MALAYSIA: Protesting students may be expelled

Malaysia's Ministry of Higher Education has issued warnings to university students who may be arrested in demonstrations within the country that they will automatically lose their national student status and be dismissed.

The warnings invoke legislation passed in 1971 in the wake of the May 1969 inter-ethnic riots that shook multi-racial Malaysia to its foundations.

The immediate prompt for the stern warning were disturbances in and outside Kuala Lumpur in late November. A rally, previously banned by the state but called by the Hindu Rights Action Force (HINDRAF) resulted in injuries inflicted on the police and some property vandalised.

HINDRAF's three principals, all lawyers, had previously been charged with sedition for "inciting hatred". The immediate objective of the campaign, however, appeared to be to petition Britain's Queen Elizabeth in a class action suit.

The action was aimed at eliciting from the United Kingdom reparations for the exploitation of indentured Indian labour in Malaya and the Straits Settlements during colonial times. As with Fiji, Mauritius, Guyana and Trinidad, the Indian levy on the plantations was crucial to the colonial economy.

Many Indians, principally Tamils, remain mired in rural poverty on the rubber and oil palm
plantations.

The rally went ahead despite the ban, a reported 10,000 or so attending. However, no evidence has been produced either by the state or the protagonist group that university students were in fact actively involved. Although ethnic Indian students may have played a role in the 'reformasi' movement of the late 1990s to early 2000s, this was not on a communalistic basis.

One of HINDRAF's central grievances is that ethnic Indians, who in Malaysia also include substantial numbers of Sikhs, Muslims and Christians who do not represent a homogenous community, have been marginalised in higher education.

Figures would appear to bear this out, but ironically everybody in Malaysia recognises that Indians are disproportionately represented among lawyers and doctors, and many of the country's best-known legal figures are Indian. Again, ironically perhaps in view of the reference to Britain, these lawyers and barristers are noted for their gifts with the English language.

HINDRAF claims there is a continuum between the exploitation of Indians under the British, the poor performance of Indian children in the national education system at secondary level, and the small number of ethnic Indians attending university in Malaysia.

The Malay-led national government emphatically rejects suggestions that Indians receive a raw deal in education. Left out of the equation is the number that go abroad to study through family financing.

Invocation of the 1971 University Control legislation is consistent with the Malaysian government's ‘quietistic’ approach to the management of campus politics.