HRP meets U.S. Embassy & asks for poor Indians: scholarships, Minorities Protection Act, eEnding UMNO racism

HRP meets U.S. Embassy & asks for poor Indians: 100 US scholarships, Minorities Protection Act, Ending Indian statelessness, Ending UMNO racism, US leadership training.
October 7, 2010 // s.jayathas // Ic, B.c, Citizenship, News

No.6, Jalan Abdullah,
Off Jalan Bangsar,
59000 Kuala Lumpur,
Malaysia
Tel: 03-2282 5241
Fax: 03-2282 5245

Website: www.humanrightspartymalaysia.com

Email: info@humanrightspartymalaysia.com

Your Reference :

In Reply :

Date : 7/10/2010

His Excellency Mr. Paul W Jones

Ambassador of the United States of America to Malaysia

U.S. Embassy Kuala Lumpur

Consular Section
376 Jalan Tun Razak,

Fax: 03-21489192

50400 Kuala Lumpur,

Malaysia Email: mariatimy@state.gov

Re: Working for change and for promoting democracy together

Your Excellency,

Thank you for accepting our request and granting us this first meeting today at 3.00pm with your officers led by your Political Counsellor Mr Brian McSeeters.

In the United States of America, only 45 years after the implementation of complete enfrachisement of the US population an African-American and son of a first generation immigrant has become the President of the United States of America. The USA is a role model for what we seek here in Malaysia.

We of the Human Rights Party of Malaysia, even though a fledgeling organization, are on a serious agenda of change to bring about policies and political programs that will ensure democracy in substantial terms. In the process we seek to eliminate a subtle but powerful racist system that is at work today that is hemming in the full potential of this nation.

We know this is not an easy task and we also know that we are not alone in this endeavour.We actively seek to work with parties who wish to promote democratic values and the true agenda of democracy, whose agenda coalesces with ours.

At this preliminary meeting, our objective is to both present our views and seek yours while exploring opportunities for promoting our agenda. We present your goodself herewith, the Human Rights Party’s “2009 Human Rights and Minority Rights report” which sets out in some detail the occurrences of human rights and minority rights violation for all of 2009.

In addition we seek your assistance in a few key areas us in promoting our agenda of human rights and democrarcy.

1) We would like for the Government of the United States of America to establish formal stipulations to the Government of Malaysia in developing ongoing positive relations between the two countries to pass a set of laws for the protection of the Minorities of the country. Without such protection, the Minorities of the country are continuously vulnerable and subject to a subtle but powerful tyranny of the majority. And we expect that, without intervention this tendency will only increase over time.

2) There exists in the country a serious problem of statelessness among a large number of Indian Malaysians. The true extent is unknown but our estimate is that it runs into several hundred thousand Indian Malaysians. The Government of Malaysia ignores this problem, because it serves their narrow interests to maintain staus quo on this matter. Their actions todate are at best nominal.

We of the Human Rights Party want to initiate a study to truly assess the magnitude of the problem. We, are resource constrained to proceed on this matter entirely on our own. We will appreciate some assistance from the US Embassy on this matter so we can resource a study to make a more accurate assessment of the problem, even as we strive to eliminate this endemic problem.

3) A sizeable number of of high performing Indian Malaysian High School graduates are denied appropriate educational opportunities in Malaysian Public Tertiary Institutions because of the slanted racist policies of the Government of Malaysia. They are denied scholarships for study, even though their academic performance easily warrants the awards of such scholarships. The Indian Malaysian students are not granted admissions into the Matriculation stream of Pre-University studies which is reserved almost entirely for the Bumiputras. This stream of study is widely known to be an easier way into the Public University of choice and University course of choice. Worse still the Indian Malaysian students are denied entry into Public Universities that they clearly are eligible for.

We estimate that there will be at least 2,000 such high performing students every year who are denied what in any other country would be considered a basic entitlement. After having made several attempts to redressing this situation locally, we have come to the conclusion that this state of affairs is not going to change in the short term,

We therefore make this somewhat unusual request to the Government of the United States of America to establish a special program of Scholarships for high performing Indian Malaysian High School Graduates for study in Universities in the United States.Our proposal is for about 100 such scholarships per year to be awarded by the Government of the United States of America to these high performing students..

4) As part of our program to develop our capacity to promote our political agenda of change we also seek to develop younger leaders. We seek to provide these leaders with exposure to the larger aspects of public life. In this respect we understand that the US embassy has a USA Visitors program where the US Embassy sponsors individuals for visit to the USA annually. We would like you to consider accepting 5 of our members annually as Visitors to the USA under this program.

We also seek an appointment for us to pay a courtesy call on your goodself on the occasion of your goodselves appointment as the new Ambassador of the USA to Malaysia.

Finally, we thank you for the opportunity to have these discussion with you and also for hearing us out on our requests. We do hope that the relationship will be productive towards the agenda of change and of democracy.

Thank you.

Your faithfully,

W. Sambulingam

President (pro tem)

Human Rights Party of Malaysia