KUALA LUMPUR, Dec. 8 -- Did you wonder why the High Court had last month ordered the Malaysian government to pay two different compensation amounts over the abductions of activist Amri Che Mat and Pastor Raymond Koh, namely RM3 million and over RM36 million?

Lawyers explained that this had nothing to do with the ethnicity of the two missing men, but was because the Malaysian government had been sued over different things in the two court cases.

Lawyer Surendra Ananth, who represented Amri's wife in her civil lawsuit against the government, said he had come across someone making a racial statement which had questioned "why is a Chinese life worth more than a Malay life".

But Surendra had pointed out that the two lawsuits were different,...