple demolitions.

“This is the end. We have come here to protest against how the government treats us. They can beat us today. They can put us in prison. We don’t care. We want to tell the government that we are fed up,” said 52-year-old S Aiyakannu from Old Klang Road.

His son Palani led a three-bus convoy from up north.

“For us, it is like a life or death situation. If our voice is heard today, good. Otherwise, this frustrated community will have to show that we can’t be taken for a ride at all time,” he added.

Others shared his sentiments. Many have not seen Waythamoorthy or his brother Uthayakumar but have heard of their movement to mobilise the community fo the rally.

“We have had enough of this bad treatment. They (government) can’t push us any lower. This is the limit. I am not here to support Hindraf’s suit against the UK government but I want to be here to show my anger,” said K Suresh from Sungai Petani.

The majority of the crowd was well-behaved, showing expected grit in the face of the heavy police presence and eventual use of water cannon and tear gas.

Every time they were sprayed with chemical-laced water and tear gas, they retreated only to come forward, in a bigger number.

Many carried posters of Mahatma Gandhi to symbolise their pacifist stand, and carried none of the banners and posters usually associated with political rallies.

The protesters gathered at about nine locations around Jalan Ampang and the KLCC . Every time they were stopped from marching forward, they would disperse and regroup at another spot. (See map below)

At times, they even managed to disperse and regroup behind the police line, forcing the FRU trucks and street personnel to turn around or alter their positions.

Ready for battle

Eyewitnesses say that reports of protesters hurting the police are exaggerated. In most spots, it was the other way round with the protesters taking the brunt of tear gas and chemical-laced water.

While no one disputes that police response had initially been retrained, the kid gloves came off the moment they started arresting the protesters for breaching the court order that banned the rally. Some were dragged along the road and hurled into waiting police trucks.

Even as they were being arrested, many submitted without resistance or complain. One old man was heard saying that he was proud to be arrested over a cause for his community.

Similar sentiments were heard when the protesters were hit with water and tear gas.

“We are people who work hard to live. We don’t work in air-conditioned offices like the KL people. We work under the sun and rain. We are hardy. Let them hit us with anything. We will stand still,” said Raman, a bus driver from Batang Berjuntai, Selangor.



Comical moments

Although emotions sometimes ran high, there were some light-hearted moments at the expense of the police, which lifted the spirits of the protesters.

On one occasion, police fired rounds of tear gas at their own men, totally missing about 1,000 protesters standing in the vicinity.

Seeing the men-in-blue running helter-skelter brought them joy, as much as seeing a Caucasian jogging in the middle of a stand-off between protesters and the police, oblivious to the tension around him!

The police did their best to disperse the crowd. After realising that tear gas, water cannon and arrests were not doing the job, they started telling the protesters that Hindraf leaders had submitted the memorandum as planned to the British High Commission.

They also said that Hindraf leaders had called for the protesters to disperse.

The protesters however were not buying any of this, telling the police to just let them march to the high commission and disperse from there.

“Never mind about the memorandum. Just let us walk peacefully right up to the high commission,” said a young man who was soon arrested for breaching the court order.

By the end of the six-hour cat-and-mouse game, it was the police who grew tired. Towards the end, they only concentrated on protecting their cordon around the high commission.

Wake-up call

One thing is sure. This was not a political protest. This was a protest against the marginalisation of the Indian community. It was a case of the community hitting the streets because they have no where else to take entrenched problems.

The show of force must surely be a wake-up call, not just for the community but also for MIC and the government.

Government leaders and the police can insist that the gathering was illegal but an overwhelming people power proved on Sunday that sentiments on the ground should not be neglected.

The Hindraf rally was the second mass protest this month - after the Bersih rally on Nov 10 - and the third if we include the lawyers’ ‘Walk for Justice’ in Putrajaya last month.

The protesters on all three occasions had no fear whatsoever in making their stand - and at each event, the police could not find a definitive tactic to put them off their purpose.

If the momentum continues, the people power as envisaged by Waythamoorthy, could well lead to changes that are long overdue.

A Gandhi-inspired mass civil disobedience (Malaysiakini)

(from Malaysiakini)
Andrew Ong
Nov 25, 07 5:38pm +0800 GMT

Hindraf legal advisor P Uthayakumar, has declared the movement’s rally today “a success” despite not being able to hand a petition to the British High Commission.



In addressing one of the last large group of Hindraf supporters to disperse from the rally, Uthayakumar, who is Hindraf’s most recognisable face, said the Indians had succeeded in sending their message regardless of the status of the petition.

“Despite the police attempts to torture us, we still manage to gather peacefully as united Indians. We have succeeded, the police have failed,” he told a crowd of nearly 2,000 supporters who clap and cheered whenever he finished a sentence.

Tear gas and chemical-laced water were fired on Hindraf supporters who defied police orders to disperse from the banned rally for nearly six hours.

Crowds comprising of Indians from all over the country have gathered today in support of a class-action suit against the British government for bringing the Indians here as indentured labourers.

Many observers have noted that the petition part of a new movement aimed at empowering the Indian community - the third largest yet among the poorest ethnic groups in Malaysia – in giving a voice to their discontent.


Emulating Gandhi

Numerous Hindraf supporters wore saffron headband or T-shirts. Dozens more were wearing a portrait of Indian independence activist and pacifist, Mahatma Gandhi.

Like Gandhi, the Hindraf supporters were out to show mass civil disobedience and it was prominently shown by a crowd of almost 5,000 near the Hotel Maya at Jalan Ampang.

For at least five times, the crowd would run helter-skelter at each ‘water canon charge’, only to defiantly claim back their original positions, chanting “We want justice!” in both Tamil and English.

A Tamachelvy, from Klang, told Malaysiakini that she, along with her 60-year-old father, attended this rally after hearing about the spate of Hindu temple demolitions.

“We felt very hurt after watching VCDs about how the government would destroy our temples. We are Malaysians but our government treats us like foreigners,” she said.

Tamachelvy, like many other Hindraf supporters, said that the government ban on the rally was unjust, as they have limited means to collectively voice their grievances.


Police exercise ‘restraint’

Meanwhile, the police exercised their duties with obvious signs of restraint, when compared to the many past brutal crackdowns on public dissent.

At about 8am today, police issued repeated warnings to a group of roughly 2,000 Hindraf supporters who had gathered near Plaza Ampang along Jalan Tun Razak, a stone’s throw away from the British High Commission.

Each of these warnings went unheeded, resulting in the crowd being showered twice with water.

But when a third warning was ignored as well, the police fired streams of chemical-laced water at the protestors - many of them seated - before sending in plainclothes police personnel to arrest several dozen Hindraf supporters.

There were several reports of police personnel beating Hindraf supporters.

However, inspector-general of police Musa Hassan told Al Jazeera in a live telephone interview that the police had exercise restraint in controlling the crowd.

“We were restraining ourselves not to use force. There was no body contact,” said Musa, who was heavily rumoured to have overseen police operations in a helicopter.

More than 400 detained

It is believed that the police - a Muslim-Malay majority outfit - had intentionally restrained themselves to avoid turning the event into a racial clash.

Unlike previous demonstrations, media personnel also expressed appreciation over the police’s directive specifically for the media to get out of harm’s way when they take action.

According to the Bar Council team of observers, police detained more than 400 people during the rally today.

Lawyer Edmund Bon told Malaysiakini that more than 400 people are being detained at the Jalan Semarak police academy (Pulapol) while at estimated 69 others are detained at the Kuala Lumpur police contingent headquarters.

“(At about 3.30pm) they finally allowed us in at Pulapol to see the detainees. The police have promised to feed the detainees and release all of them this evening,” he said.

Ethnic Indians protest in Malaysia (Al Jazeera)

(from Al Jazeera)


Malaysian police have used tear gas and water cannons against a street protest by thousands of ethnic Indians in the capital, Kuala Lumpur.



Many ethnic Indians have complained that they are marginalised in terms of employment and business by a government dominated by politicians from the majority of ethnic Malays.

Malaysian authorities had already cracked down violently on a protest that was critical of the government earlier in November.

Hamish MacDonald, Al Jazeera's correspondent in Kuala Lumpur, said: "Ethnic Indians are one of the minority ethnic groups in Malaysia. These people believe they are given a raw deal by the government.

"The Malaysia government has laws which favour the Malay Muslim majority, and the ethnic Indians feel that they are not represented properly.

"They tried to hand over a petition at the British High Commission this morning, because they feel that this disadvantage goes back to the colonial days.

"Since then the protest has moved towards the city centre and turned violent.

"The police have fired water cannons and many, many rounds of tear gas into the faces of the protesters. The protest has since turned into a street battle," he said.

Warnings

Protesters denied official warnings to stay away from the planned rally in the capital, which had been organised by a Hindu rights group to draw attention to complaints of government discrimination against the minority ethnic Indian community.

Witnesses said Indians had regrouped a few hundred metres from British High Commission to call on the former colonial ruler to make reparations for bringing Indians to Malaysia as indentured labour just over a century ago.

A lawsuit filed recently seeks $4 trillion in compensation for the estimated two-million ethnic Indians whose ancestors were brought over to Malaysia as labourers by Britain in the 1800s.

Ethnic Indians make up about 7 per cent of the population.

Forming 60 per cent of the nation's 27 million people, ethnic Malay Muslims make up the majority group, while 26 per cent are Chinese.

10,000 Hindraf protesters rally in KLCC (Malaysiakini)

(from Malaysiakini)
Nov 25, 07 10:22am

About 10,000 protesters demonstrated under the shadows of Kuala Lumpur’s iconic Twin Towers after their efforts to petition the British High Commission was thwarted by the police with tear gas and chemical-laced water cannon.

The protesters had attempted to gather outside the high commission early this morning but thousand were pushed back by the riot police to outside a two-kilometre radius of the venue.

However, the protesters later joined the another crowd gathered in Kuala Lumpur City Centre (KLCC) which surged to between 10,000 and 15,000 by 9.30am.

The protesters – a mix of young and old Indian Malaysians from all parts of the country - were addressed by Hindraf leaders, including P Uttayakumar.

Meanwhile, the police are firing tear gas and chemical-laced water into the defiant crowd every 10 minutes. Each time, the crowd retreated and then surged forward.

'This is outrageous'

Hindraf leader A Sivanesan condemned the police for turning Kuala Lumpur into a war zone.

"Things are getting out of hand. We blame the police. They have beaten women and children. This is outrageous," he told Malaysiakini.

"But this will not stop us from submitting the memorandum and we will try to find a way to do that."

Lawyer Haris Ibrahim, who is leading at 10-member Bar Council monitoring team, was stunned by the heavy-handed police action against the protesters.

"We're not happy with the way the police are handling the crowd."

DAP member of parliament M Kulasegaran was also upset with the crackdown.

"Over the last 50 years Indian have been marginalised in this country. And we now want the same rights as enjoyed by other communities," he told AFP.

"They have no right to stop us from protesting today. This is the will of the people," he added.

Petition to Queen Elizabeth II

The planned protest is to support a lawsuit by the Hindu Rights Action Force (Hindraf) against Malaysia's former colonial power for bringing Indians to Malaysia as indentured labourers and exploiting them for 150 years.

Furthermore, the suit sought a declaration that the Reid Commission Report 1957 failed to incorporate the rights of the Indian community when independence was granted, resulting in discrimination and marginalisation to this day.

The quantum being sought is about US$2 million for every Indian currently residing in Malaysia.

Following the filing of the suit, Hindraf held nationwide roadshows explaining to grassroots about the case.

Coupled with their work to prevent rampant state-sanctioned demolition of Hindu temples, Hindraf won over a wave of support for their cause.

Today's memorandum was to petition Queen Elizabeth II to appoint a Queen's counsel to argue the case on their behalf.