{"id":11410,"date":"2012-10-27T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2012-10-27T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2012\/10\/27\/human-rights-commission-probes-hindu-claim\/"},"modified":"2012-10-27T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2012-10-27T12:00:00","slug":"human-rights-commission-probes-hindu-claim","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2012\/10\/27\/human-rights-commission-probes-hindu-claim\/","title":{"rendered":"Human Rights Commission Probes Hindu Claim"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.thenewage.co.za\/67032-1007-53-HRC_probes_Hindu_claim\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n<p>BOKSBURG, SOUTH AFRICA, October 24, 2012 (thenewage.co.za): The Human Rights Commission (HRC) is investigating alleged racial and religious discrimination at a school in Boksburg while the teacher at the centre of the row has been suspended (see HPI: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.org\/blogs-news\/hindu-press-international\/south-africa-racism-claimed-over-pupils--red-strings\/12453.html\">here<\/a>). This follows complaints against a teacher at the Parkdene Primary School who has been accused of harassing a Grade 3 pupil for wearing the sacred Hindu red string (Kavlava) around his wrist.<\/p>\n<p>Isaac Magena, spokesperson for the HRC, confirmed receiving two complaints about the alleged harassment of Akilan Madurai. &#8220;One (we got) from the parents and recently we got another one from the DA. We have already started with our investigation,&#8221; Magena said.The HRC said it was in contact with the Department of Education.<\/p>\n<p>The child&#8217;s parents Sundrika and Don Madurai said they had tired of dealing with their son&#8217;s &#8220;harassment.&#8221; &#8220;We tried every avenue to deal with the matter internally. The principal told us to find him another (school),&#8221; Don Madurai told The New Age. Akilan also spoke out about his ordeal: &#8220;She called me a coolie (a derogatory word for Indians in South Africa) after I refused to cut off my string. The Madurai family is not the only family with complaints against the teacher. Several other parents said they were glad that &#8220;this was being exposed&#8221;. <\/p>\n<p>Attorneys acting for the school said the principal and teacher denied the allegations. &#8220;They (allegations) are strongly denied. Racism is not being tolerated at our school. Our school policy says all religions decoration may be worn and be hidden with a jersey,&#8221; said Kwa attorneys. Department of Education spokesperson Charles Phahlane said, &#8220;The matter is still in process and we will communicate the outcomes.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Source BOKSBURG, SOUTH AFRICA, October 24, 2012 (thenewage.co.za): The Human Rights Commission (HRC) is investigating alleged racial and religious discrimination,&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11410","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11410","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11410"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11410\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11410"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11410"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}