Dark Deepavali for me

Jailed Hindraf-HRP leader P Uthayakumar wishes Malaysians a Happy Deepavali while he 'celebrates' his festival of lights locked up in an isolation prison room.

COMMENT

By P Uthayakumar

For the second time in five weeks, I have yet again been locked up for 31 days. For 24 hours a day, confined to a 10 foot x 10 foot, dark isolation room with a 2 foot x 10 foot wash area and toilet bowl.

The drain hole is clogged up and water available is enough for only 3-4 dippers, for bathing purposes. The isolation room is near the torture chambers and the last cell – No.12 – with five other persons – murderers and armed violent robbers/criminals.

This is the very last death row cell and is ‘next door’ to the hanging chambers which can accommodate the hanging of three prisoners at any one time.

I can hear the trap door of the hangman platform being opened as it was being tested, perhaps for another imminent hanging.

This is my second Deepavali in prison, the first under ISA detention at Kemta Prison in 2008.

In the last five months of imprisonment, I have lost eight kilograms. The same water dipper used to wash my backside is used to drink my ‘kanji’ [watery rice gruel].

Three days ago the prison doctor refused to refer me to the general hospital for my severe prolapsed disk condition. The condition is being aggravated by the denial of my request for a plastic chair (given to me earlier) for over four weeks now. He said that only the prison authorities have that power.

I persisted and the prison authorities then sent me to the Semenyih government clinic.

But the pro-prison Dr Norhayati refused to admit me despite my complaints of severe backbone pain, numbness in both feet, swollen legs and pricking pain when walking with difficulty.

Even a referral letter was denied for me to be given my plastic chair and warm drinking water as I developed a fever, flu and cough drinking prison tap water ……TO TORTURE ME!

I quietly walked back to my dark, cold, and also hot and stuffy (day time) and dirty and lonely cell at Kajang Prison to spend my dark Deepavali.

If drugs, tobacco, or other prohibited items are found, as happened yesterday, I could also be implicated irrespective of my innocence and caned on the soles of my feet and put into the isolation cell simply because I happen to be in the same cell with the aforesaid hardcore criminals.

Despite complaining to one DSP Kamarul that on Oct 25, 2013 regarding Paramasivam’s (45) attack with a prison knife, and him receiving five stitches on his head, four on his eyelid and four on his nose, I am still being refused a transfer to the safer hospital wing by the cruel ‘Naragasuran’ Umno controlled prison even on the occasion of this Deepavali day.

Happy Deepavali to all Hindraf supporters and to all Malaysians

My struggle continues.

P Uthayakumar is the pro tem secretary general for Hindraf Makkal Sakhti. He was sentenced to 30 months imprisonment in June by the Sessions Court for writing a seditious letter to then British prime minister Gordon Brown in 2007. He is currently serving his sentence at the Kajang prison. This letter was written on Oct 31, 2013.