Hindraf urges Suhakam inquiry on estate workers

Commissioner Sha’ani supports a petition that ties Indian misery to the fragmentation of large plantations.

KUALA LUMPUR: Hindraf has asked Suhakam to conduct a public inquiry on the displacement of estate workers and its consequences on the Malaysian Indian community.

Estate workers were victims of the “largest single forced displacement in the region” and the world had yet to know anything about its “disastrous consequences”, Hindraf national advisor N Ganesan said today when presenting a petition to Suhakam commissioner Muhammad Sha’ani Abdullah.

Sha’ani said he supported the petition and would do his part to persuade Suhakam to hold the inquiry. He said he would try to meet Hindraf’s Dec 24 deadline for an answer from the human rights commission.

In an emotional speech during the presentation of the petition, Ganesan said at least 800,000 Indian estate workers were displaced between 1970 and 2000, causing massive structural changes within the community and thereby making the ethnic minority a vulnerable target for discrimination.

“They were pushed out from rural communities into alien urban centres in a short span. When they lost their jobs, they lost everything.”

He singled out the Malaysian government as the main culprit in the discrimination of Indians, saying it had been treating them “like cattle” with impunity.

Speaking to reporters after the presentation, he said the estate workers used to live in an ordered social system in large British-owned plantations, with their own schools, temples and burial grounds.

However, when the country achieved independence in 1957, the British scrambled to sell off the large estates, letting go of them in parcels.

“When you have a 1,000-acre estate, you can have an economy of scale,” Ganesan said. “But if you break it down for different owners, you reduce the economic scale.

“In time, the property became a land bank and was sold to third and fourth parties. And then you would have the problem of whether a school or a temple has a legal title.”

Ganesan referred to a report that economist and academic Ungku Aziz Abdul Hamid presented to Parliament in 1963, pointing out that it was against the fragmentation of the estates because that would create a class of absentee landlords and urban investors with no concern for the workers.

However, the government virtually ignored Ungku Aziz’s recommendation and took no action to control the subdivision process.

The Hindraf leader tied the displacement of estate workers to structural changes in the Malaysian economy, citing the influx of foreign workers, major property development projects and the takeover of major plantation companies by Perbadanan Nasional Berhad.

He said such changes were accompanied by government discrimination against Indians, manifested in land grabs and forced evictions. He cited the cases of Kampung Buah Pala in Penang, Bukit Jalil Estate in Kuala Lumpur and the Gatco Plantations in Negeri Sembilan.

He said the discrimination came in many forms, including the demolition of temples, the takeover of burial grounds, the denial of citizenship to Malaysia-born Indians and deaths in police custody.