Umno Leaders and Their Racist Hatespeak

ARCHIVES 2013

By admin-s On Oct 9, 2013

And yet it continues to be supported – to the extent that at GE13, Umno won nine seats more than in 2008.

Kee Thuan Chye

No run-up to any Umno party elections has been so notoriously marked with racist fervour as the current one. At least two of the contenders for senior positions have revealed their true colours by openly bashing non-Malays. In any sensibly-governed country with sensible laws, they would both have been arrested for provoking racial tension. But Malaysia is increasingly becoming the country where Umno is king, and anyone who is not Malay doesn’t count for much.

This is why someone no less than the home minister can say with impunity that because more than half of identified gang members in the country are Indians, and most of the victims “are our Malays”, the police are justified, if they have the evidence, in shooting to kill gang members before asking questions.

This statement from Ahmad Zahid Hamidi in front of presumably a predominantly Malay audience in Melaka last Saturday is not only racist; it is also something that in a civilised, sensibly-governed country with the right sensibilities would have resulted in his being sacked, without hesitation, as home minister.

His statement totally disregards human rights and natural justice. It encourages the police to take lives instead of bringing people to justice. It is telling the police to be judge and executioner all at once. How could it have come from a minister of the government?

This is not what we teach our children. But now that a minister has said it, it will have a negative impact on the young. How can we let Ahmad Zahid get away with it? This is not only conduct unbecoming; it is conduct unforgivable.

Lately, Ahmad Zahid has been behaving like a gangster himself – in the way he told Malaysians who were not happy with the country’s political system that they should leave; in the way he promoted detention without trial for criminals and pushed for the amendments to the Crime Prevention Act (CPA); in the way he refused to answer a question from Malaysiakini reporter Lawrence Yong last week over how the police lost 44 loaded firearms as revealed by the Auditor-General’s report; in the way he threatened journalists at the Saturday event in Melaka that if they were to report what he said, he would close down their newspapers.

These were his words: “…this is a closed-door meeting; this is only for Umno delegates. If any news about what I say appears in the newspapers, be it in Malay, English or Chinese or Tamil, I will shut down that newspaper. Do not write, I say do not publish, do not put on Facebook, do not anything. I know what to do. You are dealing with Zahid Hamidi, okay?”

That last bit, “You are dealing with Zahid Hamidi, okay?”, is particularly arrogant. So too is the claim that he can shut down any newspaper just because they publish what he said. In the past, the home minister could have done that and his action could not be questioned. But now, after the recent amendments to the Printing Presses and Publications Act (PPPA), the action can be challenged in court. Obviously, Ahmad Zahid is getting out of control.

Besides, as far as that Melaka event is concerned, it was reportedly a government function with the Government’s stamp being clearly visible on the logos in the backdrop. But he himself termed it as being “only for Umno delegates”, which must therefore mean that the organisers of the event were misusing government funds and machinery for something related to the party. This would constitute abuse of power.