Monday May 6, 2013

GE13: Voters harassed for not looking like Malaysians

KUALA LUMPUR: It was vigilantism gone wrong as some Malaysians found themselves manhandled just because overzealous members of the public wrongly assumed they were phantom voters.

In Rawang, the husband of a policewoman was beaten up by a group of people outside the polling station.

Tajudeen N. Anver Dacha, 49, a Malaysian citizen, said he was walking in to the Dewan Serbaguna Rawang when he was confronted by a group of men and women who claimed he was a foreigner.

“I was kicked in the back and hit by one of them,” said Tajudeen, an Indian Muslim born in Taiping, Perak. He lodged a report at the Rawang police station.

In Kuala Selangor, a 33-year-old mentally challenged man was manhandled by a group of angry men who mistakenly thought he was a foreigner trying to vote.

At the Sekolah Agama Rendah Kuala Selangor, Kamal Krishnan@Mohd Nizam, a Malaysian Indian Muslim, was checking his voting information with the Election Commission officers when a group of men forcefully took his identification card.

His brother Zulkifli Mohd Nizam, 36, said the men thought Kamal Krishnan was a Bangladeshi.

“My brother's picture is being circulated on Facebook to embarrass the Government and the EC,” he said after lodging a police report at the Kuala Selangor police headquarters.

Zulkifli said he had to show the police report and Kamal's birth certificate to enable his brother to vote.

In George Town, police detained a man who prevented a voter from casting his ballot at SJK (C) Li Tek B at Lintang Macallum 1 here.

The man took the voter's MyKad, accusing him of being a foreigner.

Police are investigating an incident at Taman Sentosa in Klang where a busload of people was stopped by several people who assumed they were foreigners on their way to vote.

AirAsia group CEO Tan Sri Tony Fernandes has denied allegations that his budget airline had been flying in foreigners to vote, saying he personally checked the flight manifests.

In his comment sent via Twitter, he said the 478 passengers on the four chartered AirAsia flights from Johor Baru to Kuala Lumpur were Malaysians voting in Sabah.

Responding to a suggestion, Fernandes invited Bersih 2.0 co-chairman Datuk Ambiga Sreenevasan to check the manifests for herself.

Bloggers and social media users have condemned those who incited “foreigner phobia”.

The Facebook group Friends of BN has posted instances where Malaysians were mistaken for foreigners and harassed at polling stations.

For more election stories, please visit The Star's GE13 site

More News