MIC President and the sole Malaysian Indian Cabinet Minister for over 28 years, Datuk Seri S. Samy Vellu has become the most unpopular Malaysian Indian leader in the country, being booed and jeered almost daily by the Malaysian Indians in the country.
Last night, as reported by the press, Samy Vellu was again the target of boos and jeers by Indian crowds in Prai, Penang. This is the New Sunday Times report: “Mob jeers Samy Vellu, blocks his car”:
BUTTERWORTH: MIC president Datuk Seri S. Samy Vellu went through a harrowing experience last night when some 100 people blocked his car and demanded the release of Hindu Rights Action Force (Hindraf) protesters detained at an illegal rally in Kuala Lumpur yesterday. The crowd surrounded and banged his car as he was leaving SRJK (C) Chung Hwa 3 in Prai here after attending a function at 9pm. The works minister was earlier escorted to the car after a mob started to jeer him. But the group, including some women, blocked the car, and did not allow it to leave the school compound. The crowd demanded that Samy Vellu alight from the car and talk to them but the minister refused, leading to a 10-minute stand-off. Samy Vellu later wound down his car window and asked the people what they wanted. The group demanded his help to secure the release of the demonstrators detained in Kuala Lumpur in the morning. “But they are criminals,” Samy Vellu was heard saying. This infuriated the group who refused to budge. Samy Vellu finally relented and promised to call the inspector-general of police today. By then, policemen managed to clear the way for Samy Vellu’s car to leave.
Samy Vellu should publicly apologise for equating peaceful demonstrators and Internal Security Act (SA) detainees as “criminals”.
This is his attitude to the five Hindraf leaders and activists who are now currently detained in the Kamunting detention centre under the ISA, not for any crime that they have committed or threat to the security of the country but because they have become a threat to the political security of Samy Vellu, the MIC and the Barisan Nasional because of their espousal of the cause for the end of the long-standing political, economic, educational, social, cultural and religious polarization of the Malaysian Indians into a new underclass in Malaysia.
I feel very offended when Samy Vellu equates peaceful demonstrators and ISA detainees to “criminals”. I have twice been detained under the ISA, the first time in 1969 for 17 months and the second time, together with other DAP MPs and leaders like Karpal Singh, Lim Guan Eng, Dr. Tan Seng Giaw, Lau Dak Kee, the late P. Patto and V. David, in 1987 where Guan Eng and I were the last to be released among the Operation Lalang detainees after 18 months.
ISA detainees are no criminals or they would have been charged in court for an open trial to determine whether they are innocent or guilty of the offences preferred against them. It is precisely because the authorities have no proof that the ISA detainees have committed crimes that they are incarcerated under the detention-without-trial laws.
Samy Vellu should apologise to thousands of ISA detainees since the ISA was enacted in 1960 for his slur on their idealism, patriotism and integrity by equating them, together with peaceful demonstrators for justice, freedom and fair play, as “criminals”.