Interlok and orang India garang: Cops grill 5th form pupils for 10 hrs

Three Form Five students were taken to the Kuala Kubu Baru district police headquarters and traumatised by being questioned for 10 hours - all for wanting to return the novel Interlok to their headmaster last Friday.

Initially, seven SMK Kuala Kubu Baru students, who wanted to return the book because they were not happy with its contents, were stopped by a discipline teacher who allegedly abused them verbally.

“All seven of us we were walking calmly towards the headmaster's room when our discipline teacher stopped us and started making comments at us, which hurt our feelings,” said one of the students, wjo was with four others at the Human Rights Party headquarters today.

According to the student, the discipline teacher said the students were purposely creating problems because of their race.

The teacher reportedly said, “Kenapa orang India garang? India memang suka rosakkan nama sekolah. Keling memang dasar pariah sejak sejarah lagi” (Why are the Indians so fierce? Indians really like to tarnish the school's name. The keling have been pariahs since historical times).

Orang India garang

The students were not able to return the novel as the teacher told them to disperse immediately.

Yesterday, while the students were in school, the head of the parent-teacher association, Baktiar Md Rashid, who is also a police officer, took three of them to the police station for questioning, without the consent of their parents.

P Gomathi, 42, the mother of one of the students, said she was angry that her son was taken to the station without her presence or permission.

“My son did not commit any crime. He just wanted to return a book that he didn't enjoy reading.

"Instead he was humiliated and taken to the balai like some kind of hardcore criminal, in a patrol car,” she said, adding that the school authorities did not inform her about this.

The novel Interlok, written by national laureate Abdullah Hussein, made headlines recently as critics have argued that it portrays the Indian and Chinese communities in a bad light.

There have been protests against the book since the Education Ministry's decision to use Interlok as acompulsory textbook in secondary schools. This is the first case of students being taken to a police station and questioned over the book.

- Malaysiakini