Finally Dharshini readmitted to school But who puts UMNO in jail for denying Dharsini a place in the first place

Dharsini a/l Ponnuthurai (14) was finally readmitted into her Secondary school today after her father Ponnuthurai Manickam had reported the matter to HRP about one month ago. We do not view this as an achievement at all as Dharsini should not have been denied entry into school in the first place. This is despite our P. Uthayakumar personally speaking to Puan Zaini the headmistress of SMK Taman Tasik, En Abdul Ghafur the Headmaster of Dharsini’s present school and En. Shamsuri Jamil, the Special Officer to the Education Minister in charge of Teachers and pupils and other personell.

This matter was also highlighted at a Press Conference by HRP Information Chief S. Jayathas and publicized by the media.

Despite all these efforts Dharsini was forced out of school for two months.

Dharsini’s 62 year old aged adopted father on his part had to shuttle from one school to another from the District Education Department to the State Education Department to the Federal Education Department on scores of occasions for his daughter’s basic and fundamental right to education.

Article 8 of the Federal Constitution provides for Equality before the law.

But UMNOs’ 1,016.799 graduates of the Biro Tatanegara programmes implements UMNOs’ racist, religious extremist and supremacist policies.

Such a simple straight forward matter deliberately made thus difficult by UMNO.

Even at the Welfare home earlier. Dharsini was believed to have been converted to Islam with the word binti after her name in her birth certificate which may pose a problem as what had happened to Banggarama of Penang. Her citizenship though she and her mother were born in Malaysia is now causing her this problem of being excluded from Form Two in her Secondary school.

But Article 12 (4) read with the Second Schedule of the Federal Constitution states that the religion of a person under the age of eighteen years shall be decided by his parent or guardian and the Second Scheduled 1 (1) (c) states “every person born within the Federation after September, 1962, of whose parents one at least was at the time of the birth either a citizen or permanently resident in the Federation, or who was not born a citizen of any other country is a citizen by operation of law.

Article 12 provides that there shall be no discrimination against any citizen on the grounds only of religion, race, descent or place of birth.

But all these laws are not abided to by UMNO and are violated with impunity.

Dharsini was forced to miss school by UMNO for almost two months now. The law in Malaysia as in most other countries is a jail sentence for parents who do not send their children to school. But here we have a dedicated pair of adoptive parents who had the heart to adopt baby Dharsini at four years of age from the Welfare Department to give love and life to this young child. But cruel UMNO denies her two months of her precious school life, the unnecessary agony she and her parents had to undergo, the embarrassment, pain, indignity etc.