‘Investigate death threat against Hindraf leader’

Hindraf Makkal Sakti wants the Home Ministry to direct the police to look into the death threat.

By Athi Sankar - FMT

GEORGE TOWN: Hindraf Makkal Sakti wants the Home Ministry to investigate the email death threat against its leader P Waythamoorthy .

Hindraf national coordinator W Sambulingam said the Home Ministry should issue directives to its law enforcement agencies, especially the police, to probe into the case immediately.

“Death threat to a person is not a negligible issue. The government has a responsibility to get to the bottom of it,” Sambulingam told FMT here today.

London-based Waythamoorthy and his family received the email death threat via email on Saturday ahead of his briefing to US government officials on issues of institutionalised racism and freedom of religion in Malaysia.

In the email, the sender has threatened to behead and kill Waythamoorthy, his elder brother, Human Rights Party secretary-general Uthayakumar, and their children.

The sender claiming to be ‘Hanif Haja’, the youth wing chief of Pekida, abused both brothers with racist remarks and threatened to teach them a lesson soon.

Sambulingam said Hindraf detractors should have the intellectual capacity to engage in a constructive argument with Waythamoorthy rather than cowardly resorting to violence and death threats.

Waythamoorthy, presently in the US, is contemplating to lodge a report at Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) over the death threat as advised by his friends in the US.

Yesterday he briefed the American Congress’ Foreign Affairs Committee (FAC) in Washington on issues of institutionalised racism and freedom of religion in Malaysia.

Today he is to brief some representatives of the US State department and Tom Lantos Human Rights Commisssion (HRC).

Sambulingam also expressed surprise over the country’s so-called civil society groups’ deafening silence on the death threat to Waythamoorthy and family.

“The threat is a serious violation of human rights and civil liberty.The groups should have raised their voice for a human rights fighter who is not a political opportunist like many others,” insisted Sambulingam.