http://www.tindakmalaysia.com/ Rediscovering Malaysian History to develop a module to teach adults en Tue, 18 Jun 2013 22:26:39 GMT vBulletin 60 http://www.tindakmalaysia.com/images/misc/rss.png http://www.tindakmalaysia.com/ http://www.tindakmalaysia.com/showthread.php/6885-Malaya-The-Undeclared-War?goto=newpost Tue, 04 Jun 2013 22:17:46 GMT

Malaya: The Undeclared War

This is perhaps the most interesting part of Malaya's history. Most of us never had any idea of the role played by the Malayan Communist Party during the Jap occupation and the political circumstances why the CPM started insurgency against the British after the Japs surrendered. Do you know : Chin Peng speaks impeccable English .... better than any young graduates now ?Chin Peng was decorated a war hero by the British ?Why Chin Peng's peace talks with Tengku broke down in Baling Kedah?
This BBC documentary gives us a deep insight of our country's history before independence--naturally never found in our history books. Watch both the Youtube links below. You can understand both sides of the story. This videos is not to promote communism per se but perhaps understand our history a bit better.
INTERESTING !


A SMALL PART OF OUR HISTORY - THE WINNERS GET TO TELL THE TALE

Malaya: The Undeclared War - YouTubeA short history of the 50 years of the Malayan Emergency, dubbed as the long long undeclared war, waged by the Communist Party of Malaya (CPM) led by its Secretary General, Chin Peng. This is the British Colonial Government version covering only part of the war from 1948 to 1957. When Malaya gained independence from the British colonial rule in 1957 CPM was invited to give up their armed struggle through the historic meeting in Baling between Tunku Abdul Rahman, the first PM of Malaya. However, Chin Ping revealed why he had to continue the guerilla war against the Government of Malaya , later Malaysia when Sabah and Sarawak joined Malaya in 1963 to form the Federation of Malaysia, until he finally agreed to lay down their arms and signed the Peace Treaty with the Government of Malaysia at Haadyai in Southern Thailand to end the CPM’s guerilla war in 1989 . Chin Peng remains in South Thailand to this day as he was not allowed to come back to Malaysia.

Malaya: The Undeclared War - YouTube

Vague memories of the Emergency in Malaya? These are interesting insights of history, of truth or treachery, of the undeclared war ?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzizY...anwFSP-E.gmail ]]> Malaysian History pywong http://www.tindakmalaysia.com/showthread.php/6885-Malaya-The-Undeclared-War http://www.tindakmalaysia.com/showthread.php/6845-History-We-are-what-we-are-today-because-of-what-happened-in-the-past?goto=newpost Tue, 28 May 2013 09:34:47 GMT We are what we are today because of what happened in the past (part 1) (UPDATED with Chinese translation)... We are what we are today because of what happened in the past (part 1) (UPDATED with Chinese translation)

THE CORRIDORS OF POWER

Saturday, 25 May 2013 Super Admin

This was a complication that the British did not need. More than 80% of the businesses, tin mines, estates, and so on, in Malaya belonged to the British and 30% of Britain’s economy -- which had been practically bankrupted by the war -- depended on Malaya. Hence the last thing the British wanted was another India-Pakistan type of conflict in Malaya.

THE CORRIDORS OF POWER

Raja Petra Kamarudin

Since the 2008 general election, the favourite ‘war cry’ was: the Malays must wake up. They were referring to the Hindraf rally of November 2007, of course, and the Bersih (1.0) rally about two weeks before that -- which for the first time since the rise of the Reformasi movement in September 1998 a rally managed to attract a reasonable level of non-Malay support.

This was followed by the most impressive March 2008 general election result a few months later (for the opposition, that is), which saw Penang, Perak and Selangor fall to the opposition, and which would not have been possible purely on Malay votes alone and unless the non-Malays too voted opposition.

Actually, for a long time before 2007-2008, the Malays had been saying that the non-Malays must wake up. The Malays realised that kicking out Umno and Barisan Nasional would be impossible unless the non-Malays also joined the ‘resistance movement’. However, in the past, the non-Malays have always given many reasons as to why they could not join the Malays to kick out the ruling party.

To understand Malaysian elections you need to analyse all the general elections since 1959 and the municipal elections four years before that in 1955 plus understand why and how Malaya was given independence or Merdeka in 1957.
Without sounding as if I am repeating myself here, when the Japanese surrendered in 1945 and Britain ‘repossessed’ Malaya, the British tried to ‘restructure’ the country. Part of this restructuring exercise was to create the Malayan Union whereby the feudal system would be eroded somewhat and the Monarchs whom the Malays call ‘Raja-Raja Melayu’would lose some of their powers.

Now, the normal ‘Malay-in-the-street’ or Malay layman did not have any strong opinions on the matter. However, the Malay elite plus the Malays from the intellectual community could not agree to this move. They felt that to erode the feudal system plus to reduce the powers of the Monarchy meant that the Malays would lose their status as the Tuans(Lords) of the land. Thus was born the concept of Ketuanan Melayu or Malays as the Lords of the Land.

The Chinese and Indians were not too bothered about what was going on while the natives of East Malaysia were not involved since this was a Malayan issue and East Malaysia was not part of Malaya. The majority of the Chinese and Indians were not citizens anyway so it did not matter what the British wanted to do to Malaya since any system was not going to change the lot of the Chinese and Indians in any way.

The Malays did not have a political movement in which to resist the British. They did have many associations, societies and movements but these were very specific to the group that they represented. What they needed was a national movement so that the hundreds of associations, societies and movements could be combined into one national organisation.

And this was what triggered the birth of this national coalition called the United Malays National Organisation or Umno, a coalition of many groupings and sub-groupings. Hence Umno, in a way, was a coalition rather than a political party. In fact, Umno was not even called a political party, not with a name like United Malays National Organisation. Nevertheless, Umno was the new platform to unite the many smaller groupings so that the Malays could talk to the British as one voice.

If you were to look at the old black-and-white photographs of the Umno demonstrations of 1946 you can see that the people in the demonstration were not fishermen and farmers. From their dressing it is clear that these people were from the elite community. Back in 1946, only those from the elite community dressed like that.

In short, Umno was not a people’s movement as such but an elitist movement of Malays who were related or linked to the palace plus Malays who had gone to school and had received an education. And, more importantly, Umno was not set up as the platform to fight for independence or Merdeka but to resist the Malayan Union. Independence orMerdeka was never the endgame or in the minds of the Malays back in 1946 when Umno was born.

Three months after that, the Malayan Indian Congress or MIC was formed followed by the Malayan Chinese Association or MCA three years later.

MIC was called the Malayan Indian Congress because it was strongly influenced by the Indian National Congress or INC of India (or Congress party for short) that was formed about 60 years earlier. MIC, however, did not get much Indian support especially when its second President, Budh Singh, who was a Communist, opposed the Malayan Union. The Malayan Indians were more interested in matters back home in India than about matters in Malaya.

And MCA, too, was more concerned about raising money to support the Kuomintang that was fighting the Communists in China than about Malayan politics. Hence both MIC and MCA did not really have any solidarity with Umno.

It was not until some MCA leaders from Melaka travelled to London to raise the issue of independence with the British that Umno began to have similar thoughts. The Umno leaders also made a trip to London to meet the British to talk about Merdeka but only after the Chinese had first raised the issue. So now it looked like two different groups wanted to talk about Merdeka, which would have complicated matters.

It must be noted that the British already had a very bad experience in India in 1947 when India was partitioned and which resulted in an estimated one million deaths. So are we going to also see Malaya partitioned into ‘Malay Malaya’ and ‘Chinese Malaya’? What will happen to the Indians then? Will they all be sent back to India?

This was a complication that the British did not need. More than 80% of the businesses, tin mines, estates, and so on, in Malaya belonged to the British and 30% of Britain’s economy -- which had been practically bankrupted by the war -- depended on Malaya. Hence the last thing the British wanted was another India-Pakistan type of conflict in Malaya.
TO BE CONTINUED
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以前所發生的決定了現在的我們（一）

這是一個英國不想看到的複雜難題。馬來亞80%的生意，礦場，田園等都是屬於英國的，而英國30%的經濟活動----他們當時的經濟幾乎快被戰爭給拖垮了----都是馬來亞在支撐的。故此，當時英國人最不想見到的是印度-巴基斯坦紛爭在馬來亞從現。
原文：Raja Petra Kamarudin
譯文：方宙

自從08年大選后，‘馬來人必須睡醒了’成了最出名的‘戰爭口號’。此口號所參照的當然是07年的興權會大 集會和Bersih 1.0；Bersih 1.0是續1998年9月的烈火莫熄集會后第一個成功吸引大量非馬來支持者的集會。
在那以後我們在08年大選見證了反對黨很出色的成績；檳城，雪蘭莪和霹靂都相續地落入了反對黨的手裏，而這 單靠馬來票是無法辦到的，非馬來票在此發揮了很大的作用。
事實上，早在07-08年以前，馬來人就一直說非馬來人必須睡醒了。當時的馬來人察覺到單靠他們是無法把巫統踢出局的，他們還 需要非馬來人來參與他們的‘對抗活動’。無論如何，過去的非馬來人都給出種種理由來圓掉他們無法和馬來人合 作踢走巫統的決定。
想要了解大馬選舉你就必須得先詳細地分析1955年的市政府選舉和自1959年以來的各屆馬來西亞大選。你 也必須得去摸清在1957年時馬來亞到底是如何取得獨立的。
在1945年日本投降后英國人‘從新取囘’馬來亞。他們當時嘗試想要‘從新建造’馬來亞，而這個計劃的其中 一個部分是建立馬來亞聯邦來撤銷掉當時的封建君主制系統，進而削弱馬來君主的權力。
當時的馬來平民其實對這件事沒有太大的知覺，但那些馬來精英和知識分子則對此大感不滿。他們覺得撤銷掉封建 君主制系統和削弱馬來君主權力會直接把馬拉人的‘土地主人’身份給去掉。 ‘Ketuanan Melayu’這個概念就是由此產生的。
當時的華人和印度人都持著觀望的態度，而東馬的土著們則是事不關己（因爲當時東馬還沒和馬來亞合併）。當時 的華人和印度人都還不是國家公民，所以對他們來説英國人要在馬來亞做些什麽並不重要，因爲他們認爲這些都不 會給自己多大的影響。
當時的馬來人並沒有任何政治運動來對抗英國人。他們確實是有很多社團，協會和運動，但這些都只是很特定地代 表他們自己的團員而已。他們當時需要的是一個全國性的團體來結合那上百個不同的馬來社團，協會和運動等來對 抗馬來亞聯邦。
這就是巫統（United Malays National Organisation，Umno），一個很多不同的組合和小組合的聯盟，的來由。所以在某個層面上，巫 統像一個聯盟多過像一個政黨。事實上，就連巫統這個名字也不像是個政黨應有的名字。無論如何，巫統結合了很 多小團體組成單一的平臺來讓馬來人有辦法一致性地與英國人對話。
如果你看囘1946年巫統示威的黑白照片的話，你會看到那些示威者都不是農民或漁民。從他們的穿著你很容易 能看出他們都是些精英分子；在1946年只有精英分子才會那樣打扮。
簡短一點來講，巫統並不是什麽所謂的全民運動，它是那些跟皇室有關聯的馬來精英和上過大學的馬來知識分子的 運動。更重要的是，組織巫統的原本目的並不是爲了要為獨立尋找平臺而是爲了對抗馬來亞聯邦的成立。打從一開 始獨立這個念頭根本就沒有在馬來人的腦海裏出現過。
在巫統成立的三個月后，馬來亞囯大黨（Malayan Indian Congress，MIC）成立，而馬來亞華人公會（Malayan Chinese Association or MCA） 也于三年后建立。
囯大黨之所以被稱之爲Malayan Indian Congress是因爲它是受到印度的Indian National Congress（INC）很大的影響。無論如何，囯大黨並沒有得到很多印度人的支持，尤其是在他們的第二 任主席Budh Singh（他是個共產主義者）公開反對馬來亞聯邦后。當時的馬來亞印度人關心印度所發生的事情多過他們關 心馬來亞所發生的事情。
另一方面，馬華也忙於為當時中國的國民黨募款來跟共產黨打戰而無暇顧及馬來亞所發生的事情。故此，囯大黨與 馬華在當時根本就和巫統談不及有什麽團結合作。
直到後來又一組來自馬六甲的馬華代表去到倫敦和英國人談起獨立這件事，巫統才開始有這樣的想法。巫統領袖隨 後也組團到倫敦和英國人討論獨立這個課題。所以當時分別有兩組人馬要洽談獨立這囘事，而這也把事情搞複雜了 。
你必須了解，英國在印度曾遇過一次很糟糕的經驗；1947年印度曾因面臨分裂而導致大約1百萬人爲此喪生。 所以現在我們會看到馬來亞被分裂為‘馬來人馬來亞’和‘華人馬來亞’嗎？印度人又要怎麽辦呢？是否應該把他 們全送囘印度呢？
這是一個英國不想看到的複雜難題。馬來亞80%的生意，礦場，田園等都是屬於英國的，而英國30%的經濟活 動----他們當時的經濟幾乎快被戰爭給拖垮了----都是馬來亞在支撐的。故此，當時英國人最不想見到的是印度-巴基斯坦紛爭在馬來亞從現。 ]]> Malaysian History pywong http://www.tindakmalaysia.com/showthread.php/6845-History-We-are-what-we-are-today-because-of-what-happened-in-the-past http://www.tindakmalaysia.com/showthread.php/6798-Malaysian-History-Ways-of-seeing-Malaysia-deconstructing-demographic-violence-Charis-Quay-Huei-Li?goto=newpost Mon, 20 May 2013 06:32:15 GMT Ways of seeing Malaysia – deconstructing demographic violence... Ways of seeing Malaysia – deconstructing demographic violence


BY CHARIS QUAY HUEI LI, GUEST CONTRIBUTOR
– 17 MAY 2013POSTED IN: HISTORY, MALAYSIA, RACE

How we depict or represent something influences how we think about or ‘know’ it, and the reverse is true as well. In the context of visual art, John Berger showed us this almost half a century ago now. Berger also helped us to realise that ‘ways of seeing and knowing’ are seldom as innocuous as they may first appear; they may hide violence beneath their gleaming, airbrushed surfaces or be tools of libido dominandi disguised as benevolence.


For instance, the pin-ups that one might find in a colleague’s office or in the department machine shop are not ‘just’ pictures of almost-naked women in provocative poses in semi-public places, but a particular way of representing and seeing women that ultimately leads to and comes from the objectification of women and their bodies, particular assumptions about women’s role in society, and a certain violence in social relations between the sexes.


Most of those who know of Malaysia are familiar with the ‘Malaysia, Truly Asia’ tourism ads; indeed, for many, these represent the only way they have ever seen Malaysia. It is therefore not surprising that much that has been written on Malaysia’s recent general elections has failed to transcend the carefully-constructed framing narrative which these ads embody and in which they are embedded. As such, the world’s chattering classes were, perhaps unwittingly but nevertheless inexcusably, complicit in reinforcing a ‘way of seeing’ which – in order to serve certain interests – is intentionally blind to Malaysia’s most vulnerable groups, most notably her indigenous peoples ( ~ 12% of her 28 million citizens), but also migrant workers (~2-4 million people) as well as refugees and asylum seekers.


One of the main planks of this narrative (hereafter called ‘MICO’ for ‘Malay’, ‘Indian’, ‘Chinese’ and ‘Others’) is the statement – and oft-quoted ‘factoid’ – that ‘Just over half of Malaysians are ethnic Malays, 7% are of Indian descent, almost a quarter are of Chinese descent and the rest come from Other Races.’ These ‘other races’, whom one might expect to be Europeans or other non-Asians, are in fact mostly Malaysia’s indigenous peoples, reduced by this statement to being negligible ‘others’ in their own land.


In the East Malaysian (Malaysian Borneo) states of Sabah and Sarawak, contrary to West Malaysia, indigenous peoples still form the majority of the population. These oil- and timber-rich states contribute ~60% of Malaysia’s geographical area, a fifth of its population and an outsize fraction of federal government revenue. They are also an embarrassment to the present ruling coalition, the Barisan Nasional (BN), as they do not (yet) fit into the racial framework they impose on the country and present to the world as ‘the only truthful way of seeing Malaysia’. Indeed, when people speak generally about Malaysia – especially in social or cultural terms – most of the time they really mean West Malaysia.


West Malaysian indigenous groups (known collectively as the Orang Asli/Asal, or ‘original people’) have been a minority for several centuries, and now form less than 1% of the population. As such, the MICO classification – along with the predecessor of today’s Orang Asli Affairs Department (JHEOA) – was created by the British to divide and rule West Malaysia (then called Malaya). For all that, it has never truly described Malaya’s population. In part, this is because each category lumped together and conflated a myriad of culturally distinguishable groups. (An indicator: collectively, Malaysians speak more than a hundred living languages.) In addition, MICO’s categories themselves were already blurring during colonial times through intermarriages and adoptions, and have only become more blurred with Independence and the gradual coming into being of a Malaysian identity.


Nevertheless, the BN, a coalition of race-based parties in power since West Malaysian Independence in 1957, has tried to maintain and reinforce MICO categories. For example, a West Malaysian with Irish, French, Javanese, Filipino, Arab, Hakka and Ceylonese ancestry could be ‘officially’ M, I, C or O depending on their paternal ancestry or their religion, or else by ‘accident’ or for other less-than-transparent reasons. (Both one’s race and religion are recorded on Malaysian national identity cards, as well as many other administrative documents.) To borrow an expression from the British, Malaysians are a mongrel race. Malaysian ethnicity is a fluid concept, forced into hard categories.


These hard categories – the MICO construct – ultimately sustain and nourish a corrupt system of patronage benefitting a small multi-racial ‘elite’ class of rent-seekers. The most obvious of its effects and enabling factors is Malaysia’s all-pervasiveinstitutionalised racism and race-baiting politics, which has led millions of Malaysia’s most highly-qualified citizens to leave the country. Much ink has already been spilled on these topics. We shall therefore focus instead on bringing to light a less-known side of the story – the ongoing narrative and effective ethnocide of Malaysia’s indigenous peoples.


One of the main actors in the entrenchment and perpetuation of the MICO depiction of Malaysia as well as its corollary doctrine of the ‘supremacy of the Malay race’ was, ironically, a man who was himself a square peg in MICO’s round holes. This man was Dr. Mahathir Mohamad. Of Indian ancestry (some say he is the son of a migrant from Kerala), and from a recent-migrant neighbourhood, Dr. Mahathir reinvented himself as a ‘Malay’, not only that, as a ‘champion of the Malay race’. He rose through the ranks to become the leader of the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO, the dominant party in the BN).


As Malaysia’s longest-serving Prime Minister (1981-2003), Dr. Mahathir presided over two decades of impressive economic growth and modernisation. His legacy, as well as both UMNO and Malaysia, would be very different today had Dr. Mahathir not attempted to compensate for his origins by becoming ‘more Malay than the Malays’, or had the ideas of UMNO’s more inclusive founding fathers prevailed: One of them, Onn Jaafar mooted in the 1950s the opening of UMNO membership to all Malayans (West Malaysians). As it was, history took a different course.


To cement MICO, widen their ‘Malay’ voter base and to make ‘Malay Supremacy’ a demographic reality, Dr. Mahathir and UMNO played on the fact that, in the Malaysian Federal Constitution, Article 160 defines a Malay as a ‘Malaysian citizen born to a Malaysian citizen who professes to be a Muslim, habitually speaks the Malay language, adheres to Malay customs, and is domiciled in Malaysia or Singapore’. In addition, Article 153 guarantees Malays a ‘special position’ in the country.


This identification between Malays and Islam serves UMNO’s political purposes through two principal mechanisms.


If Malay, therefore Muslim: Over the years, it has become increasingly difficult for a person born Malay – and therefore by ‘legal definition’ Muslim – to convert out of Islam or to practice a non-Sunni form of Islam. Today, as the Lina Joy case has shown, this is for all practical intents and purposes impossible. Some who try are sent to re-education centres. Those classified as Muslims are subject to both civil and syariah law, as well as rulings of state religious departments.


Whereas in principle only civil law applies to non-Muslims, Malaysia’s dual legal system has created numerous legal, administrative and human problems in overlapping areas, notably family law. In the context of demographic manipulation, it is worth noting that non-Muslims who marry Muslims must convert to Islam; as with the impossibility of conversion out of Islam, this has not always been the case in Malaysia.


If Muslim, therefore Malay: Muslim migrants to Malaysia, whatever their origin, are rapidly assimilated into the ‘Malay’ category by the political will of UMNO. Thus, one finds individuals ‘issus de l’immigration récente’, such as Dr. Mahathir Mohamad, having a ‘special position’ vis-a-vis others who have been around for longer, but who simply happen not to be Muslim.


Given UMNO’s social engineering goals, Malaysia’s indigenous peoples clearly represent both a threat and an opportunity. The threat lies in their very existence, which negates the claim that Malays are indigenous ‘sons of the soil’ (bumiputera); in particular, it greatly weakens the position of ‘assimilated’ or ‘constitutional’ Malays such as Dr. Mahathir Mohamad and others like him, of whom there are a considerable number among UMNO’s leaders. The opportunity lies in their status as undefined ‘others’ in MICO.


It does not take a Stanford Business grad at McKinsey to figure out what ‘the solution’ is: the embarrassing existence of the indigenous peoples must be ‘erased’ by making them into ‘Malays’. There have therefore been widespread official and semi-official efforts in this direction.


The most obvious of these was the introduction of large numbers of Muslim migrants (some say up to 700,000) through a covert ‘citizenship for votes’ operation known as ‘Project IC’, which over the past few decades has significantly changed the demographics of Sabah, formerly a Christian majority state. Analysts believe that this may have led to a general destabilisation of the region and in particular indirectly enabled an armed incursion into the Malaysian state of Sabah by militants from the southern Philippine island of Mindanao, who claim the territory of Sabah .


Other ‘Malay-isation’ efforts are less well-documented and more subtle; they include soft – and sometimes not so soft – efforts to Islamise the indigenous peoples of both East and West Malaysia. (At the moment, two thirds of Malaysian Christians are indigenous East Malaysians and, conversely, just under half of indigenous East Malaysians are Christians. These facts seem to have escaped even the Missions Etrangères de Paris, but may no longer be true in the future if MICO persists and succeeds.) A 2008 report by the Asian Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Network called the Malaysian Department of Orang Asli Affairs (JHEOA) – whose ostensible mission is to ‘develop the socio-economic well-being of the Orang Asli’ – ‘a mechanism to control the Orang Asli’, one of whose ultimate aims since the late 1970s has been to integrate the Orang Asli into ‘mainstream Malay society’ through Islamisation.


Socio-economically, Malaysia’s indigenous people are among her poorest and most marginalised groups; they have benefitted far less than the ‘Malays’ from ‘bumiputera’ affirmative action policies, programmes and aid. Worse, land they live on has been ‘grabbed’ e.g. for the Kuala Lumpur International Airport and for its timber. A 2003publication by the Centre for Orang Asli Concerns, an NGO, described the Orang Asli as ‘First in the Land, Last in the Plan’. Similarly, a recent report by the Malaysian Human Rights Commission (SUHAKAM) observed that the ‘economic self-reliance of [East Malaysian natives] has been progressively reduced…forcing them to become coolies in their own land’.


With Malaysia’s tightly-controlled media – many newspapers are owned outright by BN parties, RSF ranked Malaysia 145th out of 179 countries for press freedom – MICO partially succeeded in labelling and sowing distrust among Malaysians for a long time, but the game changed when internet access became widely available. Internet penetration is now at about 60%.


The mushrooming of independent news portals and other online forums starting a little over ten years ago enabled many Malaysians to broach the once-taboo ‘race issue’, first by venting frustrations pent-up for decades, then to engage in more sophisticated analysis, and finally to expose the MICO framework and its inherent violence for what they were and to reject them. This dynamic and rapidly-maturing national conversation has been, quite simply, amazing to watch, even for those who always had faith in the inherent goodness and basic common sense of the Malaysian people. It has resulted in initiatives such as ‘Saya Anak Bangsa Malaysia’ (My Race is Malaysian), Projek Dialog, Malaysian Artistes for Unity, ‘Kita Kawan Mah’ (We are all friends) and theMalaysia Forum, as well as growing support for non-race-based political parties, especially in areas with reliable internet access.


The results of GE13 – where the BN lost the popular vote but retained power amidst allegations of massive and widespread fraud – thus represent more than anything a resounding rejection of the BN and its MICO framework as well as corruption and abuse of public office by young, urban, connected voters. An online poll of 30,000 Malaysians under the age of 21, the age of voting majority, showed 90% support for the opposition Pakatan Rakyat and only 10% for the race-based political parties of the BN.


Unsurprisingly, in the immediate aftermath of GE13, the ruling BN – who do not seem willing or able to change with the times – immediately sought to reinforce their ‘tried and tested’ MICO methods of manipulating and controlling the population by speaking of a ‘Chinese tsunami’ and by inciting hatred between ‘races’ (as defined by them) in the front-page headlines of offline media. Dr. Mahathir Mohamad attributed the BN’s loss to ‘greedy Malays’ and ‘ungrateful Chinese’. Utusan Malaysia, owned by UMNO, screamed ‘Apa lagi Cina Mahu?’ (What more do the Chinese want?) and the Star, owned by MCA, the BN’s ‘Chinese’ party, dutifully played the echo chamber with ‘Chinese will be SIDELINED’.


To the international community, the BN attempted as usual to portray Malaysians as a divided, vengeful and violent people, whom only they are capable of keeping from springing at each other’s throats. And thus, no doubt, protect investments. It is in this light that Najib Razak, the leader of the BN’s disingenuous remarks on ‘national reconciliation’ must be read and understood. It is also in this light that calls for a BN merger with the opposition Democratic Action Party (social democrats) must be read and understood; in effect, the BN has a history of ‘neutralising’ ascendant opposition parties by absorbing and ‘racially pigeon-holing’ them – previous victims includeGerakan, the People’s Progressive Party (PPP) and Parti Bersatu Sabah (PBS).


The foreign press largely fell for, or chose to fall for, the BN’s ploy and continued to report on Malaysia within the MICO framework, ignoring the fact that this was precisely what Malaysians had rejected in the elections. Not only did many take the ‘Chinese Tsunami’ at face value and repeat it thought-for-thought as ‘analysis’; some major news outlets, including the Economist, le Monde and the Financial Times, went one step further and finished the BN’s work for them by ‘absorbing’ Malaysia’s indigenous peoples into the ‘Malay’ category in their ‘ethnic statistics’ of the Malaysian population, thus erasing those ‘first in the land’ in Malaysia with a single stroke of the pen. These were appalling and irresponsible acts of journalistic laziness, hermeneutic arrogance and ultimately demographic violence and narrative ethnocide.


Many Malaysians reading BN’s racist rhetoric, which reached new heights (or depths) immediately before and after the elections and in addition was amplified by the international press, felt like female engineers who popped over to the machine shop to mill a simple piece only to find themselves confronted with a life-size pin-up on the wall.


They were disgusted and outraged, and rightly so.


To tell their side of the story, ordinary Malaysians have come forward in increasing numbers recently to undermine the MICO framework and expose its distortions, in particular by pointing out that it does not accurately represent their ancestry or Malaysia’s complex cultural heritage. Sairana Mohamad Saad’s article in the Malaysian Insider is typical. It begins:

According to my birth certificate, I am a Malay. Based on my…features, I should be from [the state of] Penang. The truth is, both [sic] my grandparents sailed to Malaysia, therefore I was born [in the state of] Selangor…and am married to a foreigner. Most Malaysians would call me “rojak” [mixed]. To me, I am a Malaysian, with rights to speak up. Period.

Erna Mahyuni, an indigenous Sabahan, had this to say about an attempt to label her an ‘ungrateful Malay’ for having said that most Malaysians are ‘pendatang’ or immigrants:

I’m not Malay nor do I have ‘Malay’ blood anywhere in my ancestry. My birth certificate shows my father is Dusun; my mother is Bajau. Incidentally, one of my great-grandmothers is Chinese, as are quite a number of my relatives, and the other great-grandmother is Pakistani Indian. Which still makes me 100 per cent Malaysian.

And Karina Bahrin directly attacked the ‘tsunami’ statement in a remark addressed to the ‘Prime Minister and all in UMNO’:

I am, by your definition, Malay. Except…my paternal grandmother was probably biologically Chinese. And…my mother is a former Catholic from the Philippines…[A]s far as you are concerned, I am Malay. Only, I did not vote for you. And neither did a whole lot of other Malays…Do the math.

As a matter of fact, analysts – including independent pollster Ibrahim Suffian of the Merdeka Centre; Dr. Ong Kian Ming, an academic-turned-politician and director of the Malaysian Electoral Roll Analysis Project; and contributors to the Australian National University’s ‘New Mandala’ – have done the math. And they have found that the data do not support the ‘Chinese Tsunami’ hermeneutic but instead point to a swing across the board towards the opposition Pakatan Rakyat coalition, whose component parties are not race-based. If one must ‘enliven’ a headline with the word ‘schism’ (Associated Press, New York Times etc.), it would be more truthful to note that in GE13 the schism, if there was one, was along urban-rural, age, gender and class lines rather than ethnic ones.


Malaysians have undertaken a much-needed and democratically-driven paradigm shift. To a certain extent, it could even be said that the Malaysian people are finally constructing their own paradigm and finding their own voices. Commentators would do well to take note of and record if not applaud this historic event instead of acting as deadweights stuck in the old, racist paradigm; otherwise, they risk finding themselves on the wrong side of history.


Charis Quay Huei Li is a Malaysian academic working abroad. An outline of the main points in this article appeared in the form of comments on the Economist’s website. These were removed by the moderator; no reason was given.
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