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Friday, 26 August 2011

Imran Khan on the Malaysian Govt at The Guardian

On being detained at Kuala Lumpur airport

Malaysia didn't want me to enter the country to gather evidence about how ethnic Indians were treated by colonial Britain

In the Hollywood film The Terminal Tom Hanks plays (with obligatory mangled foreign accent) a character who is trapped in New York's JFK airport. Last week, I had a similar experience at Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA) in Malaysia. Whereas Tom Hanks's character spends years trapped, I was only there for a few hours. The episode was both humiliating and enlightening. I had been engaged by a Malaysian lawyer, Waytha Moorthy, to look into taking action against the British government for its role in the exploitation of Indian Hindus during Malaysia's period as a colony, and its failure to protect their rights when independence was declared in 1957.

Read the rest on the web.

3 comments:

Joshua Lopez said...

Pardon my ignorance but whats the purpose of this after 54 years? Time Lapse lah, Case Closed!

Crankster said...

I don't think there is any use of bleeding the current British government of money for what their forefathers did.

However, perhaps the British ought to right the situation by either applying pressure on the Malaysian government or working to help educate and give these people a better life.

Crankster said...

It's not a lie at all. If you took the trouble to go down to ground level and see their situation, you would see the gravity.

Frankly, it is very easy for anyone to look at someone else and say, "If I can do it, so can you."

Because you can never judge unless you stand in their shoes.