The northern branch of the Human Rights Party (HRP) has lodged a police report in Penang against the country's top leaders for violating the constitutional right of young Indian Malaysians to education.Lodged at the Patani Road police headquarters yesterday, the report named Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak, Deputy Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin and Higher Education Minister Mohamed Khaled Nordin as key violators.
This was the HRP's third report against BN-led federal government policies, following those lodged recently in Kuala Lumpur and Kulim.According to the party, more police reports will follow as part of its campaign to lobby for the students' right to education.The party cited Article 8(1) of the federal constitution, which provides that all persons are equal before the law and entitled to the equal protection of the law; as well as Article 8(2), that there shall be no discrimination against citizens on the grounds only of religion, race, descent, and place of birth.
In its report, the party also pointed to Article 12(1): “Without prejudice to the generality of Article 8, there shall be no discrimination against any citizen on the grounds only of religion, race, descent of place of birth” in the admission to any higher education institution that is government-funded.”When contacted, central committee member N Ganesan said the report was against Umno's “racist policies against bright Indian students who have scored excellent results in the Sijil Pelajaran Malaysia but were unable to obtain Public Service Department scholarships to further their studies in matriculation colleges and universities”.
“We want to put on record the dissatisfaction of the Indian community over these blatantly discriminatory racist policies of Umno,” he said.“These policies have long-term implications for the intellectual development of the Indian community specifically and for the country at large. This level of racial discrimination does not exist in any other part of the world except here in Najib's 1Malaysia.”
'Access denied'
Ganesan claimed that about 2,237 Indian Malaysian students have scored up to 13As but were denied access to the 10,500 local and 1,500 overseas scholarships offered by the government, as well as to 40,000 matriculation and 847,485 public university seats.They were also denied places in critical courses such as medicine, pharmacy, dentistry, engineering, aeronautical engineering, accountancy, law, and bio-technology, he said.
The community's other grouses include the demolition of a temple in Setapak by Kuala Lumpur City Hall on June 24.“Acts done with impunity are nothing short of a scheme to stunt the growth of the Indian community (to) 'always keep these fellows grovelling for the basics, give them peanuts or give them nothing - they will go away',” added Ganesan.“But they will not go away, they will push continuously harder to eliminate the root cause of their problems.”
Source : http://www.malaysiakini.com/news/135983
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