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.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS