Below is a letter sent through Malaysiakini from Dr Sheela Moorthy:

Dr Sheela Moorthy
May 2, 07 2:52pm

I am a Malaysian currently living in the USA. I am supporting the education of my sister who is enrolled at CalPoly, California.

The reason I am writing this letter is to express my disgust and anger regarding comments passed by the Minister of Science, Technology and Innovation Jamaludin Jarjis during a working visit to California recently.

He was present at a gathering organised by the Malaysian Consulate for the students to meet him. The purpose of this meeting was for them to address any concerns or queries they had. Being away from home, we all know that we love to meet our fellow-countrymen regardless of what color or creed they may be.

And being brought up in the true Malaysian way, we were thought to respect each other and look beyond the shallowness of skin color.

This was not the case with our minister. He made several derogatory remarks about Indians in general, about how they were brought in as 'buruh kasar' and at one point asked my sister about how many Indians were in her batch of students.

My sister answered him saying there were two of them. The other Indian student was fair-skinned and was actually sitting at the same table as the minister.

He did not realize that this student was also an Indian and went on saying that he must be a 'high class’ Indian and then pointed at my sister and said that she must be a ‘low class’ Indian as she was darker skinned.

I am appalled that we have people like this sitting at the helm and trying to run a multi-racial country. I urge all Malaysian to stand together and voice out against weeds like this who give our country a bad image.

I demand an apology from him and I want him to take responsibility for his words and I believe that malaysiakini is one of the venues to voice my dissatisfaction.