Race Relations Act

The Government has pushed for the tabling of a Race Relations Act. Tan Lian Hoe from Gerakan has stated that it is redundant considering the existence of other legislations like the Sedition Act. (Ref: New Straits Times, Tan:Law On Race Relations Not Necessary , 28.9.2008) On the other hand ABIM has expressed approval of it. (Ref: Sun2Surf, ABIM Lauds Initiative To Draw Up Race Relations Act, 28.9.2008) What I find to be the most intelligent response so far has been Marina Mahathir's blog:

Someone has proposed a Race Relations Act. But does that cover non-Malaysians as well? Why don't we have an Anti-Racism Act instead? In Australia, there is the Commonwealth Racial Hatred Act 1995.

The UK used to have the Commission for Racial Equality, now called the Equality and Human Rights Commission. There is also the Institute of Race Relations, which investigates such areas as racism and the press, police racism, exclusions from school, deaths in custody, the plight of asylum seekers, anti-Muslim racism, the impact of anti-terrorist legislation and attacks on multiculturalism, and the Runnymede Trust which is a think-tank on ethnicity and cultural diversity.

Maybe it's time for us to establish something like this as well, even within the Constitutional context that we have.

Incidentally, Marina Mahathir was blogging about the death of Abdel Aziz Hassan Abdraman, a 22 year old student from Chad who was recently murdered in Wangsa Maju. One African student residing in Malaysia, wrote in a Ghanaian newspaper about the spate of killings in Malaysia of foreign students. (Ref: Joy Online, Comment: Think Before You Leap To Malaysia, 26.9.2008) I do not know whether such allegations that he has written in his letter are true, but you can judge for yourself once you read it.

Incidentally, I also read with interest Datuk Professor Dr. Shamsul Amri Baharuddin's interview with NST. (Ref: NST, Don: Race Relations Act Needs More Thought, by CC Tan and E. John, 28.9.2008) He said that such an Act was not required because "it came out of a situation where there is a form of vilification in a statement made about the Chinese." He condemns it as a "knee jerk reaction". Instead, he suggests that we should have a referendum and/or a white paper on the proposed Race Relations Act. Here are some quotes that I like from that interview:

• Malaysia was set up after a referendum. So we follow that good democratic practice. It won't cost much.
• People talk about unity and integration (but) they don't even know the difference between the two. Unity means sharing of values. Integration, the keyword to that is segregation; it's physical. Apartheid is about physical segregation. But our ministers cannot differentiate between the two.
• When you talk about unity or integration, there are four different processes that we need to look at. Number one is assimilation. We have Jawi peranakan, Cina peranakan -- that is assimilation. That is one form of perpaduan, one form of integration. Two is accommodation. We have Deepa-Raya, Kongsi-Raya. It's "I respect you and you respect me" and we share things together. The third one is acculturation, which means I borrow your culture and you borrow mine. Food and clothing are classic forms of cultural borrowings. The final one is called amalgamation -- you go to potong kereta, you put different parts together and make a nice car. That's what we do with the Vision School concept. We haven't gone to that level when we analyse perpaduan.
• I think the moment we use the word unity without the content, then we are lost.
• In a way, the vernacular system has also saved this country because we don't speak to each other very well. So in that way, we tend to keep our peace.

Incidentally, it may be noted that Datuk Professor Dr. Shamsul is the founding director of Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia's Institute of Ethnic Studies.

I hope to revisit this topic in the future.