Activists yesterday renewed their demands for an investigation into the way Malaysian authorities treat Indian minorities following the death of a woman who committed suicide after police fatally shot her brother.
R. Seetha died of multiple organ failure on Wednesday, six days after she poisoned herself and her four children with weed killer.
The children survived. Seetha’s family has said she became depressed after her brother and four other suspected robbers were killed by police during a car chase on Nov. 7.
Ethnic Indian activists have long accused police — dominated by the ethnic Malay Muslim majority — of using excessive force against Indians. Activists see the deaths of Seetha and her brother as the biggest symbols of police brutality in recent years.
Activists wanted to take a coffin bearing Seetha’s body to Parliament yesterday to demand that lawmakers look into the case, but scrapped the plan after the family took it to be cremated, said P. Uthayakumar, the leader of the Human Rights Party, whose members are ethnic Indians.
“It is the first case we know of where someone has committed suicide as a direct result of police targeting Indians,” Uthayakumar said.
Authorities have consistently rejected those accusations, but activists say Indians form a disproportionate number of suspects who are killed during police operations.
National police chief Musa Hassan said police acted appropriately in the case of Seetha’s brother, saying he and the others shot first at police who were chasing them. They were accused of a spate of armed robberies in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia’s largest city.
“The job of the police is to protect the public. We do not protect criminals,” Musa said on Wednesday. “They should surrender if they do not want to die.”
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