Chinese would claim racism if punished road bully were one of their own, says former minister

(The Malay Mail Online) – The Chinese would have labelled the punishment of road bully Siti Fairrah Ashykin Kamaruddin as “racist” were she of their ethnicity, claimed Tan Sri Zainuddin Maidin.

In a blog post yesterday, the former information minister noted there were no complaints of racism in the Kuantan incident that involved a Malay woman and an elderly Chinese man.

Instead, he said all had expressed their sympathy towards the elderly victim, Sim Siak Heong, and derided his attacker better known as Kiki.

“I wonder, how would the Chinese press, Chinese social media, Chinese parties and Chinese NGOs have reacted if the punished were a Chinese,” wrote Zainuddin.

“Wouldn’t they have considered the punishment to be racist, since it was just a petty case?”

The former group chief editor for Malay daily Utusan Malaysia was referring to Internet video of the woman recorded hammering away at the elderly vehicle with a steering lock and abusing him racially.

Siti Fairrah was fined RM5,000 and ordered to perform 240 hours of community services in lieu of jail time, after pleading guilty to causing mischief and damaging Sim’s car.

To bolster his insinuation, Zainuddin highlighted the case of Teoh Beng Hock’s death in custody, which he said was dubbed a murder by DAP MP Lim Kit Siang.

“If the police had acted quickly against such a small case like Kiki’s, then how many more years must it take for a major case such as probing Lim Kit Siang under the Sedition Act?” Zainuddin asked.

Lim is currently under investigation for sedition over a written tribute to Teoh published on the fifth anniversary of his death earlier this month.

He also accused the the Inspector-General of Police of delaying the investigation into a long-drawn political issue.

This, he claimed, had caused the Attorney-General to be seen as afraid of taking action or delaying it.

A social media storm erupted this week after the video documenting the woman verbally abusing an elderly Chinese man and hitting his car with a steering lock was uploaded on video-sharing site YouTube.

The police previously confirmed that the 67-year-old Sim was fined for failing to yield when exiting a junction and causing the accident.

Malay rights group Perkasa in Selangor had then launched the fund “out of sympathy for her” earlier today, which it hoped will “help lighten the financial burden” of the RM5,000 fine.