How can God-fearing leaders perpetuate a lie in order to further their agenda of remaining in office? For Deputy Prime Miniser Najib Razak to label Hindraf as a violent extremist group is a great injustice to the marginalised minority Indian Malaysians. This is a blatant lie which honest, fair-minded citizens cannot accept.

How can a peaceful group of Hindraf supporters suddenly be transformed into a terrorists group? It is beyond the comprehension of Malaysians of all race and creed. Obviously Najib was merely parroting what the attorney-general said in arguing for the courts to deny bail for the 31 Hindraf supporters. On the basis of a flimsy police report, without proper investigations he surmised that Hindraf was a terrorist group with links to the Tamil Tigers.

How can anyone classify Hindraf as a terrorist group when their only crime to date was to participate in a peaceful assembly to articulate their grievances? The assembly was deemed illegal when the government decided not to issue them a permit. If at all it is a terrorist organisation, then it must be the world’s most harmless one because it has not fired a single bullet, caused any violence or professed the destruction of any institution. It is beyond the imagination of fair-minded people to call them an extremist organisation.

Perhaps their only mistake was to insert the offensive term of “ethnic cleansing” in their memorandum to the British embassy. More appropriate words would have been “marginalisation and discrimination of the non-Malays in particular the Indians”. That would have succinctly described their dissatisfactions.

For the prime minister to follow in his deputy’s lies is most unforgivable, especially in the media. At the IMT-CT SME Conference and Expo 2007, the prime minister went on record to say, "Half the cabinet are non-Malays, non-Umno and non-Muslims." If we refer to the Prime Minister’s Department’s website, we will find that 22 out of the 32 cabinet ministers, or 69 percent, are from Umno alone.

I do not wish to be too harsh on both of them as they are both religious people but would I be impolite to say that they are liars?