04/12: Hindraf unqualified to meet with PM, says Zainuddin

(Bernama) -- The group calling itself the Hindu Rights Action Force (Hindraf) is unqualified to meet with Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi to discuss the problems of the Indian community because the organisation is not recognised by anyone, Information Minister Datuk Seri Zainuddin Maidin said today.

"It would be unbefitting a prime minister to meet with a discredited organisation which had stooped to the level of street thugs and violated the laws of the country," he told reporters after a visit to the media centre at the Langkawi International Maritime and Aerospace (LIMA) 2007 exhibition, here.

He also said that it would be inappropriate for the prime minister to meet with a group which had sparked off chaos and resorted to violence to threaten the government.

Zainuddin said any effort to meet with the country's leaders to express any dissatisfaction should have been made before Hindraf acted to organise the illegal rally and not after.

Thousands of Hindraf sympathisers joined an illegal rally on Nov 25 in Kuala Lumpur to support what they claimed was the handing over of a petition to the British High Commission asking Queen Elizabeth II to appoint a Queen's counsel to represent the Indian community in a class action suit against the British government for bringing Indians as indentured labourers to then Malaya in the 1800s and exploiting them.

Hindraf is seeking a four trillion pound sterling (RM27.7 trillion) compensation through the suit filed in London claiming that the British were to blame for the alleged marginalisation of the Indians in Malaysia.

Zainuddin said Malaysia had representatives and leaders from various communities, and the government recognised the MIC as the political party championing the cause of the Indian community in the country.

He said the Indian community, via the MIC since the era of Tun V.T. Sambanthan, had collaborated to gain independence for the country and that the community should accord respect for the MIC as well as Datuk Seri S. Samy Vellu who was its current leader.

Zainuddin said the Indians had achieved much progress compared with the time before independence when they came to the country as plantation workers, adding that many of them were now professionals -- including even those who supported Hindraf.

"We also regret the action of certain quarters who have taken advantage of the situation to allege that the president of India and the chief minister of Tamil Nadu supported the Hindraf action," he said.

A Hindraf leader, P.Uthayakumar, had told Bernama yesterday that the organisation wanted to have a meeting with the prime minister to raise the problems confronting the Indian community in the country.

Last Friday, Abdullah described as harsh a claim by Hindraf that the government was involved in ethnic cleansing of Indians in the country.