Helen Ang shares her thoughts with us on the Hindraf struggle.
__________________________
Abdullah Badawi says “tell me the truth”. Bollocks!
The archaic, draconian, repressive Sedition Act has been invoked on Indian-Hindu lawyers who are trying to do him some telling.
That the government is now throwing this desperate measure trump card at Hindraf’s legal advisor P Uthayakumar, its chairman P Waythamoorthy and a third Hindraf leader is a very frightening development. It should wake Malaysians from their stupor if nothing else has that’s been happening recently. Will more arrests follow?!
Ten thousand Indians and more had wanted to tell the Prime Minister the truth this Sunday. They wanted to tell him they’re thoroughly fed up with the situation in this country. Just as the Bersih rally a little more than a Saturday ago had told.
Malaysia’s government is afraid that the street demos may be catching. More demos are like falling dominoes. It’ll convince more and more of our countrymen that more and more of us are crying out that the rot is too much and we want to stop it, beginning with putting a brake on Umno’s carte blanche.
And taking to the street seems to be the only way for Malaysians to be heard. Other channels, like mass media, are locked out to ordinary, disenfranchised rakyat.
The PM’s actions certainly don’t indicate he wants to listen.
Instead, his minions slap a restraining order on Other Malaysians whom Abdullah every so often claims he is leader to. He blithely declaims: “I’m PM to all Malaysians”. [Who believes him? Do you? I certainly don’t.]
Police will not allow Hindraf supporters to proceed to the British High Commission on Nov 25. (For a backgrounder on their class action suit which their rally is to highlight, please read my mKini column reproduced here: http://www.indianmalaysian.com/sound/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=683)
Police are making pre-emptive arrests. Police have set up roadblocks to pre-empt out-of-state Malaysians from reaching their destination in KL. Did not the Tun, only not too long ago say this country that he himself presided over for 22 years and brooking no dissent, is a police state?
Police evidently don’t believe Other Malaysians ought to publicly express themselves although the PM’s son-in-law and his Umno cohorts are allowed to do so with impunity and at anytime, it would seem (Read more here: http://blog.limkitsiang.com/2007/11/23/kee-thuan-chye-interview-2-a-culture-of-fearing-the-truth).
Baradan Kuppusamy in his analysis ‘Hindraf – a new force is born’ writes: “For the first time, religion, that is Hinduism, is the rallying cry, not ethnicity or class.” That’s exactly what the Indian guy, Ganesh, sitting beside me told me when I attended a Hindraf forum on Sunday.
I was amidst a sea of Indians at that meeting, held in a jam-packed town hall where the crowd spilled over. The meeting was conducted almost wholly in Tamil so I cannot report on the proceedings but the anger and anguish felt by the Indian community was palpable.
Ganesh told me he cried when he saw how Hindu deities were smashed up by Malaysian enforcement officers. The pictures of the uniformed officers throwing rocks at Hindu devotees are a vivid testament to the ugly face of the Abdullah Administration. Yes, Mr Prime Minister, the buck stops with you.
Nobody in power and in a political position to remedy the Indian community’s most pressing complaints – which are many – is seen to be acting or viewed to be capable of acting. Look at how ‘effective’ Samy Vellu was in Shah Alam recently.
The most painful concern is the utter disregard shown for the Hindu’s religious sensitivities. It is this bleeding, open wound that has prompted the support for this Sunday’s rally which the Government is hell-bent on suppressing.
It is this neglect that has made Uthayakumar a household name and a confrontational force, almost overnight riding on the groundswell of Indian aggrieved sentiments. Baradan is correct in his analysis that “the powerless in society naturally and emotionally gravitate towards any power that seeks to champion their cause and Hindraf is doing just that.”
When Uthayakumar walked into the forum just four days ago (Hindraf was on a national roadshow), he received a standing ovation and thunderous applause. When he left, the crowd jostled around him like he was a Bollywood star.
What a contrast to the reverberating boos in the hall which greeted Samy Vellu when his photograph was projected on screen during the slide show Uthayakumar presented.
But if it is only Indians who feel the hurt, the corresponding indifference on the part of the large whole will widen the chasm between our communities. There is a sense of one underclass and one oppressive class. It turns the battle for legitimate rights into a wholly communal struggle.
Haris says Hindraf is taking a narrow race-based approach and I agree with him. Since People’s Parliament is big on Bangsa Malaysia, shouldn’t we here show more support for our Indian brothers and sisters?
I know Haris has tried and I hope he’ll revive his efforts in this direction that he’s recorded in previous postings I remember reading. There are better ways to go about saving temples (legal and effective methods) instead of resorting todemagoguery.
I hope Haris will revisit his rational strategies and share them with us again.
Yes, a bedraggled Uthayakumar being dragged away by police will rouse the Indians but keeping in sight the ends to be achieved, it is results that we want. Haris notes that if Hindraf were willing to work with the political parties like PAS, DAP and PKR instead of manning the barricades solo, there would be a better chance of the demolition squads being halted.
We need to show that Malaysians of all colours – Bangsa Malaysia – disapprove of the wanton temple destruction. These demolitions, as well as the existence of temples without building permits and the government rendering illegal the temples which are older in years than Malaya, are also symptomatic of a deeper, more complex national problem. Hindraf, for pointing its finger at the government’s race supremacy policies as the root of the problem, is now the target of police action.
There is a gallows humour in the joke that if it’s a Malay problem, it’s a national problem. If it’s a Chinese problem, it’s a racial problem. If it’s an Indian problem, then there is no problem.
Like all biting jokes, there must be some grain of truth in the observation for its bitter sting. Oh how much we, the rest of us, have let our Hindu brothers and sisters down! Instead of waiting for Hindraf to reach out to us, perhaps we could do more to extend our hand to the Indians.
Please, we must ‘do’ more.
The People's Parliament 
Sharing
November 23, 2007
Subject to be Seconded!!
—
HINDRAF,
give everybody a chance to show their concern!
Postpone your Rally
as Everyone do worry
on each and every Hindu
has to be concerned
by Everyone!
Rally can be many forms
take sounding the HORN be one
so can be anywhere
for many many if not every
to join!
one minute or two
will make a SINGLE VOICE
loud & Clear!
Before you pick the time & date
and a good Slogan with WISE,
Please set rules and regulations right,
Residential, hospitals should be out
and ……!
Let PM knows he has to face everyone
from everywhere!
100,000 or more will not be hard!!
Horns with a Malaysian heart!
Paul Warren
November 24, 2007
If they really wanted the Sunday rally stopped, Uthayakumar and the others would not have been granted bail, in the notion that their incarceration would, without leaderhip, halt the rally. But at least two have been let out and the other remains in custody in protest.
My own estimation is that, maybe not 10,000, but it could be less, maybe more, will somehow make it to the British High Commission on Sunday. If they are dressed in their orange attire, then I would also assume that it would be a statement like the one they make when they carry kavadis during Thaipusam. It simply says, that they are ready for sacrifice.
The result of any assault by the police and FRU, whether by chemically laced water canons or tear gas, or worse still, batons, guns and live bullets can contibute towards the first ever massacre on the streets of Kuala Lumpur. I can only imagine a passive congregation of people only too willing to end it all right there.
After all what is there to run to? For many their homes have been ravished and destroyed. The life that they knew once, whether in the estates or in the urban squatters, are decimated and their only hope, their cherished Gods and dieties, trampled and destroyed with no thought for human decency and sensitivity.
Reading what happened at the Giant, Shah Alam, this attitude towards Indians, who probably have to have a certain look about them, has obviosly transcended into the private sector as well.
The police have prevailed on all residents of the Klang Valley and all travelling towards the Klang Valley that the cause of their few hours of misery trapped in long traffic jams is all due to “some Indians” wanting to protest. My good Chinese friends have asked me why give all these problems. I tell them they sound no different from how many Germans would have sounded one time allowing in the mean time Hitler to rise to the heights he did.
Maybe some who actively participated and promoted the BERSHI 10/11 March might think that maybe HINDRAF should have joined forces with 10/11. But then again HINDRAF is driven more by a religious as well as a socio-economic motive that is uniquely prevalent in just that one community. Even among the Indians the experience that HINDRAF supporters would have had living their lives in Malaysia would not have been the same as those Indians from Urbania, affluent Indians of Christian, Muslim as well as many Hindu extracts. As much as I sympathise with HINDRAF’s motives and the drivers that have pushed them to this, I surely have never experienced everything that they have or would have. Yet, in many a conversation with someone of another race, I have many a time encountered the same ignorance, bigotry, prejudice and bias which I brush aside as attributing to idiots I sometimes have to deal with. Fortunatly for me I have the luxury to be able to. I know that for a large majority this luxury does not exist and they have no choice but to suffer the consequence.
The Malaysian Indian very quickly finds out that any respect he gets from other Malaysians has to be earned. I come out of my condo and the Nepalese guard asks if I came to do some work. I drive into a hotel driveway to pick up a resident staying there, the doorman opens the back door for the resident to sit. Whats worse, the door man is an Indian himself, and he thinks I must be the driver. WEll these are my experiences and I can get bloody furious about it. Of course for places like GIANT I suppose, the SOP for their security might be that all Indians who come in must be a potential thief. I cannot but laugh the day when very shortly after I went into one complex alone I soon realised that I was targeted for close scrutiny and was being tailed. I enjoyed taking these guys for a nice long walk for more than an hour, then took a cheap shirt or whatever, and paid for it with my Platinum card! But why target me? I had the look was it? Fitted the profile?
Come off it. We all know HINDRAF is not getting anywhere with its suit against the BRITISH Government. Neither are they going to go anywhere with their petition to the Queen. It is all about embarassing the Malaysian Government. Isn’t CHOGM on in Uganda? Will Abdullah Badawi be there? Nice time to embarrass him isn’t it? What more, everyone attending CHOGM will know exactly what its all about without needing to be briefed on whats really happening. Now, I didn’t know that embarrasing the Malaysian Government is suppsed to be a crime. But I shall stand corrected if anyone tells me so. But then again, we just have to leave it to our idiotic UMNO leaders to put Malaysia on a permanent state of embarrassment every time they open their mouths. So I guess HINDRAF would have a good defence here.
I hope nothing untoward happens on Sunday. But something needs to happen. More than the UMNO led government I would say that it would be Samy Velu and MIC that would not want HINDRAF to succeed. Indeed HINDAF’s headlines grabbing position in the last few days must surely give Samy Velu nightmares he has not had in a long time. How can any other Malaysian Indian or organisation outshine Samy Velu and MIC respectively? It would be in Samy Velu’s interest to see that this rally becomes unrully and becomes violent so that HINDRAF can be neutered and banned and its leaders incarcerated. I will not be surprised to see many faces that appear at the rally and who might, if any, be the cause of any untoward incident, be the same ones that popped up at the MAIKA AGM. I hope there will be enough cameras out there to take pictures of these guys to be posted on the net so that we can compare them to those at the MAIKA AGM.
To all those who manage to get there to Jalan Ampang in the vicinity of the British High Commisssion on Sunday, my prayers are with you. Not that I condone whatever it is you might do. But I shall try to understand and not dismiss it. My best wishes.
Dominic Tan
November 24, 2007
Dear Paul,
A very well written comment, in which I can see a lot of thought went into it.
I fear for this Sunday’s rally. I pray that nothing untoward will happen, but I am not hopeful.
I fear that the government will come down hard on the rally using their usual methods and put the blame squarely on the participants. The Government is getting desperate, and the last Bersih Rally proved a sore point to them.
Your points about religious persecution are valid. All of us who aren’t Muslim suffer from it, in one form or another in this country. However, due to the socio economic standing and the majority of our Hindu brethren, it is way more, because of the “inability” to fight back.
I also see your points on racist nature of our society in regards towards our Indian Malaysian brothers. (The emphasis on Malaysian, rather than Indian)
I too, will not be there at the British High Commission on Sunday. Am I afraid that something “bad” will happen? Perhaps…but then again I was also afraid that something “bad” could have happened at the Bersih Rally, but yet I overcame my fears, and I was there.
If I were to examine my reasons for not going it would have to be this. “Rightly or wrongly, I have the impression that this rally is organized along religious and racial lines. To my knowledge, Hindraf has not tried to work with other civil organizations (but i realise I could be mistaken). When we work along religious and/or racial lines in isolation, we will only perpetuate the racial and religious divide our country seems to suffer.
I was there at the candle light vigil for Revathi. But it was a multi religious affair in the sense of the organisation of it.
My prayers are for this Sunday.
Birdseye
November 25, 2007
“Since People’s Parliament is big on Bangsa Malaysia, shouldn’t we here show more support for our Indian brothers and sisters?”
I’m hopeless at splitting hairs so I really do not care if it concerns just one race or one religion. I will show support if I judge there to be a grievance and planned action is a sensible one.
So, do the Indians have a case about being marginalised and not getting a fair shake? Most definitely. But the problem I have with this rally is how do I support an action that will go nowhere? I will gladly join a rally to encourage people not to support the non-performing (for decades) MIC or MCA, but to sue the British government with no (zero, nada) chance of success? I can see the embarrassment factor but that’s not going to help our Indian friends.
It seems to me the only logical complaint that we may now make is that we did not get whom we voted for. And that is simply not the case; we thoroughly deserve who we voted for!
Instead of wasting time going nowhere, let us spend our time (and it’s running out) figuring the best way to have people who can represent out interest well and do what is best for this country to sit in the next Parliament. The Blogs must unite for this cause.
Boycott the MSM for starters! Use the blogs to promote candidates willing to fight for what’s best for this country. Organise a brainstorming session at the next Bangsa Malaysia forum or even over teh tarik at mamak shops that sell the Sun for 30 sen.
ash
November 25, 2007
The things that we see here today that has taken place in klcc and batu caves proves the rally is worthy of its cause. The rally to submit the memo to the British Embassy did not succeed as it was expected however the message is definateldy conveyed to the world MALAYSIA is not what it proclaims to be!
Helen Ang
November 25, 2007
Birdseye,
You’re on. Since I’m the one with past experience in mainstream media & now a soapbox in alternative media, i’m now seriously putting my mind to the boycott brainstorming & action plan. The MSM spin on Hindraf is sick!