Little red dots and blind spots

Blogger Sharifuddin A Latiff framed his challenge to Ibrahim Ali rather cheekily – “Oi, Brahim, Melayu bertaburan kat sana sini ko tak nampak ke” (Oi, Brahim, the Malays are here there and everywhere, you don’t see them ke?).

If you’ll look at the screenshot of Sharifuddin’s blog posting (below), you can catch in a jiffy what he’s getting at. In the sea of successful Malay names staring out at you, the Chinese ones are adrift like isolated islets, or ‘little red dots’.

An explanation as to who the 152 names belong to: The first set of 16 names are the Defence Ministry head honchos and military high command, the second set (33) the top brass in the Home Ministry and police, and the third set (103) are the heads of missions – ambassadors, high commissioners and consuls.

The name list was compiled by the Centre for Policy Initiatives in rebuttal to Mahathir Mohamad’s claim that we’re at risk of being overrun by the yellow peril. [Disclosure: Helen Ang is a CPI staff member.]

It is a common saying that ‘a picture paints a thousand words’. And the screenshot of these speckles of red speaks volumes on the story of Chinese marginalisation. The truth is contrary to Mahathir’s scaremongering, Perkasa’s tribal drum-beating and Berita Harian’s outright lie that newly registered non-Malay voters outnumber Malays 40 to 1.  

However the response when Malaysian readers are presented with empirical evidence, rather than the race rhetoric we’re so accustomed to, is quite predictable.  

One reader attacked Sharifuddin for being ‘petualang bangsa’ or traitor to his race – a common label slapped on outspoken Malays like Zaid Ibrahim and Azmi Sharom, as well as spiced his curse on Sharifuddin and family with choice profanities.  

1topsy-turvy Malaysia

When the data reveal one schema and the brazen name-callers are in defiance of revealed facts, we get ‘Malaysia Boleh’. This Malaysia Bolehness is the immense talent some Malaysians have for easily calling their fellow citizens racists (in the context of Malaysians suffering the Stockholm syndrome, a racist is anti-Malay, anti-Islam).

But if you (‘you’ meaning non-Malays) can manage to extricate yourself from the shackles of the syndrome, try to imagine – accomplished Chinese are shut out from the bureaucracy. So how much worse must poorly educated Tamils fare, being denied the lower ranks of the civil service and other opportunities for uplifting their status?

If Chinese are dots, then Indians are pinpricks on the map of Malaysian socio-economic development.  

Malaysians of other ethnicities have this amazing blind spot when it comes to the Tamils on our turf. Yet Malaysian First-ers are ever so ready to give P Uthayakumar a tongue-lashing when he highlights how the Indian underclass is beset with social ills, in large part aggravated by the calculated neglect of the Umno-led government.  

But wouldn’t Hindraf – accused of a narrow Indian-for-Indian mindset – soon be out of business if all the other races paid as much attention to the community’s problems as they unanimously do to the Palestinians?

Take for instance a lead letter in Malaysiakini last month headlined ‘So little has been done for Gaza’. The letter-writer Goh Keat Peng appeals to “dear readers” to concern themselves intimately with the Palestinian plight, and shares how he prays for that oppressed people in the holy land.  

Goh, a Christian missionary, maintains a blog. Browsing through two years worth of his blog writings, I do not glimpse any hint that he’s aware of the fact that poverty-stricken Indians even exist in Malaysia.  

Since Goh is a Saya Anak Bangsa Malaysia public forum speaker and the SABM movement preaches a we-love-all-Malaysians brotherhood, I would be most glad if the next time Goh sings his Kumbaya tune, he would hold hands with some Malaysian Indians for a Kodak moment. Go ahead and say a prayer for the poor ones too.

Cina Baru marquee models  

Lim Guan Eng penned some thoughts on ‘BN’s Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde’ which can be read in the Malaysiakini letters section. The Penang chief minister writes:

“The time has come for all Malaysians to look at each other as fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters and children faced with similar problems and filled with common hopes and aspirations. For this reason, whilst I will meet with any group seeking a dialogue, I am not keen to initiate discussions on my own with organisations based on a purely communal instead of a Malaysian agenda.”

Lim (right) is misguided in turning away petitioners from communal organisations. Since his letter came in the wake of the Kg Buah Pala fallout, it’s safe to assume that he was alluding to the Human Rights Party delegation.

What crosses my mind is that Lim cakap tak serupa bikin; he says ‘Malaysian First’ but does something else. His appointment of Mohd Fairus Khairuddin as deputy chief minister – who has since been ousted – smacks of the very same communal approach Lim claims to reject. The incompetent, inexperienced Fairus was given the job for no other reason than he is Malay and to fill the PKR quota.

Then there is Lim’s aide Ng Wei Aik who complained that Najib Razak took a full 12 hours to register his anger at Israeli commandos for boarding one of the Gaza flotilla ships. In contrast to Najib who was slow on the uptake, Ng’s quick draw has been interpreted (by a writer calling himself Shuzheng) as his heart touchingly being at one with the Palestinians, and “DAP people like Ng cast the impression that they think of Muslims every moment of their waking hours”.

While I would not reasonably expect Ng to equally think about Hindus his every conscious minute, he is nonetheless a Penang state exco as well as state DAP Socialist Youth secretary. As such, and professing to be ‘socialist’, I would expect him to display a keener interest in what happens in his own backyard.

Indians sleeping on the street

In February, I wrote about a vagabond found dead in a pool of blood on a shoplot corridor in Georgetown. It was three days before last Christmas that the murder of the 68-year-old mentally unsound Indian vagrant was filmed on CCTV camera. Footage showed the assailant covering the victim’s head with a plastic bag and punching him.

Did Ng and the Penang government do better than Najib and express their reaction and outrage within a 12-hour deadline on the vagabond case? (see press clipping) Moreover, a shop in Macalister Road is not more than a few hundred metres away from Ng’s office in Komtar, compared to Gaza many thousands of kilometres away.

While DAP joins the Umno and PAS chorus that the Israelis must be punished, what about justice for the elderly Indian? The homeless, defenceless C. Veerasamy - who was killed in such a callous and horrifying manner - used to be a Penang municipal council road sweeper.

Please forgive my charity-begins-at-home outlook. Unlike Ng, pastor Goh and the sprinkling of Chinese in the diplomatic corps (those little red dots), I’m not such a well-travelled cosmopolitan. I don’t even know if Gaza has an airport, not that we can cross over from Tel Aviv as after all, our passport bars entry into Israel.

And pardon the poor Indians. They don’t even have passports. Some have never been to a destination as near as the Little Red Dot island a bus ride away, unaffordable because Singapore currency is 2.3 times ours.

We might just as well pardon poor Indians for living. Those begging and sleeping in our KL streets, that is. How unsightly. Oh but I forgot. With Malaysian First blind spots, they’re not seen, are they?

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.