By IANS
New Delhi : A forceful plea for protecting the interests of ethnic Indians in Malaysia was made in the Rajya Sabha Thursday, with members cutting across party lines to demand that the government take concrete steps in this regard.
“It is the sentiment of the house. The government will definitely take notice. It may be brought to the notice of the external affairs minister,” Deputy Chairman K. Rahman Khan told Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs Suresh Pachouri.
“I will inform the minister and urge on him that he should take appropriate steps. I will inform the house accordingly,” Pachouri replied.
Raising the issue during zero hour, the DMK’s Tiruchi Siva said Malaysia’s ethnic Indians were “peacefully demonstrating with portraits of Mahatma Gandhi to demand equal rights but the police used tear gas and water canons to crush them.
“This kind of authoritarianism is not acceptable,” he added.
Siva also pointed out that Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi had written to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh urging him to take immediate and appropriate action and hoped expeditious steps would be taken in this regard.
According to the AIADMK’s K. Malaisamy, 64 Hindu temples in Malaysia had been destroyed or damaged since the ethnic Indians began their campaign for equal rights.
“It is very distressing,” said D. Raja of the Communist Party of India. “They (the ethnic Indians) have become (Malaysian) citizens but do not enjoy equal rights and their human rights have been violated. The government should take it up in an appropriate manner,” he added.
V. Narayanasamy of the Congress lamented that while ethnic Chinese had been given rights equal to those enjoyed by Malays, ethnic Indians who were also demanding this were “jailed for no fault of theirs when they were agitating peacefully”.
He also urged External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee to take up the issue through diplomatic channels.