When Malaysian lock-up detainee abuse scandal first came to surface, especially when a video of it was made public, I noticed a number of people tried to associate the scandal with discrimination and, ultimately, racism. Moreover, some tried to manipulate some sort of chauvinistic communal nationalism. I wholly disagree with the association; correlation does not imply causation is an apt phrase.
To me, this issue concerns neither ethnicity nor nationality. It’s simply about persons being abused. No more than that. Nevertheless, the apparent fact at that time didn’t help my case since, previously, all the abused detainees seemed disporportionately Chinese Malaysian and Chinese from People’s Republic of China. Hence, I must say, I’m relieved with the revelation that the abused detainee in the video that was forced to strip and squat by a Malaysian police officer was not a Chinese from PRC but in fact, is a Malay Malaysian.
That disclosure vindicates my stance that there was no racism involved. This piece of information should render those that expounded that the scandal was tainted with discrimination and racism to sit in a corner and sulk. It proves that they’re wrong. More importantly, it cleanly undoes those racist opportunists’ crude works that tried to fire up communal feeling.
Of course, because my take is that ethnicity doesn’t matter, the fact that the victim’s a Malay shouldn’t make the issue any less angering as it should be. But it does and it does because of the existence of those that always try to transpose every issue as communal issues. These people cry of discrimination while they, deep within themselves are racists. Without them, the fact that the victim’s a Malay wouldn’t comfort me by one bit.
Malaysian society is young when compared to many others. While we grow up, we need to realize that not everything is about discrimination and racism. At the same time, racists don’t work in the open. They’re among us, trying to cry “Discrimination!” or any other word in similar context even when it’s not. Whenever we overhear somebody cries that, we must to ask ourselves, is it really about discrimination or racism or is someone trying to manipulate Malaysian complicated racial politics?
The ability to discern the two possibilities is paramount if we as Malaysians hope not to see the current Australian race riot to replicate itself in Malaysia as our second May 13 Incident.
