there’s no such thing as ‘malay rights’…
Post on Nov.17, 2009
… so said dr azmi sharom (law lecturer, university of malaya & newspaper columnist) at the saya anak bangsa malaysia (SABM) forum in penang on sunday.
indeed. how true. no such thing as ‘malay rights’. why? because we are all born equal, we all all have the same rights. however, sad to say, there are still so many malays out there who insist on ‘malay rights’. instead of ‘malay rights’, it should be ’special priveleges’. yes malays have special priveleges, which then again is a seperate matter to talk about (eg if there is special priveleges for certain people of a certain race means there is apartheid!). right now i’m not going to go into that since i intend to write about the SABM event in penang which was held on sunday, 15 nov. at the hu yew seah hall.
i went there only at 12.30, enough to catch the tail-end of the youth workshop. about 20 youth turned up for the workshop.
the afternoon event began with a screening of fahmi reza’s movie ’sepuluh tahun sebelum merdeka’. i was in charge of registration. each person who signed up was given a folder with a few interesting documents – cutodial death since 200 where the names of all the death were mentioned, UN universal declrations of human rights, DNA and the myth of ‘race’, and of course the saya anak bangsa malaysia charter, which was provided in all 4 languages. the nice colouful booklet from the bar council titled ‘my constitution, the rakyat guides’ was in the folder too. this was an effort by the malaysian bar council in the ‘my constitution’ campaign (you can see the booklet on the 3rd pic of the link ).
the crowd slowly ticked in and in the end we had about 60 all these 60 though, did not stay until the end of the event. some of them went back in between. i expected about 100 people but 60 is also okay – a good number for events such as this. the hall was huge, which can accommodate 300 people and 300 chairs had been arranged earlier by the people from the hall, though we had wanted to go on saturday to arrange the chairs. as we expected 100, we would have arranged only about 100 chairs. since 300 chairs had been arranged, and less than 100 people turned up, the hall kind of look so empty…especially when people like to sit at the back. and many were spread out here and there. (pic below was taken near the end, when lots of people had left).
SABM t-shirts and badges were on sale and quite a number of sale were made through the t-shirts. KOMAS’s VCD were also on sale. aliran also set up a desk to sell its magazine and some books, ISA badges, t-shirt. a very important desk that was set up was the voters registration desk.
a short video on the SABM event, taken by my fellow citizen journalist colleague, jimmy, will be up soon. for more photos, please go to my facebook photo album.
UPDATED:
November 19th, 2009 on 1:37 PM
there is no malay rights because the chinese want more. they’ve got the economic rights. try to venture into business and the malays will be supressed untill they bleed and die. the malays are only able to get one foot into business because of goverment’s help which the chinese interprete as malay rights.
the chinese have managed to create confusion that even some malays like azmi are so confused as to say that the malays have no special rights. in actuality the malays are only seeking equal rights in the wealth of the country.
November 19th, 2009 on 2:54 PM
maulana arrif said:
…in actuality the malays are only seeking equal rights in the wealth of the country…
Sad to see what the education system has churned out…
The real truth is that the “wealth of the country” can only be ‘exploited’ by those who are hardworking and smart.
The post by arriff simply suggests that the govt should “legislate” such wealth to the ‘malays’. Basically, a welfare state, but the beneficiaries are the ‘malays’ (tho I have yet to see the real poor malays enjoy such benefits).
November 19th, 2009 on 7:54 PM
The fact is, because of ignorance, many malays have that under tempurong jealous streak with them which has been fully exploited by the devil like mahaKutty who himself has that evil proclivity in his Kerala bloodstream. The greed and resentment corpuscles run through that stream.
That’s why they harp so much on “unity” amongst themselves ceaselessly, using everything under the Sun, especially religion and (ayrab style)cultural thing to that paranoiac pitch we are so familiar with. The inevible emergence of elitism and fascism is the natural progression via an apartheid system.
Still bullshitting that language alone can unite the country like there’s no tomorrow when that has failed miserable because of unabashed bad intention and spirit involved.
November 20th, 2009 on 1:54 AM
maulana, headsup had given you a good response. please i hope you are not further insulting the muslim by what you had said.
that’s right, wits, some of these malays don’t know they had been exploited by their own muslim leaders!
November 20th, 2009 on 2:30 PM
Maulana:
“try to venture into business and the malays will be supressed untill they bleed and die”
According to UMNO’s own Nazri Aziz, such phenom is only morally but not legally wrong. Business is business after all. And given how UMNO has conducted the goverment and public affairs for the last 50 years, they are no better than the chinese businesses they’re vilifying if not worse.
“in actuality the malays are only seeking equal rights in the wealth of the country.”
If by seeking equal rights you mean seeking equal output benefits from unequal input efforts, yes I believe you’re quite right. A lot of malays are ONLY seeking that.
“Man is either your brother in Islam, or your brother in humanity.”
Imam Ali (as)
November 21st, 2009 on 2:03 AM
The Tall and Short of the matter….
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http://imagineequality.blogspot.com/2009/11/devilish-deeds.html
“Friday, November 20, 2009
Devilish Deeds
The harmony and well-being of a people is based on there being mutual respect. In a world that has become deeply intertwined and interdependent, our cultural and religious diversity often become more visible. For this very reason, we can ill afford to have religious fascists and zealots trampling on the human rights of others and, in the process, destroying the ethos of what makes a multicultural society tenable.
We cannot have a regime that speaks about multiracialism, multiculturalism, and religious tolerance but then tacitly permits its religious bigots and fascists to reign supreme in order to impose a fundamentalist orthodoxy……”