Monday, January 7, 2008

HINDRAF TO CONTINUE STRUGGLE WITH ROSES

HINDRAF

135-3 Jalan Toman 7

Kemayan Square 70200

Seremban N.Sembilan

7th January 2008.


Press Statement


Re: HINDRAF LAUNCHES VALENTINE ROSES CAMPAIGN TO FREE ISA DETAINEES AND ASSERT RIGHTS OF MINORITY MALAYSIAN INDIANS WHO HAVE BEEN OPPRESSED SUPPRESSED MARGINALISED AND REMAINED PERMANENTLY COLONIZED COMMUNIY.

HINDRAF REQUESTS PRIME MINISTER TO MAKE HIMSELF AVAILABLE TO ACCEPT ROSES FROM AND ON BEHALF OF 70% POOR AND UNDERCLASS INDIANS.

On the 16th February 2008 (Saturday) a minimum of 10,000 Malaysian Indians representing 70% of the poor oppressed suppressed and marginalized community would make themselves available to hand over red and yellow roses to the Honourable Prime Minister Dato Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi in conjunction with Valentine’s Day.

Red Roses would signify HINDRAF’s Love and Peaceful Struggle whilst yellow roses would signify the Demand for Justice for the 5 HINDRAF leaders held under the draconian laws and for the rights of the minority Indian community who have been neglected for the last 50 years since Independence by the Government.

The minimum of 10,000 Minority Indians would make themselves available as follows:

Date : 16th February 2008 (Saturday)

Time : 11.00 am

Venue : Parliament House Kuala Lumpur

HINDRAF wishes to assert that this is purely a peaceful gathering with the view to present our beloved Prime Minister with Roses to enlighten him on the predicament and Cry for Justice of the Minority Indian community. The heart of the Indian community bleeds on the incarceration of their leaders under the ISA. It is hoped by accepting the roses the Prime Minister would be compassionate and understand to the needs of the Indian community.

HINDRAF requests the Prime Minister to attend personally to accept the roses or alternatively make his personal representative available to accept the same. We are amenable to change the venue if it is inconvenient with the Honourable Prime Minister.

We trust the Government would perfectly understand the peaceful gesture of Malaysian Indians and allow these poor oppressed and underclass to express their feelings through presentation of the Roses.

HINDRAF wishes the Honourable Prime Minister (an advance) “HAPPY VALENTINE’S DAY.”

P.Waytha Moorthy

Chairman

Currently in London

waytha@hotmail.com

"MESSAGE FROM HINDRAF SUPPORTERS"

Good day mr. Waytha,

Hope god is always keeping you in good condition.
First of all i'll like to convey my personnel thanks to you and all our brothers in because of you guys our community begin to coming out from the dark; begin to think wisely .Happy to see the tremendous changes in our people's mentality and attitude. No more fights among our peoples.wow!!!! this all happened simply because of you guys. I'm here to inform you that we are the whole community standing behind you. we are conducting prayers almost everyday nationwide for our five brothers!! please lead us to keep going with our struggles!!! now for the time being you are the only person to guide us. go ahead with your struggles!!
"passion will die without constant injection of new inspiration".
"nobody on the face of these earth can make us feel inferior without our permission"
RAJ M.

Protect Hindus in Malaysia, BJP tells Govt

About 10,000 Hindu temples have been demolished in Malaysia since its independence from the UK 50 years ago, P Waytha Moorthy, Chairman of the Hindu Rights Action Force (HINDRAF) in Malaysia told Leaders of Opposition L K Advani and Jaswant Singh in New Delhi on Thurday.

Apprising them of the plight of the “persecuted” Hindu community in his country, he said most of these temples existed from the British colonial days and were as old as 150 years. “Hindus are stripped of their dignity and self-respect by this act” by the vindictive manner in which their temples have been razed to the ground.

There has been a steady attempt to “Islamise” Malaysia ’s multi-faith population (in which Muslims constitute 55%). The Shariah Court ’s rulings are being made binding on non-Muslims, especially in matters of inter-faith marriages and the religious identity of children, he said.

Later, the BJP parliamentary party issued a statement condemning the Malaysian government’s policy of subjecting the country’s Hindu community in particular, and People of Indian Origin (PIOs) in general, to discrimination, injustice and persecution.

The issue also figured when Singapore ’s elder statesman and former Prime Minister, Lee Kuan Yew called on Advani. Lee not only fully shared his concern but also said, “discrimination on religious grounds in Malaysia affects not merely the Hindus. All the non-Muslim communities in Malaysia – Buddhists, Taoists and Christians – are getting worried.”

According to Waytha Moorthy, nearly 70% of the PIO population in Malaysia , which has been living in that country for over 200 years, remain manual labourers, living on daily wages. This underclass remains oppressed and suppressed, with the government making no special budgetary provision for their economic and educational advancement.

Waytha Moorthy said the number of Tamil, Telugu and Malayalam schools has dwindled drastically, even though the population has increased manifold. “The government’s neglect of the educational needs of the Indian community is deliberate, since the authorities want to cut off the PIOs’ cultural and spiritual heritage.”

Moorthy, who is a leading lawyer, briefed Advani and Jaswant Singh about the Malaysian government’s repressive crackdown of the peaceful, legitimate and democratic protests by the Hindus. He said the Hindus in Malaysia have always been loyal, law-abiding and peaceful citizens.

“Three lawyers involved in taking up the cases of HINDRAF and its supporters have been charged with sedition for speaking the truth. Thirty-one participants in the recent massive protest rally organized by HINDRAF have been falsely charged with murder under a law that denies them bail. All this is being done to instill fear among the Hindus, so that they will not come out again to protest,” Moorthy said.

The BJP statement said the party believes that India has a moral obligation to take up the case of injustice and persecution of Malaysian Hindus and PIOs with the authorities in Kuala Lumpur.

“The UPA government cannot shirk from this responsibility either out of its commitment to anti-Hindu pseudo-secularism or under the pretext that this is an internal matter of Malaysia."


Hindustan Times

New Delhi, December 06, 2007

Tamil organized group arrange the demonstration near ottawa Malaysian embassy





STAY FOCUSED ON OUR MISSION

THIS POSTING IS CONTRIBUTED BY A SUPPORTER OF HINDRAF. WE WISH TO ADVISE OUR SUPPORTERS NOT TO RESORT TO UNHEALTHY PRACTICES OTHERWISE THE STRUGGLE OF OUR FELLOW BROTHERS WHO ARE INCARCERATED UNDER ISA WOULD BE MEANINGLESS. FOR THEIR SAKE AND OUR COMMITMENT TO PEACEFUL STRUGGLE WE URGE OUR SUPPORTERS TO REMAIN CALM AND LET US CONCENTRATE ON OUR ORIGINAL 18 DEMANDS FOR THE RIGHTS OF INDIANS.

LET US STAY FOCUSED ON OUR MISSION AND LET US CHANNEL OUR GRIEVANCES DIRECTLY TO THE GOVERNMENT.



( MIC Youth Leader, S.A.Vigneswaran)


MIC Youth Leader, S.A.Vigneswaran who went to Paya Besar, Kulim (on 6 Jan 2008) as part of his tour on a so-called meeting the Indians to explain the actual situation's was slap with a biggest protest who gather outside the hall. Around 200o people gathered to show their protest but less then 50 people attended the meeting. PDRM have no option other than calling in, FRU to control the crowd. One youth was detained after he kick and punch, vicky's car. The Indian youth has send a very strong signal of protest and police has to escort Vicky's car out of the area.






Message From Seelan - THE REAL HERO

















Thank you all for your support during my fast. Thank you to all the Malaysians and Singaporeans who came down and those who called. Thank you especially, to the tree I was underneath, you sheltered me from the sun and the rain, and you gave me a place to lean when I was tired.
But this is only one small chapter of the struggle, the problems at large have not yet been solved. We must stand together as one, and keep taking action.
It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees.” - Mikhail Bakunin
Seelan Palay
Singapore

There are protests everywhere




JAN. 2, SINGAPORE, JERVOIS ROAD—When I met him, Seelan Palay was reading a Tamil newspaper. He had not eaten in two and half days, had not had solid food in ten, and had not consumed more than one meal for seventeen. A third-generation Singaporean Tamil, Palay had whittled down his caloric intake gradually in preparation for a hunger strike. In time-honored South Asian tradition, the scruffy 23-year-old art school graduate was fasting in front of the Malaysian High Commission to protest government actions: in this case, neighboring Malaysia’s violent response to a peaceful rally of thousands of ethnic Indians at the end of November.

The November event, conducted under the umbrella of Malaysia’s Hindu Rights Action Force (HINDRAF), has mobilized Palay even in Singapore, where restrictions on freedom of expression are par for the course. The grandson of a South Indian gardener and a gravedigger from northern Sri Lanka, Palay is an old hand at causing a stir. Palay, a painter and video artist, attended the rally in Kuala Lumpur, and says that what he saw there—as Indians peacefully protested the Malaysian government’s treatment of their minority—moved him to action. (Some reports, including one from major Malaysian news source Malaysiakini, put the numbers of that rally as high as 30,000. Other sources say 10,000 attended. Palay was there in part to document the action.) Malaysian police met those rallying with tear gas and water cannons. Palay says he was among those tear-gassed. The government has detained five of the group’s leaders under the Internal Security Act, which gives officials broad powers and has little transparency. Palay says each day of his hunger fast is for one of the detainees. He’s petitioning for them to be released, charged and tried in an open and transparent way. At this point, the Malaysian government has offered no answer.
“Everyone deserves a fair trial,” he says. “It’s very unfair. These people are not even asking for a change of government. They’re asking for a change of policy…. That kind of response was just uncalled for.”

Palay says the Singaporean police have warned him to leave—they also asked him for an entertainment or exhibition license, but he told them his business was neither. He’s already well enough known to them from his other activism that they didn’t even ask for his national ID. When Malaysian High Commission officials started snapping pictures of his visitors, he says, he walked up to their guard booth to give them a better view. He aims to finish the fast and keep agitating for change of all kinds—preferably in protest-averse Singapore. (He’s also involved in animal rights issues and vegetarian groups.)

If I hadn’t known he was on a hunger strike, I would never have guessed it. Spare-framed but with a sturdy, steady look, Palay sounded articulate and energetic. Speaking over the buzz of an Indian laborer trimming the lawn of the spacious bungalow behind him that afternoon, Palay said he had received little support from Singaporean Indians.

What makes him willing to do this when so many other people are not?
“Because I understand that the culture of resistance, the freedom of expression is a universal concept,” he said.

“Sometimes a kind of indoctrination can make a whole generation and the generation to come suppress that kind of expression, but when I read history and when I read current affairs… There are protests everywhere, even in Malaysia. The lawyers march in the streets. That is all proof to me that just because I’m Singaporean and there’s no culture of this here—fine. I won’t wait for the change, I’ll make the change. I will set an example…. The people who are affected come here to show their appreciation. I get calls from Malaysia, and that is all I need to know. I am with them on this issue.”

Palay drinks only water and has four bottles leaning against the trunk of his chosen tree; he’s had diarrhea for the past few days, fights headaches, and says his muscles feel the strain. Sporting a goatee and a short ponytail, he looks—and often sounds—like his American university-age counterparts.
Palay’s protest made the newspapers in Singapore, as did the upheaval in Malaysia. In Singapore, South Asians are treated as well as anyone else—the government does not systematically favor Malays and Muslims, as it does in Malaysia.

There, government jobs and university seats are allotted with preferential treatment for Malays, and have been for decades. More recently, Hindus have complained of suspicious conversions to Islam: one widow was denied her husband’s body and was told after his death that he had converted to Islam. The man was buried; the widow is suing. But such cases are sometimes tossed between sharia (Muslim) courts and civil courts, leaving plaintiffs nowhere. Malaysians are grateful for Palay’s protest, he says—most days, those visiting him are Malaysian. Another friend, local human rights lawyer and anti-death penalty crusader M. Ravi, garlands him nightly. (Ravi’s not his lawyer yet. Seelan says that lawyers in Malaysia have said that if the Malaysian government denies him a visa to travel there, they will take up his cause.)

Palay’s other visitors that night also included an opposition party politician, Chee Siok Chin, who called Palay “rare.” Indeed, other young Singaporeans I spoke to during my visit told me its repressive attitudes towards open debate are part of what prompts them to go elsewhere.
His father, a taxi driver in Singapore, thinks that if Seelan is not afraid, he should do what he wants to do. But what about factory worker Amma?
“She cries a lot,” he conceded. But, “I had a personal experience. This is my personal response.”
He’s got a plan for that first meal Saturday morning already: mango juice, tea—and two vadai. When we left him, he was at T-minus two days.
Aside: The government tried to link HINDRAF to the LTTE, but this seems to me ridiculous.

Hindu identity makes the difference

Though the Malaysian Mohammedan state boasts that its society is multi-cultural and multi-faith and that it is tolerant to other religions, Wahabism, the intolerant, high handed oppressive brand of Mohammedanism is gaining ground with every passing day in Malaysia. Quite contrary to its earlier shade, Malaysia’s official dark green is becoming darker and darker very fast.
When Malaysia’s Hindu Rights Action Force (HINDRAF) chairman and Barrister at Law (Lincoln’s Inn) Shri P. Waythamoorthy was in Chennai on a mission to garner moral support to the agitating minority Hindus for their basic rights in his country, even most of the mediapersons repeatedly questioned him as to why should they focus on their religion while calling their organisation instead of projecting themselves either as Malaysian citizens of Indian origin or Malaysian Tamils.

The bewildered HINDRAF chairman was confused for a few seconds and soon recovered to retort: “It is because as Hindus by faith and culture that we face the challenge.”

The mediapersons were still uncompromising: If you call yourself an ethnic minority of Indian origin or Malaysian Tamils, it would be easier to get their voice heard at every quarter, they argued. Frankly speaking, this is the mindset of most of the people especially in Tamil Nadu, as a result of the ‘socio-political infection’ called pseudo- secularism and the seventy five years old influence of Dravidian movement that has sowed the seeds of parochialism in the minds of the gullible.

Shri Waythamoorthy sadly revealed that he had to face similar questions almost everywhere, even though he was explaining that the issues were related exclusively to the citizens of Malaysia as Hindus.

In the guise of development and improving infrastructure, hundreds of Hindu temples are being razed to the ground in the Malaysian capital, whereas deviation takes place in haste from the original plan if a mosque stands in the way. And many of these temples are hundred years old; some seventy five or fifty, constructed during colonial days.

Among those demolished, only a few were offered alternative sites but they are either adjacent to drainage or unfit for any congregation. Even then, after years of patience, Malaysian Hindus did not plan to air their objection to the Malaysian government. Their sole objective was to march peacefully to the office of the British High Commissioner to submit a memorandum to the queen of Britain to remind her Majesty’s moral responsibility in resolving their issues. Malaysian government, despite claiming to be a democracy, did not allow this normal democratic practice, and had also taken ruthless repressive measures to suppress their grievances, determined to teach them a lesson so that they do not dare in future to let off their steam in public.

Though the Malaysian Mohammedan state boasts that its society is multi-cultural and multi-faith and that it is tolerant to other religions, Wahabism, the intolerant, high handed oppressive brand of Mohammedanism is gaining ground with every passing day in Malaysia. Quite contrary to its earlier shade, Malaysia’s official dark green is becoming darker and darker very fast. This is the reality today, not only in Malaysia but all over the world, wherever Mohammedan community has its presence. Increase in the number of Mohammedan women in black burqua is the indication for Wahabism having taken deep and strong roots in their mohalla or jamat.

Issues before Malaysian Hindus for being Hindus are varied. Mother and child, husband and wife are forcibly separated if one’s name is mistakenly or purposely registered as Mohammedan. If any Hindu male gets converted to Mohammedanism, his wife and even major offsprings are automatically taken for granted to be Mohammedans. They are sent to religious reformation schools if they raise any objection to their forced conversion.

It is needless to explain that these so-called religious reformation schools are nothing but similar to concentration camps of communist countries. If a Hindu finds his or her religion wrongly registered as Mohammedan and application for rectification is filed, there ends the peaceful and normal existence of that person. The religious reformation school alias concentration camp opens its iron gates and until the person changes his or her mind and consents to be a Mohammedan, he or she is virtually a prisoner.

A recent case of this sort of arrogance is that of one young mother by name Revati, who was separated from her small baby and husband, and shut in the religious reformation school just because she wanted her religion to be corrected as Hindu in the records. All along, she had been a practising Hindu, living with her grand mother since her childhood, who is also a Hindu but her parents living elsewhere were converted to Mohammedanism at a point of time. That was enough for the administration to treat her also a Mohammedan. Again, a Hindu, just because either intentionally or inadvertently registered as a Mohammedan, when dies, is forcibly buried in a Mohammedan burial ground, deprived of Hindu rites.

These are some of the Hindu specific issues for people in Malaysia for being Hindus. And a Hindu wrongly recorded as Mohammedan wants to be officially corrected as Hindu so that he or she need not be under the purview of medieval Mohammedan civil code of Sharia that is in force in Malaysia. There is also much more socio-cultural neglect for being Hindus. In the light of these facts, it is quite essential for Malaysian Hindus to identify themselves as Hindus instead of projecting as citizens of Indian origin or Malaysian Tamils.

Calling themselves as people of Indian origin will make them vulnerable to the charge of being unfaithful to the country that has accepted them as its own citizens, still fond of being identified as people of the country from where their forefathers migrated. And if they pose as Malaysian Tamils, they would be voluntarily limiting their scope to a narrow linguistic circle in drawing attention and sympathy.

Today, Hinduism has become universal, true to its ancient characteristics of Vasudhaivakutum-
bakam. There are many non-Hindustanis who willingly and devotedly follow Hindu faith and its rich culture. In depth study of Hindu philosophy has drawn many non-Hindustanis to be staunch Hindus, without any need to getting converted to Hinduism ritually. And there are many Hindu organisations now with international reach to take up any Hindu cause. Also, many Hindus with the origin of Hindustan irrespective of the difference in their mother tongue are living as one community in various nations with legitimate citizenship.

Going by these factors, it is time not only for Malaysian Hindus but Hindus all over the world to identify themselves as Hindus so that the feel of oneness would solidly stand in support behind them in all their efforts to retain their faith and culture and assert their rights.

HINDRAF activities in England


2 HINDRAF meetings have been held in London and 1 is going on today, 6/1/08 at London Colony Village Club, St. Albans.
More than 50 people attended the first meeting in Highgate Hill Murugan Temple and 150 people for the second meeting in East Ham Murugan Temple.
The following special prayers had/is being held for the release of our 5 HINDRAF leaders captured under ISA colonial law:
Homam on 4/1/08 in East Ham Murugan Temple.
108 Swarna Pushpa Archana (108 gold Archana) on 5/1/08 at Chennai Viswaroopa Adhivyadhihara, Sri Bhaktha Anjaneyaswami, Tamil Nadu.
2 poojas on 6/1/08:
Arhana Ananthara Dharshan at Thirupathy, 5.30 a.m.
Special Kungumam Archanai at Padmavathy temple in Thirupathy (Perumal’s wife) at 9.00 am.
There are many activities, meetings, campaigns and rally (yes another peaceful) have been organised in the nearest future throughout England especially in London.
Overwhelming support from Malaysian Indians and also friends from other races as we are fighting for justice and equality. Hence, putting pressure on the racist UMNO led government of Malaysia.
Below are few pictures taken at the meetings and special prayers held in London.