KUALA LUMPUR, MALAYSIA, november 26, 2007: (HPI note: See video news report here.) Unprecedented street protests by ethnic Indians have opened up a new fault line in Malaysia’s tense race relations, posing a major problem for the government as it faces elections, analysts said on Monday. Political observers in the multicultural nation, where minority Indians and ethnic Chinese live alongside the dominant Malay Muslim community, said the ugly scenes at Sunday’s rally represented a new era of racial activism. “It is quite clear we will have an emboldened community willing to fight for their rights. It’s almost a renaissance or a rebirth,” said leading commentator Charles Santiago. “The young Indian population out there especially see discrimination on a daily basis …For a lot of them, they feel they have nothing to lose.”
At least 8,000 protesters including women and young people massed near Kuala Lumpur’s iconic Petronas Towers — meeting stiff resistance from police who beat them with batons and unleashed gas and chemical-laced water. The rally was officially in support of a multi-trillion dollar lawsuit accusing former colonial ruler Britain of being at the root of Indians’ economic problems by bringing their ancestors here as indentured laborers in the 1800s. But it was more squarely aimed at the ruling United Malays National Organisation (UMNO), which stands for Malay interests and has ruled the nation since independence a half-century ago. While Malays control the political scene and the Chinese population is dominant in business, Indians complain they run a distant third in terms of wealth, education and opportunities.