To the critics of Hindraf and Uthayakumar

Although Hindraf and its political arm HRP might be unpalatable to you, nonetheless the issues they raise are entirely valid. Once you grasp the gravity of the message, you could perhaps get some inkling as to why the messenger has lost patience with Malaysians.

By Helen Ang

This is my response to the Malaysiakini report BUM 2010: Uthayakumar sparks row. This reply is made in my personal capacity and independent of BUM.

Haris Ibrahim alleges ‘communalism’ and was quoted as saying he was particularly turned off by Uthaya’s e-mail statement on the shooting of Aminulrasyid.

Looking through the Human Rights Party (HRP) website, I found these statements below; Uthaya’s article headlines within inverted commas and my comments added in brackets.

(1) ‘No justice for six Indians shot dead by police in one transaction. Policeman shot dead Malay-Muslim in a rare case instantly prosecuted’. [Can readers name another Indian besides Kugan who has been a victim of police brutality? They’re largely namelesss to the mainstream media and yet according to Suaram director Dr Kua Kia Soong, ‘Indians are a minority in this country but they form the majority when it comes to statistics on deaths in police custody or police killings.’]

(2) ‘Murder probe for odd Malay youth shot dead by police, criminal tag for hundreds of Indian youths killed by police!’ [Exaggerated maybe, but is the ‘criminal’ tagging true though?]

(3) ‘Deputy Home Minister visits Aminulrasyid’s home. But zero such visits to any Indian shot dead by police & murder in police custody case.’

(4) ‘Shot dead by police Home Ministry panel at work and media headlines. But zero for Indians victims.’ [Last November, five Indian youths were shot dead by police in Klang. Of these ‘suspected armed robbers’ aged between 17 and 24, three were brothers. If you can’t picture their mother’s grief at three coffins lying side by side, perhaps you might recall the fourth victim’s sister who committed suicide by drinking paraquat. Her name was Seetha.]

I won’t refute that Uthaya has been race-specific in his crusade to highlight grievances but would it do justice to the real situation if he hadn’t, and instead employed a blanket description of ‘Malaysian’ shot dead?

Kua summed up Suaram’s ‘Policing the Malaysian Police’ 2005 report, a portion of which found, ‘The marginalised Indians who make up some of the poorest and most oppressed sections among West Malaysians have been portrayed in a racist light. Yet Indians have been the main victims of racial killings such as at Kampung Medan in 2001, deaths in police custody as well as trigger-happy police shootings.’

Rebutting the ‘communalism’ accusation generally, R Shan in an earlier article in the HRP website wrote: ‘Whenever an Indian issue is raised, it is classified as racist and not as a community issue, even when it is the truth and reality.’

Shan also pointed out that the first case handled pro bono by Uthaya on custodial death was 10 years ago – KL High Court civil suit (SI-21-61-2000) – for Mohd Anuar bin Sharip’s family who approached Hindraf as a last resort. Hindraf’s next case was the second postmortem of Ho Kwai See who died after eight days in police detention.

In the latter half of its story, Malaysiakini quoted blogger Salahuddin Hisham as saying, ‘When you [Uthaya] highlighted the plight of the estate workers, do you know that there are also Javanese and Chinese workers in the estates? There are also the Chinese, Malay, and people of other races who are poor, not just Indians.’

I’m presuming the Javanese he mentions are Indonesian. Whereas the Malay First-ers crave a monopoly on victimhood, poverty and suffering, Hindraf’s harshest critics are the nationality-loving Malaysian First-ers who discount that race matters.

To Salahuddin’s contention that it is not just the Indian community that needs special attention, I would counter that their urgent distress signal is not getting the attention it deserves.

Salahuddin is indeed correct that there are the poor from every community. However, the Malays live on land that belongs to them and they have their kampung to call home or return to, and there is Malay Reserve Land. On the other hand, when the plantations were dismantled, Indians who lost their estate jobs were turned out homeless to become urban squatters. They have not been the beneficiaries of government land programmes such as Felda, Felcra, Risda and others.

Unlike Malays, the Indians have no social safety net and receive little notice or help from the welfare departments. Furthermore, what is the evidence of your own eyes? I see vagrants sleeping on the five-foot way and they have consistently been Indian men.

I see Indian small vendors selling newspapers and sweets, and what they sell in sidewalk stalls fetch meagre profit like flowers and jasmine garlands at RM1a strand.

I see that road sweepers, car washers and parking attendants are Indians, garbage collectors are Indians (and Indonesians), cleaners and labourers are Indians (and Indonesians). The Indians have been in this land for generations and their status no better than illegal immigrants.

The primarily English-speaking Malaysian First-ers like to think they are superiorly beyond or above ethnicity and choose to hold themselves aloof from Hindraf. They complain that Hindraf is confrontational, abrasive, hyperbolic, sectarian and always talking about Indians alone, plus the clincher – ‘Hindraf is racist’.

Nonetheless, I would urge Malaysians to reassess this ‘racist’ label that they apply so cavalierly as well as to put Hindraf’s struggle in proper context.

Our Malaysian constitution has Article 153 guaranteeing the Malay special position and granting quotas. The Umno-led government has since Independence (Mara was established before 1969) unremittingly implemented NEP-like policies that favour solely one race. This race-oriented structure of state has ultimately stranded Indians at the bottom of the heap.

While one may question his methodology like Haris does, still, Uthaya has spent a lot of time pondering on the Indian condition during his ISA detention of more than 500 days.

For his dues paid in Kamunting, surely we can give Uthaya this much, that is to weigh the substance, ie, merit of the argument and not be too distracted by the form. The form of Hindraf is arguably narrow – Hindu Rights Action Front – but then again, people don’t similarly demand that Sisters in Islam must take up the cudgels for Christians, Buddhists, Sikhs, etc or fight for men’s rights in order to be viewed as inclusive.

I’m well aware that Hindraf does not endear itself to Malaysians who prefer politically correct posturing such as Yasmin Ahmad’s huggy-feely Petronas ads or Anas Zubedy’s feel-good publicity campaigns. But if Hindraf’s critics are really so Malaysian-First, why do they read foremost in English? If one were to read more in Malay, you’d realise how negative and belligerent the stereotyping has been of Indians in our unique ‘agama dan bangsa’-permeated environment.

Uthaya reluctantly agreed to came to the BUM gathering – which he already anticipated to be ‘hostile’ – to try to dispel the entrenched prejudices. What eventually transpired can only convince HRP that they’re banging their heads against a wall of indifference.

It’s undeniable that Uthaya and his colleagues have alienated even ‘friends’ (individuals, organizations and alternative media) sympathetic to the Indian cause. This being the case, perhaps we would all be better off going our separate ways whilst minding the Indian saying – ‘If you can’t help, don’t hinder’.

Although Hindraf and its political arm HRP might be unpalatable to you, nonetheless the issues they raise are entirely valid. Once you grasp the gravity of the message, you could perhaps get some inkling as to why the messenger has lost patience with Malaysians. The official set-up of this country assuredly makes us one of the most race-obsessed in the world but it is paradoxically Hindraf and not bumiputera-ism that is taken to task.