KUALA LUMPUR, July 27 — The wife of imprisoned Indian rights activist P. Uthayakumar wants the government to send her husband to hospital for medical treatment next month and vowed today to haunt the jail daily in protest until her request is carried out.
S. Indra Devi said Uthayakumar is scheduled for a specialist check-up at the Hospital Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (HUKM) on August 1 over his prolapsed disc condition.
“On 1st of August, he needs to be taken to hospital... If they don’t, I think I’ll be sitting in front of Penjara Kajang and I’ll be sitting until they say ‘I’m taking your husband today’. I think that’s the best thing I can do,” Indra told a press conference here today.
In what appeared to be a pre-emptive move against any possible denial of Uthayakumar being sent to the hospital, she said other supporters would be present at the Kajang prison as well.
Uthayakumar, the leader of Hindraf, reportedly suffers from prolapsed disc, a degenerative disc disease of the spinal lumbar which causes severe back pains.
Hindraf secretary-general S. Thiagarajan also said the rights group plans to hold a demonstration if Uthayakumar is not sent to the hospital for his appointment.
“I believe the prison authorities and government will never push us to that extent,” said Thiagarajan, who was also present at the press conference.
Indra said prison authorities had provided Uthayakumar with a pillow and a chair this week, following her press conference last Saturday to highlight her 51-year-old husband’s plight.
She alleged that the Kajang prison authorities had on Wednesday shortened the duration of her weekly phone call to her husband from 15 minutes to 10 minutes.
But she claimed that Uthayakumar told her that prison authorities are now “threatening” to put him in a dark cell and cut off the couple’s phone calls if he continued to reveal his prison life.
Indra said she had advised Uthayakumar from taking the painkillers that the prison doctor was purportedly offering, saying that she feared it would cause damage to her diabetic husband’s kidneys.
Uthayakumar was slapped a 2½-year jail sentence on June 5 this year for penning seditious remarks in a 2007 letter to former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown.
The former Internal Security Act (ISA) detainee’s jail sentence was meted just hours after his brother and fellow Indian rights activist P. Waythamoorthy was sworn in as a senator in the ruling Barisan Nasional (BN) government following the May 5 general election.
