I find the recent arrests and charges laid against 12 Malaysian Indians, including 2 DAP parliamentarians, in connection with the defunct LTTE (since 2009) troubling in the same way Anwar Ibrahim’s arrest and conviction on sodomy charges was troubling in 1998 . Anwar’s alleged, and later proven (by Malaysian legal standards), criminal acts were significant, not in themselves, but in terms of who Anwar was in the context of Malaysian politics! Is something similar afoot here? Can these Malaysian Tamils’ alleged acts of possession of paraphernalia and of support on social media be significant in themselves? Is something similar afoot here? Can these Malaysian Tamils’ alleged acts of possession of paraphernalia and of support on social media be significant in themselves? There is now as there was then, the sense that there some other tangential purpose is at play. One wonders if, given widely held sympathies of Malaysian Tamils towards the Elam struggle, there are other individuals who have, naively or otherwise, been involved in similarly questionable acts over the 5 years of the LTTE’s proscription (2014 -2019). It is however these unfortunate men who have been charged, and the charges have come at this particular moment. One wonders why? … More in On Being a Malaysian Tamil 3