SL poses the question as to whether world's No 1 golfer Vijay Singh would have been granted permanent residence were he an immigrant from Indonesia. The answer to the question is a simple one and I explain below as to why it must be in the affirmative.

During the hearing of an electoral petition in the High Court at Kota Kinabalu in Sabah recently, it was divulged that several thousands of illegal Muslim immigrants from the Philippines and Indonesia were given false papers to enable them to vote.

In 1992, a wooden building which served as a place of worship for a community of Christian Orang Asli in Tanjung Malim was demolished on the instructions of the district officer even though the place on which it stood is part of native hereditary land of which the title is solely theirs.

The demolition was initiated at the request of the Pejabat Agama Daerah. The incident has been documented in detail by scholar Dr Colin Nicholas who specialises in the Orang Asli affairs.

It took the Catholic Church 23 long years to obtain a building permit for a church in Shah Alam. Permission was eventually granted but with a number of hobbling restrictions among which was the condition that the proposed building should not be recognisable distinctively as a church but rather should blend in with the factory buildings.

And yes, the Selangor government offered the church a plot of land on a factory site at Glenmarie only after rejecting as 'unsuitable' two other plots in Shah Alam which itself had previously made available.

It was serious and irreconcilable differences with bumiputera academics and government officials over the interpretation of modern Malaysian history - the controversy was reported in the English print media - which led internationally-renowned local scholar Prof Wang Gung-wu to leave Malaysia for good to take up teaching appointments abroad permanently.

I am not surprised that it is kacang puteh for hundreds of thousands of illegal Indonesian immigrants to gain citizenship and acquire bumiputera NEP privileges. But what pains me is the attitude of some Malaysians who while welcoming our Indonesian brethren, can remain indifferent to the de facto second-class status of non-bumiputera citizens who have lived in this country for centuries.

Oh yes. You must see these same Malaysians blazing in anger when they are told of the hardships inflicted onto the Palestinians by the Israelis.