Race hatred a factor in 'May 13'
This photograph (below, right) of the PAS muktamar last weekend shows Malay men stepping on the Star of David. Now how would you feel if it were the cross or crescent? The event organizer deliberately etched the religious symbol of Judaism on the floor so that those present could not avoid trampling on it.
Two weeks ago at an anti-Israel protest, the demonstrators chanted 'Allahu akhbar' and 'Khaibar ya Yahud' (the Arabian Jews were subjugated when Khaibar was conquered), marching from 
Kampung Baru.
Kampung Baru. Sidenote: Prime real estate slated for development, Kg Baru will remain "100 percent bumiputera" as its landowners strongly object to non-Malays investing in this area located in the heart of KL.
Another popular rally cry by the Malays is 'Yahudi laknatullah' or accursed Jews. Then there was that brilliant idea of a nationwide 'Teach children to hate Israel' campaign in schools, mooted by Hishamuddin Hussein back when he was education minister.
If you read Malay media and Malay blogosphere, you'd be acquainted with the fevered pitch of race hate exhibited against Jews.
Yet even in English, media coverage is lopsidedly anti-Israel. On June 7 alone, The Star online carried nine articles that made it proudly deserving of the tagline 'The Palestinian People's Paper'. A day earlier on June 6, it published not one, not two but three! opinion-editorials excoriating the Jewish state – I wrote about that piece of top brass initiative in my CPI article 'Umno heroes and Star spear Israel'.
The frenzy of race hate in cyberspace is patent each time the Israeli-Palestinian conflict flares up and Malaysian blogs start bashing Israel. "MM, most of the time, you only posted international news about Gaza and Palestinians here, very few others. I bet your whole world spin around that tiny land?" one reader calling himself 'Joseph' wrote in Marina Mahathir's blog last Dec 30, directing his comment at her.
However the hatred manifested is not confined to anti-Jewish sentiments. In some of the Malay-ultra blogs, expressions of hate are targeted at Chinese and Indians. The common denominator of these blogs is that they all have Che Det (Mahathir Mohamad's blog) on their blogroll.
'Mahathiracism' speech
The May 13 death toll was predominantly Chinese, hacked to pieces. Malays were the aggressors armed with parangs.
It is a monumental task to untangle distortion about the massacre because the ketuanan melayu hegemony tightly controls official storylines permitted public airing. However, through studying the coverage of Gaza as a present-day comparison, we can get an inkling of the one-sidedness on what content the Malaysian public is encouraged or allowed access to.
It is fair to assume that a lot of information has been obscured, withheld or doctored, be it about Israel, Palestine or May 13.
In such a vacuum and hedging on our absence of knowledge, Mahathir Mohamad (left) in his 'Gertak' speech attempted to turn the Malays into May 13 victims – instead of the perpetrators that they were – by calling the bloodletting a "class war".
It is not to say that the economics of class struggle as well as the politics of divide-and-rule did not play a part in precipitating the outbreak of racial violence.
What I'm saying is Mahathir's motives are suspect since he has never been a socialist icon like Ahmad Boestamam, Pak Sako and the like. His posturing now as a champion of the working class rings hollow, especially when Umno was led by the elites just as its Alliance partner MCA had the reputation as a towkay party.
A major factor for the mass killings to have happened – really, it takes the utmost extremism for a man, or a mob to beat a victim till he bleeds to death – is that the Chinese were nothing short of hated by the Kg Baru amoks.
And lately, loathing again has been fanned after the opposition made great strides in the 2008 general election, similar to May 13 occurring after opposition gains in the 1969 GE.
This suspicion of minorities is egged on by stereotyping. Mahathir wrote in 1970's 'Malay Dilemma': "The Jews, for example, are not merely hook-nosed but understand money instinctively. … And the Chinese are not just almond-eyed people, but are also inherently good businessmen."
His keynote address in Terengganu on Monday is a facsimile of the Dilemma screed. After 40 years, Mahathir is still repeating his sly insinuation that Chinese, as a race and collective, were filthy rich in the 1960s.
While the above is disingenuous, it becomes quite dangerous for him to be trotting out accusations that Chinese today are still robbing the riches of Tanah Melayu. The gist of Mahathir's continual agitprop bodes ill for peace and stability, particularly if Malaysia were to go bankrupt in a few years and prompting social unrest.
'Gertak' is to intimidate
The ketuanan melayu demagoguery conveniently ignores the fact that prior to 1969, British suppression of the communist insurgency saw 1.2 million Chinese resettled in more than 500 New Villages which were little more than shantytowns fenced behind barbed wire.
How could those one million-plus Chinese villagers in the peninsula – out of a population totalling only 10.5 million in 1969 including Sabah and Sarawak – be considered prosperous in such huge numbers as to provoke the 'rich Chinese-poor Malay' class war that Mahathir invokes?
Lest it be forgotten, the Chinese came to this land as coolies. The dictionary does not define 'coolie' as millionaire. A great number of the community remained the underclass eking out a meagre living.
But even before the ex-premier's devotees turned up at the stadium for their dose of vintage 'Mahathiracism', the Gertak gathering already started from a lie. Its organizer Razali Idris claimed he chose the acronym Gertak meaning 'bridge' [sic] for his group Gerakan Kebangkitan Rakyat because it "embodied all that they stood for", i.e. "to connect" the races and foster harmony.
Oi! Jangan nak tipu lah. In the Terengganu dialect, bridge is 'getok'. The pronunciation of 'getok' is quite distinguishable from 'gertak'. And Gertak itself was a mono-racial rally scheduled for May 13 – a date picked by Mahathir himself.
The intent to intimidate was clear from the outset, and framing the event as 'Malay uprising' does not leave room for doubt. The identical 'Melayu bangkit' battlecry was a front-page banner headline not too long ago in Utusan Malaysia, and unmistakably to incite.
Everyone bumi except Chinese
At the Gertak occasion also, Mahathir as head of the Perdana Global Peace Foundation was presented the proceeds from the Fly2Gaza drive, totalling more than RM120,000. Interesting isn't it, that the Malay supremacist showboating just had to tie in with the Malaysian Muslims' pet cause?
The Kuala Terengganu (KT) venue of Gertak (right) may have something to do with the lukewarm response the event received.
Terengganu is 95 percent Malay in population. There were no May 13 tensions there or in its East Coast cousin Kelantan which has a similar demographic. May 13 happened not in the Malay heartland but in Kuala Lumpur where the populace was racially half-half.
By the same token, the Kg Medan racial clash would not have happened in KT or Kota Bharu because the minorities there are not significant enough to be a threat or to cause friction. This could be the reason why Mahathir when in Terengganu (that has only 2.6% Chinese) failed to draw the crowd the organisers wanted.
Adding to that, the Gertak gathering was held in the morning of a working day during World Cup season – which football fans have waited four years for. The turnout might be a different story another time, another place though … say, in Kg Baru.
The institutional basis of this country that makes it almost a point of honour to discriminate against Chinese and Indians rests on racism, period.
Make no bones about this selectivity in discrimination as Malaysians of Siamese and Portuguese descent are inexplicably categorized bumiputera, although Article 153 of the federal constitution denotes the 'special position' as referring to Malays and natives of Sabah and Sarawak.
'Bumiputera' is a coined word facilitating the suppression of Chinese and Indians. I'm just surprised that some women rights sub-committee from political groups like Kimma (comprising wannabe princes and princesses of the soil) has not yet campaigned for the use of 'bumiputeri'.
HELEN ANG used to be a journalist. In future, she would like to be a practising cartoonist. But for the present, she is in the NGO circles and settling down to more serious writing and reading of social issues.
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Comments (DQ):
A brave, brilliant but blunt analysis of what most Malaysians would rather not discuss or debate in the open. Racism still underscores our ethnic relationships, our less than sincere interaction with others not quite like us. We're constantly reminded by politicians who play to the gallery of the mob, constantly baiting and perpetuating irrational fears and bigotry--ghosts of prejudice which supposedly strengthen one's supposed power base... So cynical, so Machiavellian, so bestial, so racist, period!
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1 comment:
While I do not condone violence in any form, I take reservations on your comments in effect that the Malays are perpetrators of the massacre of Chinese during May 13. I do not how old you were at that time but immediately after the opposition won majority seats in Selangor there were rallies conducted by the opposition hurling insults such as "sekarang Malaysia Cina punya" or "Melayu keluar dari Malaya" at the Malays in Kuala Lumpur. It would be easy to say that the Malays should just sit and watch or be patient. Inevitably there would be intolerant people who would spark violence in such situations. To provide an illustration would you feel remorse if a group of Malays insulted the Chinese in Beijing or Taipei and got massacred even if they were legitimate citizens of those countries? The natural feeling certainly would be serves them right. As I've indicated, I think no actions justify violence. Yet that possibility will always be present. As sane and matured civilians it is imperative that we take upon ourselves the heavy responsibility of making sensible comments and judgments. I am not saying your article is entirely wrong but in an environment where sensitivities are easily trodden upon do not let our frustrations cloud our civil expressions that could lead to disharmony.
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