Why Crucify Malaysia?

This is for the eyes and ears and mouths of Aljazeera, for Malaysia's  rotweilers and watchdogs of Human Rights, for our very own home-grown self-appointed and self-regarding crusaders in Malaysia's League of Human Justice like Captain Malaysia ( Branch Office in Penang), Kelawar Man and Murai (with Kelawar Kar awaiting the completion of Penang's Undersea Tunnel), Minah Hebat and Minah Kelawar  (ubiquitous and merata rata in the cosmopolitan centres on the west coast of Semenanjung Malaysia).  Or to simplify it, let's lump them all as the BHL or Bleeding Heart Liberals.

We are all concerned about the situation that Bangladeshi migrant workers - like all migrant workers - find themselves in.    Often, it is a cruel situation.    A situation of unfairness and exploitation.    So let us find out from one who really should know (and thinks) about Bangladeshi migant workers.

Let us hear from the Prime Minister of Bangladesh.

Firstly, on 6 December 2014, the PM of Bangla Desh Sheikh Hasina had a "successful and effective" three-day visit to Malaysia.


See:
https://bdnews24.com/economy/2014/12/06/malaysia-visit-successful-manpower-export-will-increase-pm

Other than deals on easing visas, promoting tourism etc, note the very glaring export drive, that of "manpower export".  According to the PM, citizens of Bangla Desh can be itemised as a commodity to be sold on the free market like mangoes or iron ore.

I would like to ask Md Rayhan Kabir (the gentleman used by Aljazeera as the spokesperson for the benighted Banglas in Malaysia): do you agree and are you happy with your Government's description of you and your countrymen as part of Bangla Desh's export trade, as the export of the brawns and sweat (and despair) of your kinsmen?

As an export entry, your countrymen, according to Wiki .....

........ remitted from Malaysia to Bangla Desh about US$5 million in 1993 - up to US$57 million by 1999.

According to the World Bank, remittances from this export of manpower in 2016 were nearly $15 billion which accounted for about 9 per cent of Bangla Desh's GDP.

When you were "sick with worry" about how the Malaysian authorities were treating your 'friend' during the peak of the Covid 19 pandemic, did you stop to think about how you and your 'friend' would be treated (medically) if you, as an unskilled worker, remained in Dhaka, Chittagong or Sylhet?  Can you see yourself haranguing your Government authorities (or perhaps calling up Aljazeera) for better treatment - especially since you and your friends contribute so much to the national coffers when you worked in Malaysia as legal or illegal foreign workers?

Here in Malaysia, we have some citizens who by virtue of paying Income Tax and contributing little/much (????)  to the national Treasury (like you do in your country), are allowed to demand that members of the Malaysian Armed Forces who only "eat and sleep" should be put out to work in FELDA  plantations!  Some of them even question the validity of the Monarchy as enshrined in the Constitution.

We await with bated breath for  Aljazeera's 101 East Team to investigate another blot on Malaysia's landscape.  This team consists mostly of Aussies like Senior Reporter and producer Drew Ambrose, Executive Producer Sharon Roobol, Producer Jenni Robman, Digital Producer Rhionai-Jade Armont and cameraman Craig Hansen.   Is that surprising?    There is a long pedigree of Aussies who take it upon themselves to expose and pontificate on the ills and errors of Asian countries, especially Malaysia, notwithstanding their very own scabs on their chest (pekong di dada dan kuman di seberang) especially the abysmal mistreatment and discrimination of the Australian Aborigines.

The Aussies seem to have a fetish about denigrating Malaysia.  I don't think many of our BHL know much about the problem of Vietnamese refugees on the east coast of Semenanjung Malaysia at the end of the Vietnam War in 1975.

See my previous postings :

https://anaksihamid.blogspot.com/2015/06/kudos-and-brickbats-and-pontianak.html

https://anaksihamid.blogspot.com/2016/10/maintaining-cordial-relationship.html

https://anaksihamid.blogspot.com/2015/05/damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you-dont.html

All it takes to whip up a strong brew of bile and prejudice against an Asian nation is a bunch of Aussie cobbers by the billabong, cobbling up a mish mash of ignorance and bias in their billy cans.  But I digress.   I must confess (some) Australians and Australia leave AsH with a nasty taste in the mouth, especially their double standards with regards to the non-white nations of Southeast Asia.

In our part of the world,  we tend to think (wrongly) of Bangla Desh as nothing but a poverty-stricken nation.  But how biased can we be, especially when we remember that song 'Bangla Desh' by George Harrison, an eminent Beatle from the 60s?  Bangla Desh (or originally East Bengal) has a sad history of wars, famines, natural disasters, and today a rising sea level (as a result of global warming) threatens to inundate villages and fields along the coastline.  Not too long ago, during the Second World War, 2.1-3 million Bengalis, out of a population of 60.3 million died of starvation during the Bengal Famine of 1943.  If Md Rayhan Kabir thinks his people are badly treated in Malaysia, here is what Sir Winston Churchill (much admired strangely enough in India, Bangla Desh and at one time Brunei as well) thinks about his forefathers, the almost 3 million Bengalis who died of starvation.

We can happily say that 77 years after the Bengal Famine, Bangla Desh has moved on.  It has, like Malaysia, a burgeoning middle class.  (See video below)

Perhaps concerned and unhappy Banglas like Md Rayhan Kabir should turn to the middle class in his own country to connect with our middle class liberals to set up a united front to defend the cause and human rights of "suffering foreign workers" in Malaysia.  They could draw up a working agenda to co-ordinate the conditions and regulations concerning these foreign workers.  Md Rayman Kabir and friends (not just his fellow kinsmen)could perhaps begin with cases like corruption and exploitation by Bangla Desh's consular officials in Kuala Lumpur who, according to Wiki overcharged Bangla workers by RM 200-300 for their passport renewal.

 They managed to appropriate RM 10-15 million.  And a valid passport as we know, is crucial for documentation of their legal status.

So what degree of culpability has Malaysia got to bear over the situation of foreign workers (not foreign immigrants), whether they are PATI or legal during this Covid 19 pandemic that is tearing apart the world's economic and social infrastructure on a global scale.  Are any other nations like Singapore, Burma, USA, UK, the EC, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, India, Russia, China doing it any better to meet up with the Gold Standard Ratings drawn up by the bleeding heart liberals in Malaysia?  If our Aussie crusaders wanted to, they could produce a score or more similar videos which demonstrate the "inhumanity" of the policies of their fellow-Caucasians in comparison to what dastardly Malaysia is doing - with reference to foreign -migrant workers and foreigners.

Where does the buck stop?


Well, here's the Prime Minister of Bangladesh once more.


Secondly, on 25 May 2015, PM Sheikh Hasina denounced the country's  migrants as "Mentally Sick".


https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/05/bangladesh-pm-calls-migrants-mentally-sick-150524192524482.html


According to Md Rayhan's PM ...

If that's the case why is Malaysia, and especially Malaysia still facing a flood of illegal foreign workers from Bangla Desh?

However ....

CONCLUSION

In New York, there is a plaque on the Statue of Liberty which reads ...

Malaysia, when it was still Semenanjung Tanah Melayu, had this ''greatness" thrusted upon them when our British overlords required cheap foreign labour from India and China.  The Malays, like other natives whose territory was "founded" by Christian Western nations had no say and no choice -they are now living and managing and coping with all the trials, tribulations and challenges of having a mult-racial population foisted upon them.

For most larger and richer nations, they have the room to take in such "huddled masses".  The USA especially under Trump has reneged on this proud heritage of America and Americans.  China, India (under Modi, Muslims are not welcomed), Japan, Australia, New Zealand, the EC and UK have no room for the "tired and the poor" except for those who are professionals (educated in their own country) and wealthy (with wealth derived from their country of origin).  With regards to Rohingyas and Bangla Deshis who flock to Malaysia, they are out of the equation altogether.

As for Malaysia - supposedly a nation of racists, full of Malay-Muslim extremists and fanatics who have no respect for the Human Rights of the populace and impose gross inequality on the minorities (translate that as non-Malays) who end up as victims of discrimination and treated like the "huddled masses yearning to breathe free" - we are expected to be whiter than white and as pure as the driven snow according to the demands of the Human Rights Confederacy.

If we are so despicable, why are our shores a favourite landing spot for Burma's "refuse of your teeming shore" and the "helpless tempest tost" of  Bangla Desh??   We have no "lamp beside the golden door". We have our own poor and needy to look after.  We do not farm them out as human exports to foreign fields so that they can remit their wages to support their families at home.  But we do have a different calibre of human exports, with one difference.  They consist of our educated and well-heeled who for the most part do not have to support impoverished families at home.  Instead they, especially those residing in Australia, have the privilege if they so wish, to slag off their ex-country in the hope of  gaining more kudos and looking more presentable and acceptable in their new country.

So why oh why are we still being crucified ....  by Aljazeera, by the liberal Western press, and by social media both home grown and foreign?  

COW DUNG

In the wake of the brouhaha over the introduction of teaching Khat or Jawi calligraphy as part of the BM curriculum for Year Four pupils,  I decided it's a good time to think and talk about a key aspect of the Malay Peninsula's culture, heritage and literary legacy which had been marginalised as a result of the policies and practices of our  previous "masters of our fate" during nearly 450 years of foreign colonisation and overlordship.

In introducing Khat, there is hardly any overtone of  pursuing a policy of  language exclusiveness and triumphalism like Singapore's  Mandarin language campaign.

To those who protest so adamantly about Khat and Jawi, people like .......

1.   Dong Zong and Jiao Zong ....

They do teach Chinese calligraphy in Chinese vernacular schools, don't they??

2.  DAP rabble rousers

DAP foot-soldiers

3.  Orang berkuasa baru

Teresa Kok is DAP's MP for Seputeh and Minister for Primary Industries.   What opinion does she hold today?  

4.  Si Bangsa/Anak Malaysia 

Apologies for this fuzzy image of  Lim Lip Eng, DAP MP for Kepong.  I find his purple Mandarin jacket very becoming.  For a moment I thought he was a rakyat of Taiwan or the PRC or Singapore(?).

When I was in Secondary School in Singapore during the late fifties/early sixties, we did not have a permanent Malay Language teacher although Malays made up nearly a quarter of Students for my Grade Level.  The school provided a Mandarin Language teacher and we Malay girls had to sit in during each Mandarin lesson after firstly standing up and making a greeting of  Sen sen chau an when Madam X entered the classroom.  Of course we (as most teenagers do) would natter out of sheer boredom.  Although the four of us were quite subdued in our chatter, Madam X would yell at us "Malay girl sitting at the back, listen to your book!".  Yez Ma'm, Yez Boss, Yez Guv!

In 1961, about a month or two before we sat for our Senior Cambridge School Certificate Examination and the  Federation of Malaya Certificate (FMC) Malay Language Paper, we were directed to Gan Eng Seng School for our Malay Language lessons on a Saturday afternoon.   What was my Grade ye may ask??  I did not fail but I did get an S7 - something I am not proud of.  BUT, the Singapore Government reckoned that was good enough for me to teach in Malay in Sekolah Menengah Yusof  Ishak when I graduated in Geography and Political Science in 1967!!!  Yes Sir, Yes Boss, Yes Guv!

 As I went through my twenties and thirties; and through the trauma of Singapore in and out of Malaysia, of the Race Riots in Singapore and the 1969 May 13 tragedy in Malaya, of watching the rising serpent of  racism-cum-discrimination which affected both myself and my pupils;  I had to do a re-think of who and what I am.

That was the beginning of my regret and shame in knowing and learning so little of my language (especially in Jawi), my Malay Literature and the history of the Malays from way before 1511 when Catholic Portugal subjugated the land of my forefathers (and foremothers).

I did try to make a beginning with teaching myself Jawi.  I bought several do-it-yourself books.  This is my most precious  and I shall extract parts from it to illustrate why Jawi is such a significant aspect of the identity of the Malay, an expression that has been so neglected for the past 60 years or more (unlike the Chinese and the Indians who are supported to maintain and foster the calligraphy of their mother tongue).


Here is that book.

What follows is extracted entirely from M. B. Lewis' book. I have learned a lot about Jawi calligraphy and somewhat unexpectedly, about a wide tapestry of Malay culture, literature, history, socio-economics and homely domestic settings.

1.  The Portuguese reach Malacca - from Sejarah Melayu

2.  Pantun

3.  A Trading Permit

4.  From a Newspaper

5.  Newspaper Titles

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Finally, a word of caution when showing one's indignation.

When DAP MP  Lim Lip Eng wrote this in his Facebook  ------

------  is he aware of the implications of the term "cow manure"?

When he used the words 'cow manure', he is of course referring to cow dung which all Malaysians know is a good organic fertilizer, just like horse dung/horse manure.

Do read this :
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/expat/expatnews/7398029/Cow-dung-and-urine-healthy.html

Hidup di dunia biar beradat,
Bahasa tidak berjual beli.   Please.

Spot the Missing Word

Many, many yonks ago the newspapers inserted a little competition to promote their sales.  It was called Spot the Ball Contest.  The picture of a ball had been removed from a photograph of a football match.  All you had to do to win a prize was to locate the position  of the ball.

Now, on browsing through today's The Independent I noticed this headline :

From The Independent 7 January 2018

My heart sank.  Trump's acknowledgement of the Zionists' and Christian Zionists'  appetite and prayers for acquiring Jerusalem had angered, understandably, the Palestinians.  But
this 'attack' on the Patriarch of the Greek Orthodox Church would not help their cause!!

So I clicked the item and this was the headline in the article written by Ali Sawafta and Nidal Almughrabi from Reuters.

In the eyes of the world,  Palestinians mean Muslims.  Palestinian Muslims are a violent lot of terrorists - like the 16 year old girl Ahed Tamimi who slapped an armed Israeli soldier just last week.

So, on the face of it, a headline like that suggests a certain very predictable chain reaction from the guardians of Christianity?  I am thinking of leading lights like ....

• Donald Trump - the leader of the Free World, of the world's richest nation.

• Charlie Hebdo, the rabidly islamophobic  French satirical weekly magazine - this should provide great fodder for their genius to work on.

• Imagine the distress suffered by the Pope to see his fellow leader of the flock being hounded by such a rabble

• Then there is the head of the Anglican Church, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby who feels very much for the fate of Christians in the Middle East .https://anaksihamid.blogspot.my/2015/12/the-mantle-of-victimhood.html

• There is also our royal humanitarian, Prince Charles, heir apparent to the British Crown who had voiced his concerns for the fate of Christians in several parts of the world and the Middle East of course - at the behest of some Christian NGOs https://anaksihamid.blogspot.my/2014/11/prince-charles-prince-among-some-men.html

• Other voices from the milieu of the Christian evangelists would clasp their hands and say "I told you so!" - voices from nearer home like Henry Pillai, pastor from the Grace Assembly of God who can barely subdue his antipathy towards Islam in Malaysia.  Remember that celebrity American evangelist Billy Graham?  Well this is how Muslims should be treated according to his son Franklin Graham.

Our President Trump could be threatened like the Patriarch of the Greek Orthodox Church!

That would certainly be the scenario if one only read the headline.  What is the purpose of a newspaper Headline? It is mainly to catch the attention of the readers.  It is also supposed to present the gist and the main thrust of the text to follow.

But this headline has failed miserably, whether by commission or omission  BECAUSE this is the actual content of the report  ......

...... that the "attack" was carried out by Christian Palestinians ( and with justification)!

The missing "ball", the missing word is Christian.  

This is not simply a matter of distinguishing a religious denomination.  If  a Malaysian commits a crime abroad it does not matter if that person is Chinese or Malay or Indian, or Muslim or Christian or Hindu or Buddhist - he is just another Malaysian, albeit a nasty piece of work who has brought shame to the country.
,
But in Palestine, the cradle of three monotheist religions and a killing field where the powerful perpetrators are labelled the victims (with the collaboration of an omnipotent Big Brother abroad), where blood and tears are cheap especially for the Palestinians -  religion matters especially in a world where violence is always attributed to one particular religion; to Islam.

Hacking Away

Since we got back about 4 weeks ago, a persistent infection that we picked up on the plane has resulted in a hacking cough that could not be shifted, even after two bouts of antibiotics.  We have become as a result, quite antisocial and unproductive in Kuala Lumpur.

Under such circumstances I could only resort to my usual tactic of tidying and sorting out the junk in my work-room.  This never fails to bring some light - some discovery - to a hacker's life.

This I found, tucked in an old brown envelope - a set of sketches on paper now brittle with age - sketches drawn by the spouse in the mid-1970s - way,way before fate threw us together.

Cautious the Cat

This was part of a young dad's foray into story telling at bedtime for his young son.  Each night Keith would listen intently to the adventures of Cautious the Cat. It was not read from a book, his dad Iain would just create the stories as they come into his head.  Little Keith somehow managed to drift away into dreamland by the end of each adventure.  The next night, he would ask and get another exciting story of Cautious the Cat scouting the streets and dustbins, the riverbanks and food centres for food to feed his family.  Lucky Keith!

We were lucky too in our Abah.  In the late 1940s and 1950s, each evening after dinner we would gather in the sitting room (bilik depan)  under the light of a single pressure lamp (lampu pam), reading our books and comics that Abah had got together for us.  It was also the usual time for getting our homework done at the family dining table.  Abah would be reading the newspaper or a book,  Mak would be busy with her sewing and mending .  And in the background could be heard the dulcet voice of a singer on the radio.

Bedtime was at nine or half-past nine.  We would shuffle off into our beds and only the youngest Akim, would give a goodnight kiss to Abah.  There were times when Abah was entertaining visitors and Akim would be nodding his head, half awake and half in slumber waiting for Abah to appear for the  goodnight peck.  None of us dared to approach Abah to inform him that Akim was waiting.  Children were to be seen and not heard!!  It may sound strict, but it never hurt us - especially now when I observe the precocious and rude children that surround present day family life.

But for Keith and Cautious the Cat, dad's story was not just one of fun and games.  Life is more complicated than that and stories should always carry a meaning, a lesson or a moral for young and old alike.  But preaching and finger-pointing morality does not make for a good story either.

Cautious lived in a world where the cards are stacked against him - where the need to feed his family sometimes makes for a dangerous and frantic existence. But, he's cautious, hardworking and honest - traits that every child should be brought up with.

Cautious was a hungry cat, who lived at the bottom end of town.

.......... where even the dustbins were empty.

...... for at the bottom end of town, everyone was hungry

..... and dogs, too  -  just as hungry - and bigger ... and fiercer.

But Cautious and all his mates, who were facing the same fate as him, were aware of other dustbins, bins that were located in the upper end of town.

...... the dustbins must certainly be fuller at the top end of town.

I suppose this fictional representation of a cat's life sketched in a child's story in the 1970s is replicated today in the life of humans ...  some humans .... some humans from some countries.


And like in the nursery rhyme The Crooked Man - there are many out there, men and women who are crooked, who do not walk and live the straight and narrow ..... though they are not confined just to the mature and elderly.

The crooked (Malay) man and more especially after Merdeka in 1957.

But the poor and the destitute - and deplorables (according to Hilary Clinton) will always be with us.

In the same vein, the rich and liberals, the self-serving elites and others who are somehow not-so-deplorable will retain their secured places in society.  What hope is there as envisaged by Mrs Obama during her husband's presidency ....

..... when hope is but a rotting carrot dangled in the face of the deplorables as in Madrid ..

.... or in Obama's home patch in Chicago ..

..... while he cavorts with the super rich.

In our home patch, it has been reported that DBKL employees and Malaysian policemen are deeply in debt trying to emulate the lifestyle of those who can afford such indulgences ...

Would Cautious the Cat, if he lived in these times be able to maintain his probity and dignity?

When times were really hard at the bottom end of town, even the people looked through each other's dustbins .....

....... and Cautious got nothing, at all ...... nor did his friends, and nor did the dogs ......

You see, Cautious who dwells on the surface is quite ignorant about the wiles and connivings of those who live above the ground - those in the higher echelons.  Cats have nothing to do with the monkey business at the top end of the town.

NB  Why are the sketches peppered with copyright labels? Read http://anaksihamid.blogspot.my/2016/05/a-malay-malady-episode-2.html