Malaysian official calls for calm following bloodshed

Malaysian official calls for calm following bloodshed

KUALA LUMPUR (Agencies): Malaysia's deputy prime minister
appealed for calm on Monday in a neighborhood still seething
after days of bloody clashes between Indians and Malays, the
worst racial violence in over 30 years.

"I'm upset because six people have died. One Indonesian, One
Malay and the rest Indians," Abdullah Badawi told residents
gathered in the community hall of the troubled district on the
edge of the Petaling Jaya satellite town.

"There are stories going around that more Indians and Malays
have died -- this is not true," he said.

Police said a sixth man died from his wounds on Sunday, a
victim of the past few days' battles between groups fighting with
sticks, machetes and pipes in Taman Desaria, a poor area in
Petaling Jaya, known for its violent crime and gangs and 40
minutes away by car from the capital.

Most of the victims were hacked or bludgeoned to death.
Abdullah said the situation was now under control and around 170
people have been arrested in the poor area marked by pockets of
almost exclusively Indian and Malay communities.

"I hope this calm situation will prevail even though rumors
are still circulating," he told reporters.

Authorities arrested 23 people carrying knives and explosives
in a violence-scarred Kuala Lumpur suburb on Monday. Hundreds of
riot police armed with batons stood guard beside trucks mounted
with water cannons, watching children return to school in five
villages after four days of intermittent clashes.

But some villagers on the outskirts of this Southeast Asian
nation's largest city refused to leave their houses, fearing that
the violence, which spread to at least two nearby districts over
the weekend, could flare again.

Selangor state Police Chief Nik Ismail Nik Yusoff said
officers detained 12 ethnic Indians and 11 Malays who gathered in
the area early Monday, apparently to fight each other. Police
seized 34 weapons, including homemade bombs, steel pipes and
machete-like knives called parangs.

This took the number of arrests since Thursday to 184 people,
which includes seven Indonesians who have since been released.
The remaining total, 99 of whom were Malays, are expected to be
detained for up to two weeks for questioning.

"Please don't take any irrational action. Think of our
children's future," Khir Toyo, Chief Minister of the Selangor
state in which Petaling Jaya is sited told the residents.

Indians make up eight percent of Malaysia's 22 million people,
Chinese 30 percent and Malays and other indigenous people make up
the rest.

The fighting initially erupted spontaneously last Thursday
over a broken windscreen.

Last Sunday, skirmishes broke out in Taman Desaria, when
members of a Hindu funeral procession passed through a Malay
wedding party instead of following an agreed alternative route.

Newspapers reported one of the dead Indians was a 43-year-old
hotel employee attacked while returning home after working a
night shift.

Serious

This is the first serious ethnic conflict since March 1998,
when nine people were wounded during Hindu-Muslim clashes over
the relocation of a Hindu shrine in northern Penang state.

Malaysia was rocked by race riots in 1969, when around 200
people were killed in clashes between Malays and Chinese.

The fighting followed Chinese and opposition celebrations over
their successes in elections when the ruling Malay party, the
United Malays National Organization, fared badly.

Many fear any political instability in Malaysia could lead to
more racial violence in the country.

Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad's ruling coalition depends on
support from parties representing all the main ethnic
communities.

The government has played down the ethnic element in the
latest clashes and asked the media not to publish "inaccurate
news" which could worsen the situation.

While Indians are well represented in the professional classes
they are also among the poorest and most marginalised in
Malaysian society. Most Indian families arrived here during
British colonial times. They are mostly Tamils from southern
India, and were brought in as cheap labor.

Many resent their poor circumstances because Indians provided
much of the labor, especially on rubber plantations, that built
Malaysia into one of the most developed economies in Southeast
Asia.