Racist policy ‘orphaned’ Malaysian Indians

Between 1970 and 2012, the government set aside RM1.1 trillion for economic development but the money never reached ethnic Indians, claims Hindraf.

PADANG SERAI: Malaysian Indians are the single largest displaced community in the Southeast Asia region, claimed Hindraf Makkal Sakti.

Its chairman P Waythamoorthy said ethnic Indians, who were brought to Malaya as indentured labour since 200 years ago, suffered tremendously under Umno-sponsored racist displacement policy after independence.

Due to this relentless Umno-sponsored displacement policy, he said some 800,000 ethnic Indian workers and their families have been uprooted from the country’s plantation sectors.

“Indians became the region’s biggest single community victmised by state-sponsored displacement policy,” Waythamoorthy told a small gathering here during a briefing on Saturday night on Hindraf’s blueprint.

He said the mass displacement policy was first mooted under the New Economic Policy (NEP) in 1970 after Abdul Razak Hussein replaced Tunku Abdul Rahman as the prime minister.

He said the racist policy was continued unabated and intensified under Dr Mahathir Mohamad’s premiership.

Since then, he said, Indian plantation workers were thrown out of their homes without compensation of any form, cash, land, houses or jobs.

He claimed Indians were also denied skills training and opportunities for new jobs. They were also denied Tamil school, cultural and religious development.

He said the United Nations guidelines on displacement and re-settlement clearly stated that such state policies amounted to “ethnic cleansing.”

He recalled that rubber exports was the Malaya’s main revenue earner since colonial days, hence ethnic Indians were the major workforce to move the nation’s economy.

Under the UN guidelines and domestic land settlement laws, he said the government should have given ethnic Indians land and houses, and provided them business and job opportunities.

Money never reached Indians

However, he said the Umno government systematically excluded Indians from the NEP and violated their rights by flushing them out from their homes and abandoning them like orphans in the name of development and urbanisation.

“They became jobless, homeless, and suffered from social-ills.

“They lost their Tamil schools, Hindu temples and burial grounds.

“They lost their community neighbourhoods, which are crucial for religious and cultural growth.

“They were disfranchised and defragmented.

“This is how Umno repaid Indians who have contributed so much to the country’s well being,” pointed out Waythamoorthy.

He said over the years the Umno government had set aside some RM1.1 trillion for economic development between 1970 and 2012, but the money never reached ethnic Indians.

In contrary, he said ethnic Malays were given free land to develop rubber small holdings, landed property to live and hefty cash compensation when they were displaced from traditional villages.

“Thus Felda, Felcra and Risda schemes were executed for Malays only,” said the Hindraf supremo, citing Felda Sendayan in Negeri Sembilan and Felda LBJ in Sepang.

When NEP was launched, Waythamoorthy said Razak declared it would give land for the landless and job for jobless.

“However, in reality, it was land for landless Malays and job for jobless Malays,” he noted.