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Malaysian authorities have charged three ethnic Indian activists with sedition in an apparent attempt to stop a rally in support of a lawsuit that holds the British responsible for the Indians' economic woes.
The US$4 trillion ($5.39 trillion) lawsuit, filed in London in August, demands that Britain compensates Malaysia's ethnic Indians - who comprise some 8 per cent of the country's 27 million people - for bringing their ancestors to then-Malaya as "indentured labourers" and exploiting them under colonial rule.
Ethnic Indians, mainly Hindus, form one of Malaysia's largest minority groups. Activists say more than two-thirds of them live in poverty, partly because they are deprived of opportunities by affirmative action policies that favour the ethnic Malay Muslim majority. Government authorities have rejected claims of discrimination.
The Hindu Rights Action Force, a non-government group, was hoping to gather 10,000 people to demonstrate outside the British High Commission in Kuala Lumpur yesterday.
Authorities warned that the rally would be illegal and threw a security cordon around the capital, citing concerns of potential violence ahead of the protest. Police arrested the Indian group's chairman, Waytha Moorthy Ponnusamy, his brother and a senior associate on Friday. The three men were later charged in court with making seditious comments, which carries a maximum penalty of three years in prison.
Two were freed on bail, but Waytha Moorthy remained in custody because he refused to post bail in a gesture of defiance.
Kuala Lumpur police chief Zulhasnan Najib Baharudin said police refused to issue a permit for the rally for security reasons and warned that protesters could face arrest.
Malaysian law prohibits public gatherings of five or more people without a police permit.
"If there is any assembly, it's unlawful," Zulhasnan said.
Police have mounted security road blocks throughout Kuala Lumpur since Thursday, sparking massive traffic snarls.
Police had earlier served Waytha Moorthy a court order forbidding the rally's key planners from being present outside the British High Commission.
"We've told our people to continue" with the rally, Waytha Moorthy said.
A Malaysian human rights group, Suaram, called the arrests an "attempt by the police to intimidate and to prevent [activists] from exercising their right to freedom of peaceful assembly and the right to freedom of expression".
The group planned to submit a petition urging the Queen to appoint lawyers to represent the Indians in the suit, which is meant to show that British neglect caused Malaysian Indians to remain economically disadvantaged after independence in 1957.
The planned rally would be the second street protest in Kuala Lumpur in less than a month.
Police fired tear gas and water cannons to disperse activists on November 10 at an opposition-backed rally demanding electoral reforms that drew thousands of people.
- AP
