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Thursday 11 February 2010

HRP: Umno BN treats Indians as ‘beggars’ (Malaysiakini)

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Human Rights Party Malaysia (HRP) is alleging that Umno BN is treating the Indian community as` beggars’ by dishing out `crumbs’ and `peanuts’ instead of giving them their equal rights in the share of the economic cake of the country.

HRPM pro-tem secretary-general P Uthayakumar claimed that the Indians have been systematically and deliberately excluded and segregated from about 99% of the national mainstream development plans, policies and programmes directly benefiting the people.

“The Indians instead are merely given the ‘crumbs’ and ‘peanuts’ for show or puppet shadow play (wayang kulit) largely through the agency of a `mandore’ (supervisor) Indian political party,” Uthayakumar said.

He claimed that 70% of the Indians in Malaysia are suffering from poverty, being pushed towards or remaining poor, retained as low wage earners, and are underprivileged - all because of Umno’s racism, religious extremism, inequality, unequal opportunities, discrimination, segregation and merge upward mobility opportunities.

Such Umno policy goes against Article 8 of the Malaysian Federal Constitution, which enshrines, entrenches and guarantees equality before the law and non discrimination.

The former Hindraf ISA detainee also claimed that there are about 150,000 stateless Malaysian Indians in the country.

The suicide rate in Malaysia is highest among Indians largely because of socio-economic imbalance and poverty related problems, which are about 600% higher than in the Malay community.

He said “70% out of the 523 Tamil schools in the country have been denied the right to be made fully government funded government schools to be on par with Malay and Chinese schools.”

“This pathetic social-economic imbalance situation of the Indian community is continuing for the past 52 years because the Indians do not have the political or economic clout and they do not get to score very much political points or do not play to the gallery,” Uthayakumar reasoned.

Uthayakumar also stated that HRPM will never become a mandore party of either Umno BN or Pakatan, but will continue to fight for the equal rights of the Indian community.

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