BANTING: About 500 angry parents and other members of the Indian community gathered outside a secondary school here on Monday to protest racial slurs and abuse allegedly uttered by a teacher against Indian students recently.

The crowd began gathering outside SMK Telok Panglima Garang’s main entrance near here at noon and dispersed about two hours later.

The headmaster was on leave, so some teachers accepted on his behalf copies of police reports made by a Form Four student and a Form Five student. According to the police reports, the female history teacher had allegedly called Indian students in a Form Four and a Form Five class ‘keling pariah’, ‘Negro’, ‘black monkeys’ as well as other derogatory names.

The teacher had also purportedly said that ‘Indians came from dogs’ and the community members were stupid and prone to thuggery and thievery.

The police reports also alleged that the teacher had said that Indians were the ‘children of prostitutes’ and the community’s youths ‘did not have testicles’ on July 17 and 22, and had also purportedly beaten up some Indians students.

The Form Four student also alleged in his report that the teacher had written the word ‘keling pariah’ on the board and lost her cool when the Indian students in the class told her that they did not like being called names.

Coalition of Malaysian Indian NGOs secretary Gunaraj George, who was among those who handed over the police reports, said that exposure to such abuse would only breed hatred and racial polarisation in schools.

“No one in his or her right frame of mind would have said these things. Given this, the best option would be for the teacher to be assigned to a desk job and not be allowed to be near youngsters anymore,” he said.

Meanwhile, Deputy Education Minister Dr Wee Ka Siong said the schoolteacher might be sacked if the allegations proved true.

The allegations were serious as no one was allowed to insult others, especially in a school environment, said Dr Wee, who was asked to comment on the incident when visiting a nine-year-old accident victim at the Sultanah Aminah Hospital in Johor Baru.

He added that the ministry was awaiting an official report before taking any action.

Source : The Star

Several Indian civil movements are fed up with the indifferent attitude of Pakatan Rakyat governments.

MCPX

Hindu Rights Action Force (Hindraf), Penang Makkal Sakti Welfare Association (Pemaswa) and newly formed Hindu Action Network (Han) want the new Pakatan governments to form state Indian councils led by the menteri besar or chief minister.

The suggested councils will plan and implement beneficial programmes for the Indian community, with short, medium and long term goals.

According to Hindraf national coordinator TS Thanenthiran, the Pakatan governments have failed to fulfill their promises.

He said during the elections, Pakatan used the Hindraf tagline Makkal Sakti but since winning they have not unveiled any policy to benefit the community.

“Pakatan Rakyat ruling parties, be it DAP in Penang, PAS in Kedah and Perak and PKR in Selangor, seemed to have made empty electoral promises to the Indians,” he added.

He stressed Hindraf would continue to fight along the movement’s 18-point memorandum submitted to the federal government last year.

Temple demolitions, non-existence of kindergartens in Tamil schools, private and public sector marginalisation and high suicide rates, are some of the issues the memorandum covers.

‘Reps betrayed the community’

Meanwhile, Pemaswa president G Asoghan claimed that Indian leaders in the Pakatan government have “betrayed the Indian community’s trust in them” to deliver the goods.

“Until today, the state governments, particularly Indian leaders, are resting on their laurels,” he said.

He claimed that more from MIC, PPP and IPF have benefited from the DAP government in Penang than genuine Hindraf supporters.

Han coordinator G Mugunthan (left) criticised Penang’s elected Indian assemblypersons of protecting their chronic self-interests when they rejected a previous DAP proposal for a state council.

Though DAP members were keen for a one-stop council, the DAP Indian assemblypersons rejected it as “it will put undue pressure on them to deliver.”

“Now they are freely doing anything according to their whims and fancies,” he said, adding that the appointment of an Indian as Penang deputy chief minister has been more “a curse than a blessing” to the community.

“It has only helped some chronic characters from BN.”

Hindraf, Han and Pemaswa plan to organise a joint dialogue session with all relevant Pakatan Rakyat heads of state governments over the issue.

Source : http://www.malaysiakini.com/news/86923

Nelson Mandela has always felt most at ease around children, and in some ways his greatest deprivation was that he spent 27 years without hearing a baby cry or holding a child’s hand.

Last month, when I visited Mandela in Johannesburg — a frailer, foggier Mandela than the one I used to know — his first instinct was to spread his arms to my two boys. Within seconds they were hugging the friendly old man who asked them what sports they liked to play and what they’d had for breakfast. While we talked, he held my son Gabriel, whose complicated middle name is Rolihlahla, Nelson Mandela’s real first name.

He told Gabriel the story of that name, how in Xhosa it translates as “pulling down the branch of a tree” but that its real meaning is “troublemaker.”

As he celebrates his 90th birthday next week, Nelson Mandela has made enough trouble for several lifetimes. He liberated a country from a system of violent prejudice and helped unite white and black, oppressor and oppressed, in a way that had never been done before. In the 1990s I worked with Mandela for almost two years on his autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom. After all that time spent in his company, I felt a terrible sense of withdrawal when the book was done; it was like the sun going out of one’s life. We have seen each other occasionally over the years, but I wanted to make what might be a final visit and have my sons meet him one more time.

I also wanted to talk to him about leadership. Mandela is the closest thing the world has to a secular saint, but he would be the first to admit that he is something far more pedestrian: a politician. He overthrew apartheid and created a nonracial democratic South Africa by knowing precisely when and how to transition between his roles as warrior, martyr, diplomat and statesman. Uncomfortable with abstract philosophical concepts, he would often say to me that an issue “was not a question of principle; it was a question of tactics.” He is a master tactician.

Mandela is no longer comfortable with inquiries or favors. He’s fearful that he may not be able to summon what people expect when they visit a living deity, and vain enough to care that they not think him diminished. But the world has never needed Mandela’s gifts — as a tactician, as an activist and, yes, as a politician — more, as he showed again in London on June 25, when he rose to condemn the savagery of Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe. As we enter the main stretch of a historic presidential campaign in America, there is much that he can teach the two candidates. I’ve always thought of what you are about to read as Madiba’s Rules (Madiba, his clan name, is what everyone close to him calls him), and they are cobbled together from our conversations old and new and from observing him up close and from afar. They are mostly practical. Many of them stem directly from his personal experience. All of them are calibrated to cause the best kind of trouble: the trouble that forces us to ask how we can make the world a better place.

Read the valuable 8 tips at  TIME.com