A Malaysian human-rights lawyer has filed a US$4 trillion lawsuit against Britain for alleged atrocities suffered by Indians whose forefathers were brought as indentured laborers to Malaysia during colonial rule.
Seeking ?1 million (US$2 million) compensation for each of the currently estimated 2 million Indian Malaysians, the suit was filed in London earlier this month, Ponnusamy Waytha Moorthy told reporters while in Washington on a trip to brief the US Congress and rights groups on the issue.
"The colossal suit reflects the years of pain, suffering, humiliation, discrimination and continuous colonialization under the current Malaysian government," he said.
"It is also to highlight the negligence and failure of the British in not entrenching the rights of the minority Indians in the Constitution when they granted Malaysia independence," he said.
Many Indians were brought to Malaysia from southern India as indentured labor by the British, but their future generations "were left high and dry" when the colonial power left the country, Waytha Moorthy said.
"There has been segregation, discrimination, marginalization and other abuses of Indian Malaysians," he said.
Ethnic Indians and Chinese are minority groups in Malaysia, whose 26 million population is predominantly Malay.
The resource-rich country, which won independence in 1957 from Britain, has blossomed into one of Southeast Asia's top economies.
But Waytha Moorthy said 70 percent of Indian Malaysians were poor, with many in the middle and upper classes of the community migrating overseas.
"The future is bleak and we took this action because we have been pushed to the wall," he said.
Waytha Moorthy is also asking British courts to declare the Malaysian Constitution null and void.
He said he had three months to serve notice of the court action on the named defendant, British Foreign Secretary David Miliband.
H said that at least one British law firm was considering handling his case on a pro bono basis.
T. Kumar, Amnesty International's Washington-based Asia-Pacific advocacy director, refused to comment on the legal suit but noted that the British colonial power had indeed taken tens of thousands of Indians as indentured laborers to various parts of the globe.
Among the destinations for the laborers were South Africa, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Guyana, Trinidad and Tobago, Fiji and Mauritius, he said.
A US YouTuber who caused outrage for filming himself kissing a statue commemorating Korean wartime sex slaves has been sentenced to six months in prison, a court in Seoul said yesterday. Johnny Somali, 25, gained notoriety several years ago for recording himself doing a series of provocative stunts in South Korea and Japan, and streaming them on platforms such as YouTube and Twitch. South Korean authorities indicted Somali — whose real name is Ramsey Khalid Ismael — in 2024 on public order violations and obstruction of business, and banned him from leaving the country. “The court has sentenced him to six months in
Former Lima mayor Rafael Lopez Aliaga, a Peruvian presidential hopeful, gathered hundreds of supporters in Lima on Tuesday and gave authorities 24 hours to annul the first round of the country’s election over allegations of fraud. Lopez Aliaga is locked in a tight three-way race with two other candidates for second place in Sunday’s vote. The election runner-up wins a ticket to June’s presidential run-off against front-runner Keiko Fujimori. “I am giving them 24 hours to declare this electoral fraud null and void,” said Lopez Aliaga, surrounded by a crowd of several hundred supporters. “If it is not declared null and void tomorrow,
PAPAL RETORT: Pope Leo told reporters that he has ‘no fear, neither of the Trump administration nor speaking out loudly about the message of the Gospel’ US President Donald Trump has feuded with Pope Leo XIV over the Iran conflict — setting off an unholy row that could have serious political implications for the Republican leader back in the US. Trump has drawn barbs even from some allies over the attacks on the US-born pontiff, who has criticized the Trump administration over its immigration crackdown, the intervention in Venezuela and the Iran war. The president risks alienating the religious right in November’s crucial US midterm elections. So far the unprecedented clash between the leader of the most powerful military on Earth and the head of the world’s 1.4 billion
A 16-year-old boy has been charged with murder and aggravated sexual abuse in Florida in the death of his 18-year-old stepsister on a Carnival Cruise ship, the US Department of Justice said on Monday. Timothy Hudson was initially charged in February and subsequently indicted on March 10, but the breadth of the case was not known until a seal was lifted on Friday last week, weeks after US District Judge Beth Bloom in Miami said that he would be prosecuted as an adult at the request of the government. Anna Kepner had been traveling on the Carnival Horizon ship in November last
RSS