(see www.indianexpress.com 28.2.2011)
Police arrest a member of Malaysia’s Human Rights Party during a protest in Kuala Lumpur. Reuters.
Malaysian police on Sunday arrested 109 members of a group linked to a banned Hindu rights outfit of ethnic Indians for participating in a rally here to protest the introduction of a controversial book in the country’s school curriculum.
Those arrested belonged to the Human Rights Party (HRP), an offshoot of the outlawed Hindu Rights Action Force (Hindraf). Later, 101 activists were released by the authorities. However, eight others, including P Uthayakumar who heads the HRP, were still being investigated. “They will be freed once the investigations are completed,” police said in a statement here.
The protesters, mostly ethnic Indians, were against the introduction of the Malay language novel Interlok in the senior school curriculum. A section of the minority community, including the Malaysian Indian Congress (MIC) — the country’s largest ethnic Indian political party, believes the book contains offensive words like ‘pariah’ which they say connotes a caste system that they claim does not exist.
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