Who's afraid of children and roses?

It was 9.15am last Saturday morning. I was on the Sprint, headed to Plaza Damas for my 9.30 Pilates class – yes, running late as usual – when, suddenly, just before the 3.5km point, the traffic started to build up. Yes, once again, the police had set up a roadblock, narrowing the four-lane thoroughfare to two lanes. Why? Because of HINDRAF's March of the Roses, of course. Three hundred Indians, comprising children and their protectors, wanted to march to Parliament House to present Abdullah Ahmad Badawi with roses and plead for clemency for the five HINDRAF leaders who are languishing in detention under the ISA.

Children with roses and what does AAB do? He blocks all the roads, forcing the marchers to regroup in the city, then sets the police on them, dousing them with chemical water and tear gas. Arresting a mother and her child. As the final indignity, he accuses them of planning this march to disrupt the coming elections.

Doesn't he know that HINDRAF planned this in January, a whole month before he dissolved Parliament, long before he finally stopped his lies and denials and admitted the truth? But how would he know? He was busy working hard.


What bothered me the most as I crawled past the police checkpoint last Saturday morning, was the fact that the policemen and women on duty weren't even pretending to check the cars that passed them for children carrying roses. They didn't give a damn that some motorists who had a little more foresight bypassed the roadblock by using the slip road that leads to the Petronas and Shell stations. The men and women in blue just stood there next to their barrier, chatting to each other. Other police personnel were relaxing under huge sunshades by the side of the road.

It was a poor show by the authorities all around. The whole city disrupted just because the incumbent prime minister is afraid to face a little girl and her friends who just wanted to ask him for some compassion and justice.