Hindraf suit good for Indians, says academic

Athi Shankar | July 26, 2011

Law lecturer Azmi Sharom sees great relevance in the message behind the class action.

GEORGE TOWN: An academic has hailed Hindraf Makkal Sakti’s decision to revive its suit against the British government, saying it will serve to draw domestic and international attention to the plight of Malaysian Indians.

“The success of the suit is not relevant; it is the intended message that matters,” said Azmi Sharom, who teaches law at Universiti Malaya.

The class action suit demands US$4 trillion in compensation for Malaysians descended from Indians whom the British brought to Malaysia as indentured labour. Hindraf claims that the British government, when it granted independence to Malaya, left the Indians without representation and at the mercy of Malay extremists.

Hindraf’s London-based chairman, P Waythamoorthy, originally filed the suit on Aug 31, 2007, but it stalled following a Malaysian clampdown on Hindraf that included the arrest of several lawyers under the Internal Security Act.

Waythamoorthy announced recently that he would file the suit again.

Hindraf’s lawyers in London told FMT that they needed more documents on the colonial period in Malaysia, kept by the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO). The movement’s chief legal counsel in London, Imran Khan, will head a three-man delegation to Malaysia next month on a fact-finding mission.

Azmi met Waythamoorthy in Bangkok last year during an international conference and they discussed the suit.

He told FMT he was aware that Waythamoorthy and his small team of researchers were working hard to obtain and study thousands of relevant documents in Britain’s archives.

“From my personal point of view, Hindraf has every right to file the case on behalf of all Malaysian Indians,” he said.

“It’s an incredible effort by an ordinary person to push the issues pertaining to a community’s plight into the international and domestic limelight.”

He dismissed suggestions by certain quarters, notably in Umno, that the suit would threaten Malay interests.

“The extremist, nationalist and right wing Malay elements have their right to talk about the so-called Malay supremacy,” he said.

“But we have our right to ignore them.”