Stateless Indians: Najib must apologise

Hindraf leader P Waythamoorthy wants the PM to make a public apology for leaving thousands of Indians in the lurch without proper documents.

GEORGE TOWN: The federal government should be ashamed for causing thousands of Malaysian-born Indians to live in stateless misery over the past five decades.

Hindraf Makkal Sakti supremo P Waythamoorthy called on Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak to publicly apologise to them.

“Najib should feel ashamed of Umno’s wrongdoing to these people rather than feel proud of his act of giving them long overdue citizenships. He should not just tacitly acknowledge Umno’s failure.

“He should publicly apologise to them for Umno’s racism,” he told FMT.

Waythamoorthy also criticised MIC for boasting that Putrajaya had enrolled 30,000 legitimate Malaysians without identity cards within two weeks under the MyDaftar programme.

He said Najib had nothing to be proud about since Umno was the real culprit behind the problem.

“Najib should also take immediate pro-active steps to end the stateless problem among Indians once and for all,” he said.

The Hindraf leader was commenting on the issuance of outstanding identity cards to Malaysian Indian senior citizens early this week.

Waythamoorthy said MyDaftar managed to enroll 30,000 people because the programme was carried out largely in urban areas, not in rural areas, where the government would discover thousands of rural folks without citizenry documents.

“Would you have come across such a magnitude of statelessness amongst the Malays or the Chinese? Indian statelessness shows Umno had systematically implemented an institutionalised racist agenda to suppress and oppress the community from the word go on the declaration of Malayan independence,” he added.

What about the younger generation?
The London-based Hindraf chairman also chided the government for issuing identity cards to senior citizens, who were nearing the end of their life span, but not the stateless younger generation.

He said Hindraf’s survey exposed stateless status among Indians was not an individual problem, but a generational problem.

He said if the grandfather did not have his rightful citizenship documents, his whole generation would be denied the same.

If Najib was sincere and honest, he said Putrajaya should have addressed the stateless status of the children of the senior citizens as well.

“Would the government take another 50 years to resolve their problems?

“By then the new stateless Indian general would have generated their own second to sixth generation off-springs, who would also be stateless,” he added.

He also ticked off Najib for bragging that the senior citizens could now enjoy citizenry benefits such as education, employment and healthcare.

“Doesn’t this show the stupidity of the prime minister… what could they enjoy at this late age, job and education?” he said.

Due to the long denial of citizenship, he noted that the senior citizens would not have their marriages recognised, could not have opened a bank account or owned properties all these years.

He said the senior citizens could not have secured decent jobs and enjoy retirement benefits such as Socso and EPF.

“All these years, the employers would have exploited them mercilessly by paying peanuts due to their desperate situation,” he added.

Complicated procedure

Waythamoorthy also hit out at the complicated procedural-ridden MyDaftar programme that has made it difficult for Indians to obtain their citizenry status.

He noted that written evidence of neighbours, employers, colleagues and staff, private clinics, who treated the newborn babies should be sufficient and adequate to prove their Malaysian birth.

“The Federal Constitution states that anyone born in Malaysia after 1957 is a citizen. But the racist government has imposed strict rules to deny Indians their legitimate citizenry rights,” he said.

He also called on Putrajaya to stop the habit of passing the buck to MIC to register stateless Indians.

“It’s the government’s responsibility. Umno racist masters should not wash their dirty hands and let their mandores to clean up the mess,” he said.