Ethnic Relations in Malaysia: Conflict and Harmony

Preface

It has often been said that Malaysia is a nation in the making, with diverse ethnic groups that have not been successfully integrated. In the short history of this country, these ethnic groups have largely co-existed in harmony. But there have also been many examples of ethnic conflict and even violence.

During the last few months there have been some intriguing developments in ethnic relations in Malaysia. On the one hand, the 12th General Elections on March 8, 2008 saw a large section of voters voting across ethnic lines. This was unlike in the past. However, on the other hand, many ethnic issues were raised by a small section of people after the elections which caused inter-ethnic tensions and conflicts.

I have long been concerned with the problem of inter-ethnic relations, both as an academician and a politician. Events leading up to and following the general elections inspired me to publish this book. It is not new. It comprises a selection of eleven diverse articles, including a speech and an interview, collected over three and a half decades. Four of the articles were completed before 2000, indeed there is one article that was written in 1974 and another in 1984, while the remaining seven were written in the period from 2000 to 2008.

Not long before the book was due to be sent for publication, I felt a little uneasy because there was a glaring lacuna. Descriptions and analyses of recent events relating to ethnic relations were missing. So I quickly started to write about them. The result is the Introduction. However, because it was included rather belatedly, it could not be incorporated into the index, which by that time had already been prepared for the book. My apologies.

I have deliberately decided not to update or revise the earlier articles. This is not so much because I could not find the time to do so, but rather because I would like readers to understand them in the context of their time period and also to observe the common thread and the trend of views and ideas that link them to the recent articles.

Almost all, if not all, of the articles, together with the speech and interview in this selection, deal with the nature of ethnic relations in Malaysia and describe various related situations of harmony and conflict that took place at different times and under different circumstances. I hope that the descriptions and analyses offered here will help create awareness about the various ethnic problems that we face in our multi-ethnic society.

In all humility, I dare say that I have been consistent in my thinking. Basically, I have always emphasized the need to be aware of and to understand the problems and challenges related to the national questions. This is so that we are able to provide solutions and march forward to build a united Malaysian nation. This was certainly one of the major objectives that those of our national independence fighters who were genuine in their motives aspired to achieve.

Many people have helped in the production of this book. But wish to record my deep gratitude to two persons in particular. They are Chong Ton Sin, owner-manager of the SIRD, who continuously but gently pushed me to make sure that the book is published according to his schedule. The other is Eileen Lian, who meticulously edited the book. To both ‘Terima kasih’.

S. Husin Ali

(husinsa23@yahoo.com)

1 October 2008

Preface: New Edition

This book has received quite a good reception. It has been found to be more relevant in view of the recent developments in the country, where ethnic relations has appeared to be more acute. As it was almost sold out and there was still more demand, Chong Ton Sin, the person in-charge of SIRD that first published it approached me about three months ago to work on the second edition. Since I was preoccupied with other things I could not undertake to do it immediately. Now it is finally ready.

In this new edition, I have done mainly two things. Firstly, I have updated the book wherever necessary, relevant and possible, in terms of facts and events. Secondly, I have included two more articles, namely: ‘Multi-ethnic Malaysia’ and ‘Outline of Ethnic Relations’. There are a few other articles I was tempted to include, but I decided otherwise in order to avoid repetitions.

I wish to express my deep gratitude to SIRD for agreeing to publish this new edition, especially two persons very closely associated with it. The first is of course Chong Ton Sin and the second is Janice Cheong who efficiently did its layout and cover. Thanks also to the other staff of SIRD for their cooperation. I also need to record my gratitude to Lingswaran for his help.

S. Husin Ali

23 September, 2014

Chapter 1

INTRODUCTION: NATIONAL UNITY AND RECENT INTER-ETHNIC CONFLICTS

The main aim of this introduction is to present, analyse and discuss the nature of inter-ethnic relations in Malaysia and why they appear to have deteriorated, thus adversely affecting the agenda of national unity for the country.

The agenda for national unity in Malaysia, 57 years after Merdeka (Independence) now, has still not succeeded but, instead, appears to have receded further and further into the distant mirage. The Merdeka Proclamation read by Tunku Abdul Rahman emphasized that Malaysia ‘shall be forever a sovereign democratic and independent State founded upon the principles of liberty and justice and ever seeking the welfare and happiness of its people and the maintenance of a just peace among all nations.’

Although the proclamation did not include the objective of establishing a united Malaysian nation, yet it is obvious that the other aspirations and principles that were expressed constitute fundamental prerequisites for achieving such unity. Malaysia is made up of several ethnic groups with diverse history, culture, religion, language and even economic roles. Ethnic differences exist, which often manifest in stereotypes, discriminations, tensions and conflicts that complicate the process of building national unity.

In order to achieve ‘welfare and happiness’ for the people within a united entity, certainly the values of democracy, independence, liberty and justice must not only be aspired for, they must be worked at. Through the effective implementation of appropriate policies, these values could certainly help in the process of achieving national unity. But at present, such policies are lacking and even if they do exist it does not appear that they are being implemented effectively and fairly.

The Malaysian government has failed, over the past five decades, to live up to what the Merdeka Proclamation promised. Firstly, Democracy has long been eroded. Basic human rights, even those upheld by the Constitution, have been violated. The draconian Internal Security Act (ISA) was used to suppress freedom and to detain innocent people for indefinite periods without trial. Although already abrogated as a result of persistent public outcry, it has been replaced by a new act, Security Offences (Special Measures) Act 2012 (SOSMA) which provides almost similar draconian powers as the ISA. Of late, the Sedition Act has also been used against many, including politicians, academics, students, social activists and also a journalist.

Not long after Merdeka, almost all the ISA detainees were Chinese and accused of being communists or pro-communists. A good number of them were incarcerated without trial for more than 10 years. Until recently, about 90 per cent of the detainees were Muslims, the majority of them accused of being terrorists or extremists. Some of them were held for more than six years and almost all have been released.

Press freedom is almost strangled and the printed media, especially, are always at the mercy of those in power. Almost all the mainstream printed and electronic media are controlled or owned by the governing political parties or corporate organizations and individuals close to the powers that be. The authorities can use the Publishers and Printing Presses Act (PPPA) to deny or withdraw the printing permit that must be renewed every year and to ban or suspend newspapers, magazines and books, although it has now been amended.

Secondly, prior to Independence, which Malaysia gained in 1957 following the British declaration of a state of emergency after the outbreak of a communist rebellion, the British colonial government detained leaders who were genuine independence fighters and dissolved the progressive organizations, including political parties, trade unions and others, which they led.

Many of these organizations were multi-ethnic in membership and/or policies. Leading examples were the Malay Nationalist Party (MNP), the Malayan Democratic Union (MDU), the PUTERA-AMCJA coalition (PUTERA made up of Malay organizations, while AMCJA of non-Malay ones), the General Labour Union (GLU) and the Pan-Malayan Federation of Trade Unions (PMFTU).

A political vacuum was thus created. To fill the vacuum, the British encouraged the formation of political organizations with mono-ethnic membership, such as the UMNO, MCA and MIC, which comprised Malays, Chinese and Indians respectively as their members. They formed a coalition known as the ALLIANCE which later broadened into the National Front (NF) or Barisan Nasional (BN), following the 1969 May 13 Incident, to include more parties that were in the opposition.

Although the BN appears to be multi-ethnic in form, the majority of its component parties are mono-ethnic in membership, each pursuing its own ethnic agenda or policies. But in terms of leadership and policy determination, it is UMNO that is the dominant party in BN, a factor that has often caused dissatisfaction among other party members and exacerbated tension especially after the 12th General Elections on 8 March 2008 and the 13th General Elections on 5 May 2013.

The existence and continuation of political parties that are exclusively ethnically orientated does not help much in creating harmony that is conducive to building national unity. In fact, after the general elections, with ethnic politics moving further into the forefront, the relationships between BN component parties have become more strained. This is evident in the relationship between MCA and MIC with UMNO, with the tension among them often expressed in ethnic terms.

The Merdeka that was achieved was very much political in nature. Remnants of British heritage have remained in different sectors, and are evident, to varying degrees, in several structures, organizations, nomenclatures and rituals. This can be seen clearly in the economy (especially in control and collaboration), the judiciary and even in education and security. The colonial elements and tendencies now appear to be strengthened by the process of globalization.

Globalization may be simply viewed as the spread of influence from the economically developed countries at the global centre to the less developed and underdeveloped countries in the periphery. The influence covers various fields of the economy, politics, military and communication. The positive aspect of globalization is that it introduces modern and more advanced technological development to the peripheral countries. But, at the same time, it also tends to strengthen the domination of the centre over the periphery in different fields.

To a great extent, I tend to share the view that, indeed, globalization constitutes a new form of colonialism or imperialism over the less developed and underdeveloped countries. It has been argued and shown that this domination affects most adversely the poorer and already exploited groups, especially the workers and peasants in the underdeveloped countries. Thus globalization tends to negatively affect the independence that had already been gained by these states.

In Malaysia, the majority of peasants and even workers today are Malays. Should globalization through business collaboration help to strengthen the traditional local business community—the majority of which is still Chinese—then there is a possibility that ethnic division and tension could increase in the country.

Thirdly, if Independence is very much in the realm of the state, Liberty touches more on the individual. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines liberty quite simply as ‘the quality or state of being free’. At present, the quality of individual freedom in this country has been marred by the existence of so many restrictive laws such as the ISA or SOSMA, PPPA, OSA (Official Secrets Act), Police Act (PA), Trade Unions Act (TUA), University and University Colleges Act (UUCA), and so forth.

It is recognized that an individual cannot be absolutely free to do everything he or she pleases, because if left unchecked this could lead to anarchy. There is a need for the exercise of certain social and legal restraints and restrictions. But if too many acts and regulations are introduced that place all kinds of restriction on individuals, then we may end up producing human robots in an authoritarian state.

Free flow of and access to information is a very important pre-requisite to democracy. But in this country there exist about 30 acts and regulations that prevent the freedom of individual access to information. These acts and regulations together with the influence, control and ownership of the media by the ruling parties can deny, in fact, have often denied the power of choice which affects individual liberty.

In many general elections, particularly the last two, the governing parties and media went to town making personal slurs and racial allegations against opposition leaders and parties. They were able to do this by imposing the powers of the PPPA selectively and by using or threatening to use the ISA.

In fact, during the last elections the BN tried to make full use of the controlled media to arouse chauvinistic Malay public anger against certain opposition parties and leaders by accusing them of being the tool of the Chinese and the Jews. Fortunately, the majority of people were not deceived by this propaganda and went on to give bigger support to the opposition. But, unfortunately, this same propaganda has raised the racial or ethnic temperature among a good number of people and created an environment of fear.

Finally, turning to Justice, it is generally perceived that the independence of the Judiciary has been eroded owing to greater interference of the Executive, alleged corruption among some judges and the promotion of a number of senior judges not on the basis of seniority or merit but on political association or subservience to their political masters. It is clear that these have affected the disposal of fair and just court decisions.

But justice is not only confined to the judicial arena. ln fact, it extends to the economic and social fields too. In the economic field, justice should be concerned with fair distribution of wealth among the people and equal job opportunities, for instance. Obviously justice does not prevail when there is unlimited concentration of wealth among a few, on the one hand, and dire poverty among the many, on the other, or when job opportunities are influenced by factors like ethnicity, favouritism or cronyism.

In this country, the unfair distribution of wealth often overlaps with ethnicity and locality of residence, although this is becoming less so now than in the past. It has for a long time been wrongly perceived that all Chinese are rich while all Malays are poor. This perception is further strengthened by the fact that a large section of Malays live in the rural areas as peasants who are occupied in agriculture and who constitute the majority of the poor. This contrasts with the fact that the majority of non-Malays, especially the Chinese who form the majority in the urban areas, earn much more or are more wealthy. But this is a rather simplistic view. There are also many poor Indians in the plantations as well as those who have been forced to migrate to towns, and also poor Chinese who work as labourers and live in the more backward areas of the towns. At the same time, there is a growing number of Malays who are getting wealthier and living very ostentatiously in exclusive urban areas.

The unjust distribution of wealth and extreme inequality of income also adversely affect access to social facilities like education, health and housing. The very good and exclusive schools, hospitals (especially the private ones) and nicely-located bungalows are expensive, and so more easily accessible to the wealthy. Therefore, it is not surprising that the majority of families that have access to them are usually seen to be Chinese.

In education, rich parents are able to send their children to exclusive international schools as well as the well-staffed and better-equipped government schools in the big towns. Even many of the government sponsored science secondary schools for poor Malays, that are built in the smaller towns or rural areas, are sometimes over-represented (compared with the overall population composition) by children from the relatively rich families involved in private businesses or public services.

At the secondary school level, there is a clear ethnic division between the national and national type schools. According to a Ministry of Education report, about 93 per cent of Malays go to national schools with Malay as the medium of instruction. At the same time, about the same percentage of non-Malays, mostly Chinese, attend national type schools which teach in their mother tongues, such as Chinese and Tamil.

At the university level, the majority of those who go to the public universities that teach mainly in the Malay language, and who are financed by the government, are Malay students. Most of them come from rural and poor backgrounds and are not proficient in the English language because they studied in Malay-medium secondary schools. More often than not, they enjoy government financial assistance in the form of scholarships and bursaries. In the better private universities, which teach in English, most of the undergraduates are non-Malays (mainly Chinese) who seldom get any such assistance.

A large number of those who pursue their tertiary education overseas—in the UK, USA, Australia and New Zealand—are Chinese, who are financially supported by their own families. Only a small number of them receive government scholarships, bursaries or loans. There are fewer Malays studying in universities overseas, but almost all of them receive government financial sponsorship. Thus, we see that the education system and its administration now tend to have a divisive rather than a unifying effect.

The point I have been trying to make thus far is that the failure to live up to the principles and aspirations enunciated in the Proclamation of Independence has stunted the process of harmonious integration in society, something that is so necessary for promoting national unity. At the same time, in the recent past, a number of political changes, circumstances and events have contributed to growing inter-ethnic tensions and conflicts. This explains why the agenda for national unity is now more difficult to achieve. Let us look at some recent cases.

i) During the 12th and 13th general elections campaigns, leaders of the governing BN coalition, with the help of the media that they own, control and influence, went all out to attack the opposition coalition, Pakatan Rakyat (PAKATAN). While this was to be expected in a political contest, they often went beyond the limits of fairness and decency. They focused their most vicious attacks on the leader of the opposition coalition, Anwar Ibrahim, and the party of which he is the de facto leader, the People’s Justice Party. The BN strategy was to eliminate him and to annihilate the party.

Besides spreading lies about Anwar being an agent of the Americans and Jews involved in an alleged sodomy case, the BN leaders and their media also accused him and the party of selling out to the Chinese in order to garner their votes. This was merely because Anwar had called for an end to the New Economic Policy (NEP), and for its replacement by the Malaysian Economic Agenda (MEA). UMNO, the leading component party of the BN, had always defended the NEP as a positive discrimination plan to help uplift the Malays economically and socially.

But Anwar contended the NEP had been used by a few Malay leaders in government and their cronies in business to amass wealth for themselves in the name of helping the Malays at large. At the same time, while agreeing that the Malay poor and low income groups should be given more help, Anwar advocated that their Chinese, Indian, Iban and Kadazandusun counterparts should not be neglected. He called for a fair non-ethnic approach to poverty alleviation.

At the same time, Anwar explained that through the MEA the national wealth should be justly distributed in favour of the lower income groups and the undeveloped rural and urban areas in order to reduce the large socio-economic gaps in the country. Again this is a multi-ethnic approach towards development, which would benefit the Malays, who form the majority of the poor especially in the rural areas,