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.