By Asrul Hadi Abdullah Sani - The Malaysian Insider
Enough with the racism, says Nazri. — file pic
“They should stop it because how would we (the Malays) like it if people say that Malays are lazy and stupid? We would also get angry. Don’t do to others what we don’t want others to do unto us,” the Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department told The Malaysian Insider.
The Umno supreme council member had earlier castigated the Malay daily for defending the controversial National Civics Bureau, or Biro Tata Negara (BTN), for its courses which he said were racist. The opposition has also claimed that BTN propagated political indoctrination.
“And more so now, under the prime minister (Datuk Seri Najib Razak) and 1 Malaysia, we must accept that Malaysia is a multi-racial country,” he added.
Utusan has been a mouthpiece for Umno ultra-nationalists and a tool for defending the party’s “Ketuanan Melayu” (Malay supremacy) policy.
The newspaper has also been criticised for being used to attack the opposition and ratcheting up racial tensions.
“I have reiterated that we must learn from Nicole David and other athletes. It is not acceptable to be a racist in 2010. It does not matter if we keep saying that we are not racist if our actions show otherwise. Enough with racism already.
“50 years after Independence, where are we headed to? Are we still going to deny that the Chinese and Indian community have any right to stay in this country? I think it is outdated,” Nazri added.
The Umno-owned newspaper was responsible for running daily stories criticising calls to allow former communist leader Chin Peng to return to Malaysia, linking it to what the newspaper says are moves to question Malay rights.
The paper also suggested that DAP was anti-Islam and said Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim was willing to betray the Malays to be prime minister — both incendiary subjects in mainly Malay-Muslim Malaysia.
Its articles have labelled the Chinese community as “pendatang” (immigrants) and the Indian community as “keling”.
Nazri added that Malaysians can longer accept categorising minorities with derogatory names.
“Malaysians, including the Malays, can no longer accept calling Chinese as immigrants and Indians with derogatory terms like ‘keling’.
“I think that if we want to act on a few that question Malay rights, then we should attack them only but not the whole community. If there are one or two individual Chinese or Indians that question Malay rights then we attack them only. We should not label the whole community as anti-Malay.
“As an elected representative, I know that that all the races are enjoying good relationships, so we should not take one or two bad examples as a basis to attack the whole community. I cannot agree with that. I am very much against racism. I hate racism,” he explained.
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