27th February 2011
Human Rights Party chief P Uthayakumar has been arrested after he said members would go through with a planned rally to demonstrate against ruling party Umno’s racism despite a police ban.
“Uthayakumar arrested at 8.00 am from his house as we were leaving for KLCC. He has been taken to the IPK police station in front of Jalan Hang Tuah,” HRP leader S Jayathas wrote in a message sent out on Facebook.
On Sunday, HRP members had planned to march from Jalan Sultan Ismail to the KL city centre, where they were to lodge a police report at the Dang Wangi district police headquarters against Umno for its 'racism'.
Jayathas had said his party hoped to attract “two or three thousand” supporters to protest the “institutionalised racism in Malaysia for the past 56 years”.
“The Indians are systematically denied minority rights. Malaysia is the most racist country in the world. Apartheid has already ended in South Africa but we still have it in Malaysia. We're not asking for special rights but we just want equal opportunity,” said Jayathas.
Panic button
Yet what probably caused the police to press the panic button was the message below that was widely circulated on the Internet and through social networks like Facebook.
"I have come to understand that tomorrow about 500 Hindraf members have volunteered to get arrested. Intercepted Special Branch communiques says their own intelligence expect a crowd of 50,000. This figure seems high though. The UN and 27 embassies have confirmed that they will be sending independent observers. Anyways 27/2/2011 is going to go down as another milestone," a commentator named Temenggong wrote on the official page of Uthaya's brother P Waythamoorthy.
Indeed, Uthaya and his brother are known for their skills in galvanising the Indian community especially in the past. They were among the founders of a group of Indian NGOs called Hindraf.
In November 2007, Hindraf had led a massive rally of at least 30,000 that surrounded the KLCC and Petronas Twin Towers complex. That rally was the first symptom that all was not well in Malaysia, despite the sunny pictures of harmony painted repeatedly by an insistent Umno-BN coalition.
Barely four months later, then prime minister Abdullah Badawi received a shock at the March 2008 general election when fed-up Malaysians helped the Pakatan Rakyat led by Opposition Leader Anwar Ibrahim to sweep 5 of the country's 13 states in an unprecedented challenge to the Umno regime. Umno is the dominant partner of the BN coalition.
"Malaysians were sickened at the way the police bashed down the Hindraf supporters. That was the last straw and they voted based on their conscience in March 2008 and that helped the Pakatan to win. We urge Najib to listen to the people. Don't use strong arm action to kill off criticism. Citizens in this country have the right to express their dissent and peaceful assembly is guaranted under our Constitution," PKR vice president Tian Chua told Malaysia Chronicle.
Najib has done nothing for the Indians
All eyes are now on whether Najib, who last week advised Libya's Gaddafi not to use violence against a people's uprising, will unleash police brutality on dissenters in his own country. Najib is widely expected to call for snap general elections by July this year.
In the aftermath of the 2007 uprising, Uthaya and four other Hindraf leaders were detained under the Internal Security Act and released only in 2009, while Waythamoorthy still lives in self-exile in London.
It was Najib who released the Hindraf 5 when he took over from Badawi in April 2009. Then Najib had promised to unite the races under his 1 Malaysia slogan, that spoke of equality for all races. The PM also unveiled a New Economic Model that aimed to share the economic pie more fairly and based on needs rather than race.
But hardliners within Umno protested and Najib has already abandoned 1Malaysia and the NEM. In place now is TERAJU, a new government unit that aims to further boost the economic standing and share of the Malays and indigenous races in the country.
Still, Najib insists the Indians did not need Hindraf and that they "only need BN". He made the comment on Friday and was immediately slammed for being "thick-skinned".
"BN has betrayed the Indians for more than 53 years! And to say that the Indians need BN is absolute nonsense. As you can see, a majority of the Indians are still economically-challenged especially those in the estates," DAP M for Batu Kawan and Penang deputy chief minister Dr K Ramasamy told Malaysia Chronicle.
Freedom to offend
But the immediate spark for HRP's Sunday protest was a book called Interlok, written by a Malay author, who used the word "pariah" to describe the Indians.
The book was written some 4 decades ago and is reflective of the language used during that era, but in another bungle, Education minister Muhyiddin Yassin insisted on using it as part of the reading syllabus for fifth formers.
Despite warnings from NGOs and opposition leaders, Muhyiddin refused to back off. Najib too refused to take any concrete action, despite rising calls to remove the book from schools' syallabus.
They were accused of trying to show the Indians and the other races that Umno was superior and would not bow to any demands.
"The Education Minister’s announcement on Jan 27 that the novel would remain as the textbook for Form Five, but with amendments to those parts deemed offensive by the Indian community is not an acceptable solution. It is puzzling how a book that is so controversial and hurtful to the Indian community could not be withdrawn," DAP MP for Ipoh Barat M Kulasegaran told Malaysia Chronicle.
According to Kula, the “freedom to offend” would not be granted if the offence were against Malays.
Deliberately stoking tensions
Dr Lim Teck Ghee, director of the Centre for Policy Initiatives, is another critic. The Najib administration has been widely condemned by the academia and foreign observers for deliberately stoking racial and religious tensions to cling to power.
"In our country there is a need for greater candor and honesty on all types of divisive issues, however sensitive there are. Writers and artists should be encouraged to write freely and without any restrictions; and all Malaysians should work harder to dismantle the constraints on our freedom of expression and other freedoms," Teck Ghee said.
"The concern over the Interlok book is not about restricting the writer’s freedom of expression or about its literary merits but it is about its harmful impact on young and impressionable minds in the context of our nation-building and 1Malaysia objectives."
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