The Woeful Plight of the Stateless Indians – Part 1

By: Iraiputtiran
It was 7.00 o’clock on a beautiful Sunday morning. The sun was rising slowly from far east. He was already out of his house, on his way to ferry the first family of seven without Birth Certificates, from Ayer Itam to the Human Right Party’s Penang state office in Prai for a press conference on their plight. Elsewhere other members of HRP/Hindraf were also busy ferrying families without BCs from around Penang to Prai for the same purpose.
By ten o’clock, the Human Rights Party’s state office was over flowing with families and their children without Birth Certificates. They came and sat there staring into the empty air, perhaps wondering, “what now, will we ever get a Birth Certificate?” I counted, there were nearly forty children and thirty adults in the crowd.
There was melancholy in the atmosphere and sorrow on their faces! It was so solemn and mournful there should be so many citizens in this country, from one particular race in that, come begging for their birth identifications like this when it should have been duly given to them as rightful citizens of this country. I looked at the young children’s faces, so innocent, so pure, so fragile. I recall a poem by Duncan that I so dearly remember…
Nor riches, nor power can give us the best things of life…
The smile of a child…Is the best of all rewards…
But today, I saw no smiles on the children’s beautiful faces, except the heartbreaking evidence of live trapped in absolute poverty. It is needless to say that the severe long term consequences of malnutrition were so glaringly evident on their frail builds. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), children who suffer from malnutrition are more likely to have slowed growth, delayed development, difficulty in school, and high rates of illness, and they may remain malnourished into adulthood. Looking at their parents, I need no more evidence than that to prove the fact.
As I sat there dispirited with the big turn out of the crowd for a very wrong reason, I was soon lost in my own thoughts as usual. The press conference started and I heard the National Coordinator of HRP/Hindraf, Mr. Ganesan, explaining to the press the plight of the poor and marginalised Indians without Birth Certificates and Identification Cards. This was soon followed by question and answer session. Finally lunch was served. It was something simple, but when I saw the children, some seated on the floor, eating the simple meal with much appetite, it brought few drops of tears rolling down my cheeks. We know just too well the reason for this, poverty. I wonder how many meals they would have missed in their lives, what do they eat when they have no money to buy food and how do they fight hunger.
Do the authorities who blatantly refuse to process their Birth Certificates for feeble excuses and kick them around like a football to many government departments for years and years, (some from birth to seven years, some almost thirty years of their lives) realize what they doing to these families, especially the innocent children. The National Registration Department’s excuse that most of these people are without their BCs and ICs because of their ignorance of the law, unregistered marriages and domestic problems is pathetic. As the idiom goes, there is ‘more than meets the eye’, behind this BC-less and IC-less issues, the problem is much more complex and difficult than it appears to be! Hidden deep down in the IC and BC policy of the government is an ugly truth that neither the government nor the National Registration Department wants to admit and act upon. It is their policies and their racially-bias execution of duties that has caused most of this poor and uninformed people to be BC-less and IC-less today, even as the third, fourth or fifth generation of citizens in this country. They adamantly refuse to accept the fact that in all truth, it is the UMNO policies that caused exactly the conditions! After so many years of independence, the powers that be are still ridiculing and travestying the poor Indians in this country! How cruel the powers that be can be…!
The poverty among the Indians in this country ranges from 60% to 70% or perhaps 80%. Poverty, ignorance, illiteracy and social problems are all cyclical! Do the authorities not know that? Sitting in the comfortable cushioned armchair in the nicely air-conditioned office room, it is easy to say, “Oh, it is their problem, they are ignorant, they are full of domestic issues, they are this, they are that…! And then, if at all they appear at the doors of powers that be, they are slapped with piles of complicated documents of which they have no knowledge, chased away with absolute disrespect for humanity!
I saw the documents required and was really taken aback with complexity of the process and the plethora of details and information needed to complete the application! How could this poor people trace the families of their late siblings, dissipated in all directions throughout the country, with whom they have lost contact twenty or thirty years ago,? How could we expect the adopted children who were abandoned by their poor parents some ten or fifteen years ago, trace back their parents? How can we punish the innocent children by denying them their Birth Certificates when their poor Muslim great grandmother gave away her daughter as a sixteen day old baby to a Hindu resulting in her being raised a Hindu. Her marriage registration application was rejected and her Hindu husband was forcefully taken away, circumcised and converted. As a consequence, her children and as well as her grandchildren were all denied their Birth Certificates even after thirty years of struggling as they were all practicing Hinduism. This is the case of Rani, 56, from Melaka who also joined the HRP/Hindraf near Istana Kinta last Sunday to hand over a memorandum to the Sultan of Perak to intervene and solve her struggle of thirty years! How is her conversion issue a domestic problem? How is Rani ignorant of the law when she was only a sixteen days old baby when she was given away. And in the case of Banggrama she was converted as a seven year old child. How was she ignorant of the law? Who was responsible for explaining the law to Rani’s biological Muslim mother, adopted father and Banggarama of conversion laws and consequences? What were the authorities doing when Rani’s Muslim mother was trapped in poverty and had to give away her sixteen days old baby. What was everyone doing until her age of marriage? Why punish these people of an offense that was never communicated to them nor they were aware of. In fact, they have to bear the brunt for the inefficiency, incompetence and racially-bias aristocracy of the UMNOsia government! That is the truth!
How do we comprehend the sadistic acts of the UMNOsia government and its authorities that seem to draw so much pleasure in torturing the poor Indians by whatever means and then just give a lame excuse that it is their ignorance of the law, domestic problem….blah…blah…blah!
Malay Muslim baby abandoning is a national issue and the government is so quick to act on the issue. They want to do all they can from building special schools for the pregnant teenage mothers to school counseling and approving severe penalty for the offence/crime. Similarly, why can’t they respect the abandoned Indian children and do all they can to help them? Why deny them their Birth Certificates because the parents can’t be traced and they are living with their grandmothers or aunts or someone in the family? What is the sin committed by Rani’s children, sons and daughters-in-law and grandchildren that they are being denied Birth Certificates. They are asked to solve the conversion issue first before being granted their BCs. But do the fools realise without BCs, the rightful citizens of this country can’t go to school, can’t acquire education, can’t get a proper job, can’t earn a decent living, can’t raise a family, can’t buy a house to live in, can’t open a bank account, can’t get medical treatment at the hospitals, can’t get insurance or SOCSO coverage for accidents and thousands of other can’t-s? Can life wait for seven years (as in Banggarama’s case) or thirty years (as in Rani’s daughters case)? Do the authorities realize their denial of BCs means denial of life for this poor people? I think they do and that is specifically what they are aiming for! They then can become a permanent supply of cheap labour and slavery. These people are in the fact worst off than the Bangladeshis and Indonesians in Malaysia who all at least have the Passports and can at least work as a factory operator.
The government servants with the pleni potentiary powers are either completely out of touch with the real world or are just too hell bent on cleansing the ethnic Indians from this land. They prevaricate all they can to cover up their inefficiency and incompetence in the public service. They take no notice of the predicament they are causing the poor Indians and stay in their comfort zones, ignore and abandon them. Why are these people in public service in the first place? We need to reform the whole public service department if we were serious about alleviating the sufferings of the poor and uninformed in this country!
Beyond all these, I fail to comprehend what other critical bread and butter issues of the Indians are DAP, PKR and PAS fighting for to qualify their parties as the so called “multiracial” parties!
Read on my interview with the parents and children in the second part, you will realise how they have been victimised by the racist UMNO government and abandoned by the PKR, DAP, and PAS coalition as well for good! And you will cry with me for them!
Thank you!

Iraiputtiran