Indian protest rocks Malaysia ahead of polls

KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) - Malaysia's ethnic Indian community staged its biggest anti-government street protest on Sunday when more than 10,000 protesters defied tear gas and water cannon to voice complaints of racial discrimination.
The sheer size of the protest, called by a Hindu rights group, represents a political challenge for the government as it heads toward possible early elections in the next few months.
Ethnic Indians from around the country swarmed into Kuala Lumpur for the rally, despite a virtual lock-down of the capital over the previous three days and warnings from police and the government that people should not take part.
"Malaysian Indians have never gathered in such large numbers in this way...," said organizer P. Uthaya Kumar, of the Hindu Rights Action Force (Hindraf).
"They are frustrated and have no job opportunities in the government or the private sector. They are not given business licenses or places in university," he said, adding that Indians were also incensed by some recent demolitions of Hindu temples.
Riot police fired at the protesters with sustained volleys of tear gas and jets of water laced with an eye-stinging chemical, but it took more than five hours to finally clear the streets of downtown Kuala Lumpur, by then littered with empty gas canisters.
Veteran journalists and analysts could not recall a bigger anti-government protest by ethnic Indians, who make up about 7 percent of the population, although some said a larger rally had been held over internal Indian politics in the late 1980s.