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Samy Vellu should lobby Cabinet support for a Royal Commission of Inquiry into the marginalisation of the Malaysian Indians as an underclass and to propose a blueprint within three months to reinstate them into the mainstream of Malaysian development

Media Statement
by Lim Kit Siang

(Penang, Sunday): A new police study has shown that Indian incidence in serious and violent crimes in the country is alarmingly high.

Bukit Aman Federal Police CID Deputy Director I Datuk Ramli Yusuff said yesterday that the number of arrests involving Indians in violent crimes had been on the rise -- 69 arrests in 1996, 130 in 1997, 162 in 1998, 179 in 1999 and 111 in the first eight months of this year.

Ramli also said that of the 651 Indians arrested under the Emergency Ordinance, 269 were for armed robberies, 57 for murders and the rest for violent crimes such as causing hurt, kidnapping for ransom, firearm offences and extortion.

He said that this year alone, 186 Indians were banished to the Simpang Rengam centre under the Emergency Ordinance 1969, compared with 162 Chinese and 60 Malays.

He said:

"Indians, being the minority in the country, are committing far more crimes compared with that of other races."

Ramli said that the police study found the high incidence of Indian involvement in crime was due to poverty as many Indian youths, who migrated to towns from estates, led a hard life.

The new police study has confirmed the recent TIME magazine article which said that "decades of official discrimination have turned Malaysia's ethnic Indians into a disgruntled underclass" with many of them feeling like "third-class citizens" in the country and the "real losers" since the introduction of the New Economic Policy 30 years ago.

MIC President and Works Minister, Datuk Seri S. Samy Vellu’s comment to the new police studies was very eloquent and most self-incriminatory when he said:

"What is missing is hope for poor youths…we must give them hope".

Can Samy Vellu explain why after being the sole Indian Cabinet Minister for over two decades, more and more Indian youths have lost hope and the Indians have become the most marginalised community in the country? Samy Vellu should lobby Cabinet support for a Royal Commission of Inquiry into the marginalisation of the Malaysian Indians as an underclass and to propose a blueprint within three months to reinstate them into the mainstream of Malaysian development.

(10/9/2000)

*Lim Kit Siang - DAP National Chairman