A group of opposition leaders today set up a 'rainbow coalition' to highlight the position of the Indian community as an increasingly marginalised group in the country, following a controversial censorship of a news report on the subject by satellite television provider Astro.

The initiative was decided during a meeting this afternoon in Petaling Jaya attended by Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia lecturer P Ramasamy and representatives from the Indian Consultative Council and three opposition parties - DAP and Keadilan and the pro-tem Parti Reformasi Insan Malaysia (Prim).

The coalition's special committee is to be headed by a three-member panel comprising of DAP leader T Kannan, Keadilan supreme council member N Gobalakrishnan and Prim deputy secretary-general RN Rajah.

"Our first point is to deplore the action taken by Astro to black out the Focus Asia report. We want Astro to telecast the programme but there are also the more important issue of the marginalisation of the community that we have to highlight," said DAP Selangor leader M Manoharan, who was also present at the meeting.

Among the actions decided by the committee this afternoon is for a conference to be held within the next two weeks for concerned parties to discuss the problems faced by the community.

This would be in addition to other actions planned by the group, including a boycott of Astro during the upcoming Deepavali festival unless the company agrees to air the news report titled 'Indian underclass?'.

Self-censorship

Meanwhile, UKM lecturer Ramasamy said a key concern of the community now is the action by Astro to remove the news report from local broadcast as it showed the company's intention to suppress discussion about the problems facing the Indian community.

"The 'Indian question' has been repeatedly suppressed by the state and the MIC. It shows uneasiness on the part of the authorities to address it and this is a serious matter," said the political scientist.

Ramasamy said the move by Astro was unwarranted as the report produced by the Star TV news team for the channel's current affairs programme, Focus Asia , was hardly controversial.

"The report was balanced as they also included interviews with (MIC president) S Samy Vellu, (Minister of Culture and Tourism) Abdul Kadir Sheikh Fadzir and (Yayasan Strategik Sosial executive director) Dr Denison Jayasooria," said the professor, who was also interviewed for the report.

The eight-minute clip, originally scheduled for broadcast at 8pm last Sunday, was replaced by another programme. Astro has since said that it made the decision out of concern for 'viewer sensitivities'.

DAP chairperson Lim Kit Siang, who chaired the meeting, said the move by Astro is cause for greater alarm as it showed that the media is imposing self-censorship of important news issues.

"If the media is imposing self-censorship to prevent the people from knowing the truth, the rot in our country has become quite deep-rooted," he said.

Wake-up call

Lim said the report, which is available on Focus Asia 's website , is also a wake-up call to Malaysians that they face a "ticking time-bomb" if problems facing the Indian community are not addressed.

The DAP chairperson added that the Focus Asia report is not the first to bring up the issue of Indian Malaysians not benefitting equally as other races from the country's development.

He noted that the issue was the main topic for discussion during a conference in Kuala Lumpur in June last year titled 'The Indian Malaysian in the New Millennium' which was attended by some 500 middle-class and professional members of the community.

"There were high hopes after the conference. But the past 15 months have shown that the conference has failed to make any impact on the resolve to address the plight of Indian Malaysians," he added.

Aside from Star TV, several other foreign publications have also written on the issue of marginalisation of the Indian community in Malaysia despite the country's rapid growth over the past two decades.

In August last year, Time magazine published an article describing the community as a "disgruntled underclass" with many feeling like "third-class citizens" and the "real losers" of the New Economic Policy introduced some 30 years ago.

In one of its February editions, the Economist noted that Malaysia was "fast developing an Indian underclass" who get none of the benefits reserved for the Malays under affirmative action programmes.

The article also noted that the government has pledged to address the problem by declaring its intention to double the community's stake in Malaysian companies by 2010.