Malaysia police arrest leaders of Indian protest

By Jalil Hamid

KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) - Malaysian police swooped on Friday on organizers of a planned protest by minority ethnic Indians, arresting them for sedition and warning of racial strife if the rally went ahead as planned at the weekend.

The organizers, from a Hindu rights group, complain that the government, a ruling coalition dominated by politicians from the ethnic Malay majority, has discriminated against ethnic Indians.

The group has promised to hold a peaceful rally in the capital on Sunday but the government has warned Indians not to take part, saying it could stoke racial tensions. Police have set up road-blocks around Kuala Lumpur, causing huge traffic jams to deter would-be protesters from coming into the city.

On Friday, police went further and arrested three Indians from the Hindu Rights Action Force (Hindraf), charging them under Malaysia's colonial-era Sedition Act for making seditious speeches at a recent rally outside the capital.

"We believe they are promoters of Hindraf. We believe they are influential people in the group," Ismail Omar, deputy chief of federal police, told a news conference. "We believe we are making the right decision in order to ensure public order."

Police also took the unusual step of securing a court order preventing anyone from attending the rally. Offenders, including journalists, could face more serious penalties than would be the case under laws against illegal assembly.

Malaysia bans public assemblies of more than five people without a police permit. In practice, police deny permits to anti-government protests but often issue permits to protests aimed at foreign governments, such as the United States.

Hindraf has vowed to go ahead with its protest outside the British embassy, ostensibly to call on the former colonial ruler to make reparations for bringing Indians to Malaysia as indentured labor just over a century ago.

But the group's core allegation that the current government has done little to improve Indians' living standards has riled the administration, which only two weeks ago cracked down on a protest rally by about 10,000 people demanding electoral reform.

Then, police fired tear gas and water cannon on the largely peaceful crowd, drawing criticism from human rights groups.

"I still don't see why the Malaysian government is afraid," said Waytha Nayagi, sister of Hindraf chairman Waytha Moorthy Ponnusamy, who was one of the three men arrested on Friday.

Nayagi said her brother had been arrested when he stopped at a toll booth on a public highway. Under the Sedition Act, he and the other two, both legal advisers to Hindraf, face a maximum of three years' jail, a 5,000 ringgit ($1,500) fine, or both.

The Hindraf chairman first attracted publicity to the group's cause in August, when he sued Britain in London's Royal Courts of Justice claiming damages of 1 million sterling ($2.06 million) to each of Malaysia's 2 million ethnic Indians for rights abuses he traces to colonial times.

(Additional reporting by Mark Bendeich; editing by Roger Crabb)