PETALING JAYA, AUG 26- The police’s announcement that 71 percent of gang members in Malaysia are Indians had been met with disbelief and had triggered allegations that the men in blue are practising racial-profiling.
PKR vice-president N Surendran said in a statement today the figure was inconceivable given that Indians make up only seven percent of the population.
“If this figure is true, it is nothing short of a national crisis involving the Indian community. If true, why has this astonishing figure not been revealed to the public earlier?” he asked.
He said PKR believed that the high figure could be due to the police and other enforcement officers’ targeting ethnic Indian in their operations.
Surendran thus, demanded that the government set up an independent inquiry to determine if the law enforcers were indeed racial profiling ethnic Indian.
“If there is such a practice, it could lead to harassment, unlawful arrests and breaches of fundamental rights. More dangerously, it could also result in callous treatment of the detainees while in police custody. Francis Udayappan, Kugan, Sugumar, Darmendran, Karunanithi were some of the Indian detainees who died while in custody while recently, five young Indians were shot by the police in Penang,” said the Padang Serai MP.
However, police had said the five were gang members linked to at least 10 murders, and that four of them had multiple criminal records for drug offences, causing hurt using a weapon, and rioting.
Surendran had also claimed that the majority of those arrested in the ongoing Ops Cantas were Malaysian Indians.
