Britain Sued Over Malaysian Indians' Woes

An ethnic Indian in Malaysia is using an audacious strategy to highlight the plight of his mostly impoverished community by suing Britain, the country's former colonial ruler, for $4 trillion.

The Malaysian government dismisses the case as baseless, but lawyer Waytha Moorthy is determined to pursue it, even vowing to appeal to Britain's Queen Elizabeth to appoint lawyers for the Indian community, which he says is too poor to find its own.

Moorthy wants Britain to pay damages of 1 million sterling [$2.06 million] to each of Malaysia's two million ethnic Indians for rights abuses he traces to colonial-era labour schemes that brought their ancestors to Malaysia as indentured workers.

Compensation
"We are seeking compensation because we were permanently colonised during British rule, and now, under the government of the ethnic Malays," Moorthy said.

"We have lost touch with our roots and have been suppressed so far," said Moorthy, who accuses British officials of failing to honour their responsibility to protect ethnic Indians when they granted independence to Malaysia in 1957.

In colonial times, many impoverished Indians and Chinese flocked to work and settle in Malaysia, drawn by government schemes meant to attract cheap labour for the country's then lucrative rubber estates and tin mines, he added. But the episode highlights a very real dilemma: after 50 years of independence, ethnic Indians, most of whom are Hindu, own just 1.5 per cent of the country's national wealth. (Gulf News)

***** Our pemimpin2 in Umno must be pretty cheesed off by this gutsy (and perhaps a little reckless) lawyer Waytha Moorthy. That Umno pimp at Utusan Malaysia, Awang Selamat, apart from bisik bisiking, has also been spitting his racist venom at the likes of Waytha Moorthy for highlighting internationally the issue of race discrimination in Malaysia. I wonder where Awang Selamat and like-minded ethnoracists trace their roots to, Indonesia or Yunnan Province? Or perhaps he would prefer to be associated with some tiny village near the Arabian Sea? It might add a little credibility to the rubbish he spews out on a daily basis.
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