The Kuala Lumpur High Court will hear a RM50 million lawsuit filed against the Malaysian Human Rights Commission or Suhakam for failing to initiate an inquiry into last year's Petaling Jaya Selatan clashes on Dec 31 this year.

The plaintiff V Subramaniam filed the suit on April 17 this year. His lawyer M Manoharan, when contacted today, said Justice Aziz Abdul Ishak had asked both parties to submit their arguments in writing.

The commission under the Suhakam Act 1999 is empowered to carry out inquiries on its own unless if the issue is under court proceedings.

Subramaniam, 50, a labourer who claimed he was injured in the clashes also named ex-Suhakam chairperson Musa Hitam, former commissioners Mehrun Siraj, Anuar Zainal Abidin and commissioners Harun Hashim and Prof Hamdan Adnan as defendants in the suit.

"Suhakam acted in bad faith when up until today they failed to condemn the violence in Kampung Medan.

"We believe that Suhakam did not abide by the Suhakam Act [which provides for inquiries] and that they have also failed to carry out their duties and responsibilities from the viewpoint of the Federal Constitution in defending human rights in Malaysia," Subramaniam said in his affidavit.

Police not sued

In the affidavit, he also accused the police of negligence and for not acting quick enough to quell the chaos though he did not name the police in the suit.

Six people were killed and hundreds more injured after the economically depressed area of Kampung Medan erupted into racial clashes on March 8 last year.

The fights spread to other neighbourhoods encompassing Taman Datuk Harun, Kampung Lindungan, Taman Medan, Kampung Penaga, Kampung Ghandi and Kampung Muniandy where the population is largely made up of Malays, Indians and Indonesian and Bangladeshi migrants.

The residents are mostly low-income factory workers, labourers and petty business owners.

After the incident, a number of non-governmental organisations and social activists approached Suhakam to probe into the clashes. Among them was Parti Reformasi Insan Malaysia's pro-tem secretary-general P Uthayakumar who alleged that the human rights body had failed to carry out its statutory duties.

The commission maintained, however, that its investigators had actually visited the site of the clashes but an open inquiry was out of the question as it involved racial sensitivities.

The commissioners named in the lawsuit were among those that had met with Uthayakumar and NGO officials.