Author: pdadmin

by Low Tse Yenn

 

Every year, Ahmadiyya Muslims around the world await the Jalsa Salana – a formal annual religious convention, which allows attendees and spectators alike to explore and expand upon their faith. The convection spans across 3 days, always beginning on a Friday after Friday prayers and coming to a close on a Sunday. While many countries often host their own national Jalsa, the Jalsa Salana UK is an international spectacle – drawing the eyes from Ahmadiyya Muslims worldwide as it is broadcasted on Muslim Television Ahmadiyya (MTA).

 

The Ahmadiyya Muslim community, who otherwise refer to themselves as the Jama’at, refers to the Islamic movement which exalts Mirza Ghulan Ahmad, a religious leader from Punjab, British India who rose to prominence in the 19th century, as the Messiah and Mahdi – the metaphorical second coming of Christ. Believers of this branch of Islam are referred to as Ahmadi Muslims – named after the prophet Muhammad’s alternative name, Ahmad.

 

This year marks the return of Jalsa Salana UK after its 2-year gap due to the Covid-19 pandemic., though accompanied by various health and safety measures. It was held on the 5th to 8th of August at the Hadeeqatul Mahdi, hosting a total of 8,887 invitees – 6,709 and 2,168 men and women respectively; though this pales in comparison to the usual 35,000 Ahmadis it usually draws from around the world.

 

The invitees were chosen by ballot while 4,000 Muslims who were unable to attend gathered virtually at 40 mosques and centers across the UK to watch the Jalsa. This stands testament to how Jalsa Salana is the largest annual Islamic convention in the UK, having run for over 50 years and organized every year by the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community (AMC)

 

On each day, an address was given by the global Islamic Caliph of the AMC – Hazrat Mirza Masroor Ahmad (aba), otherwise called Huzur by Ahmaddis. The Jalsa began with an inauguration, held at the Jalsa Gah – the stage and seating area where Huzur and attendees congregate. Here, Huzur affirms that while this year’s Jalsa might be small in size, it was nevertheless held to quench the spiritual thirst of the people and to allow those chosen to serve the guests of the Promised Messiah.

 

Through these addresses, Huzur commends the Jama’at’s great work – speaking of missionaries worldwide and testimonies from new believers. He speaks of the fruits of their labor, in the 211 mosques built, in the many new converts, in the numerous people reached through their publications and translations, and how connections between past and lost converts have been strengthened and rebuilt. He also details the good work done beyond the religious realm – speaking of their humanitarian and medical efforts in emergency situations worldwide.

 

Yet, at the core of his addresses are spiritually riveting sermons – ones that expands upon the core teachings of Islam. In his address on the last day, he builds upon sermons from prior Jalsas, speaking of the rights of others and how Ahmadis should act in propriety of them. He speaks on the rights of friends, the sick, the orphans, oaths, and others during the war – reiterating the significance of duty, righteousness, and intention. In the end, he closes the address as usual and ends the convention with a silent prayer.

 

Featured throughout the convention are interviews and testimonies by the invitees, staff, and volunteers. Here, they recount the significance of the Jalsa and the very visceral experience which accompanies it. Often, they speak of Huzur as an awe-inspiring and close figure – one they hold a deeply personal relationship with.

 

The Huzur commands a powerful presence, one which invokes in Ahmaddi Muslims a spiritual and emotional experience. Beyond the teachings and sermons the Jalsa will impart them, the Jalsa presents Ahmaddi Muslims the privilege of being in his presence and the chance to serve and hopefully meet him.

 

This year Jalsa’s stands as a feat in and of itself – a large convention held during one of the most vulnerable and dangerous periods in history. According to Huzur, the organizers had initially believed that the Jalsa would not be held due to the current Covid-19 conditions.

 

This assumption would continue to spill over to affect the preparations of the Jalsa – leading Huzur to believe that the organizers were not doing it with full conviction. Worrying that the half-hearted conditions of the organizers would affect the volunteers and workers, Huzur had expressed his concern to them – jolting them into a greater sense of urgency despite delays in preparation.

 

Huzur recognizes the workers and volunteers as the true driving force of the Jalsa. He mentioned that while many were disappointed that they were not chosen to serve, those that were chosen had fulfilled their duty to their utmost conviction and would be thoroughly rewarded by Allah. Though faced with weather setbacks such as heavy rain, the volunteers came together to dirty their hands with great spirit in order to help the many struggling cars in the muddied parking lots throughout the tiring weekend – showcasing a great display of their conviction.

 

by meixiu

 

My extended family finally made a WhatsApp group. Although everyone speaks Cantonese, my aunts, uncles and cousins communicate primarily in English via WhatsApp. On some occasions, they use voice notes to record themselves speaking in Cantonese. Other times, they resort to typing in loosely romanized Cantonese. This is how my family navigates not knowing written Cantonese.

My paternal side is Hokkien, eventhough no one knows how to speak it. My maternal side is Hakka, though many eventually learned Cantonese later in their life as Cantonese was the lingua franca of Malaysian Chinese in Kuala Lumpur and Ipoh. This was before vernacular schools drove the shift to Mandarin Chinese.

Barnes’ report in 1951 suggested the government should unify schools with Malay or English as the main language, while Chinese and Tamil would be taught as subjects. This suggestion was eventually incorporated in the Education Ordinance of 1952. The same year, the Fenn-Wu report was submitted. William P. Fenn was the associate executive secretary of the board of trustees for a number of institutions of higher learning in China. He and Wu Teh-yao, then an official at the United Nations, were invited by the federal government to conduct a study of Chinese schools in Malaya. This study became the Fenn-Wu report. [1] It was critical of the Barnes report and advocated for Chinese as a cultural language, promoting trilingualism.

On my maternal side, this shift to Mandarin Chinese was apparent. My mother was the last person educated in English as the medium of instruction before national secondary schools moved to Malay in the 1970s. My grandparents decided to send my younger uncles to Chinese-medium schools. By the 80s, the Selangor Chinese Chamber of Commerce and Industry launched the Speak Mandarin Campaign in Malaysia in 1980 and 1985, following the Singaporean government’s own campaign launched in 1979. This trend carried on to my cousins who went to a vernacular Chinese school at primary level and eventually went to a national secondary school rather than an independent Chinese school, thus becoming trilingual while I remained a banana as my mother is. My paternal side, on the other hand, did not prioritize education as much and hence did not experience this jarring split between “Chinese dialect” and “Mandarin Chinese” within their family like my maternal side did.

There have been concerted efforts to preserve Penang Hokkien due to its connections to the Peranakan community. It has also been recognized as a disappearing language. However, others dialects like Kuala Lumpur Cantonese, Sabahan Hakka, Sarawakian Hokkien and so on are not so lucky. These regional dialects have developed their own unique identity in Malaysia given exposure to other languages. There are endless Malay, Hokkien, Hakka, English and Tamil words in Malaysian Cantonese, such as 蘇嗎 (su1 ma1), from “semua”, while Hong Kong uses 全部 (chyun4 bou6). There is also bak1 sak1 from “pasar” while Hong Kong uses 市塲 (si5 ceong4). In true rojak fashion, you can also sprinkle Cantonese words in between non-Cantanose words. For instance: kacau can become kalan2cau.

With the 2019 Hong Kong protests, there was an eruption of discussion especially among the Malaysian Chinese community. A friend pointed out that many times, support for the Hong Kong protestors came down to whether you knew Cantonese or Mandarin as pro-democracy papers from Hong Kong were typically in Cantonese while pro-China news was evidently in Mandarin. The theory held true for my extended family. This said, there are still some gaps as Hong Kong slogans like 光復香港，時代革命 (gwong1 fuk6 hoeng1 gong2, si4 doi6 gaak3 ming6) made no sense to my parents, especially due to their political context. The protestors themselves have translated the phrase as “Hong Kong Restoration, Age of Revolution” before settling for “Liberate Hong Kong, Revolution of our times”. 革命 (gaak3 ming6) was also a word hardly used within Hong Kong prior to the slogan, but it has since become a main feature of the protests after the 721 Yuen Long attacks and the stand-off at Sheung Wan.

The political uprising in Hong Kong shows how the locals reassessed and played around with their language. On top of that, Cantonese romanization was also increasingly employed to localise their identity and ideas (and reflect the trilingual and biliterate policy Hong Kongers grew up with). Take for example the 2014 Umbrella Revolution where the unofficial Chinglish motto of the movement is “Hong Kong, Add Oil!”. Various news outlets such as localist magazine 100毛 demonstrated the increased use of the wider linguistic phenomenon Chinglish/Kongish […] which uses loose Cantonese romanisation, code-mixing and Hong Kong English to caption and share news updates in line with an understated localist agenda.” [2]

Another aspect of the protests was the consistent affirmation of “Chinese dialects” in Malaysia like Teo Chew, Hokkien, Hakka, Cantonese and Hainanese to be different languages. There was a movement to resist standardization through stressing such localizations and mixing of languages. These dialects are not mutually intelligible to Mandarin. The Speak Hokkien Campaign in Penang asserts this as well, pointing out that the similarity between Mandarin and Hokkien is less than that of English and German.

Hence, there is a need to reframe languages thought of as “dialects” within Malaysia that reflect the many varieties of Malaysian Chinese identities. “Dialects” typically have a reputation as a language that people default to in order to fully express their anger. The mixing of languages in Malaysia is typically celebrated for multiculturalism and achievement of the 1Malaysia agenda but the discourse on individual Malaysian Chinese and Indian identities really only begins and ends with if you are banana or coconut. Rarely do we assess the internal dynamics and identities of being Malaysian Chinese beyond defending its right to exist. It is as Li Zishu 黎紫书 asks: “In our generation, we have no homeland nor cultural origin [in China]. We grow up here [Malaysia]. How  do  we  face  this  place?  How  do  we  learn  about  ourselves?” [3]

There was a saga that happened a while after the 2019 protests surrounding Nigel Ng, a UK-based Malaysian comedian who became viral for his reaction video to BBC Food’s egg fried-rice fiasco. Ng was heavily criticized for apologizing on Weibo after featuring YouTuber Mike Chen, who has been openly critical of the CCP, in one of his videos. This prompted several netizens on Twitter to say it was an open secret that Malaysian Chinese were devoutly dedicated to their homeland, while others have praised Ng as a “vision of a globalised Asian citizen: he’s fluent in English and dresses stylishly.”

Teaching an English-speaking audience “haiya” and “fuiyoh” (Cilisos claims the latter is from Malay and Tamil!) while validating audiences from the east, Ng represents the dream many Malaysian Chinese have for their children, which is for them to eventually become international citizens in the West or East. However, ethnic Chinese continue to face the assumption that they carry “imputed nationalism: the assumption that Chinese outside China continue to focus on their Homeland, whether historically, culturally or even politically” and that they continue to expand the homeland into a global setting. [4] As the Hong Kong protests have opened up space to bring up regional identities and languages, maybe we in Malaysia should start challenging this assumption.

 

References

[1] Selvadurai, Sivapalan, Ong Puay Liu, Marsitah Mohd Radzi, Ong Puay Hoon, Ong Puay Tee, and Badariah Saibeh. “Debating education for nation-building in Malaysia: National school persistence or vernacular school resistance?.” Geografia-Malaysian Journal of Society and Space 11, no. 13 (2017), p. 15.

[2] Leung Rachel Ka Yin, “Word generation,” Mekong Review, September 2019 [https://mekongreview.com/word-generation/]

[3] Tse  Shuen,  “黎紫書的「閱」、「歷」人生,” Ming   Pao,  3 July 2017 [http://mingpaomonthly.com/mpm/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/bookc000180.pdf]

[4] Kuhn, Philip A. The homeland: Thinking about the history of Chinese overseas. Vol. 58. Canberra: Australian National University, 1997.

by Yvonne Tan

 

Before the pandemic, like every other Malaysian, I would frequent the same mamak at all times of the day. Eventually the workers recognized me, and they too also remembered my friends that tagged along. However, after some time the workers themselves started disappearing one by one and never returned. When my friend prompted one of the remaining workers we recognized about where the rest went, there was only a short reply “kena tangkap” before it got awkward and moved on to our order.

There is no need to stress the cultural significance of mamak in Malaysia. Hailed as an everyman restaurant in proximity to just about anyone’s home and workplace, a relaxed atmosphere any time of the day and also an exemplar of Malaysia’s multiculturalism that celebrates the “inadvertent space for cosmopolitan togetherness by facilitating our enactment of a seemingly banal collective national pleasure and pastime: our love of food and eating” [1]. However, just as food plays a social role in bringing communities together, it also divides of which the latter we have yet to reckon with including the high cost to sustaining food identities only for the government-mandated three races. [2]

A UiTM study for a course assignment in January 2021 had conducted a small study of nine mamak stalls in Shah Alam took to social media to share their findings which eventually became viral on Twitter. The study showed that most workers in the mamak worked shifts of up to 12 hours a day with no overtime pay, no annual leave for at least 3 years and that abuse is rarely reported. It was also one of the first few times popular discourses on mamak was not simply about a special roti canai they had or how cheap the food was but rather how exploitative the business model was, and recognized that it was mostly run by exploited foreign workers despite being a hub of national pride.

The infographic also calls to be more understanding towards workers via the question “How to help them? Be kind”. As the initial assignment was to investigate the level of public awareness on the Malaysian Employment Act 1955 which prohibits such practices, the reality of upholding such protections is very different. This is of course not the first feature of mamak stall’s abusive labour practices. BBC’s feature story back in 2011 titled “Malaysian business’ labour dilemma” reported that workers had regular 16-hour shifts and still had to eventually close down most of its locations because of a shortage of foreign workers given the government had rejected their application for more Indian workers in an attempt to reduce the reliance on cheap labour while little is done to protect the rights of migrant workers.

Mamaks that get exported elsewhere consistently faced fines for breaching labour laws such as Mamak Pty Ltd in Sydney was fined twice for underpaying staff and allegedly forging false records to hide underpayments, however, the company was liquidated during the court case with an AUSD 1.3 million tax bill. New Naratif had also reported on the unsustainability of Singapore’s hawker model which has been made a “cultural institution” by the government with UNESCO’s Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity recognition. Without opportunities to truly be equal members of Singaporean society via the hawker profession, with 12 to 14 hour working hours, more often than not 6 days a week, our neighbours also lament their diminishing hawker culture.

Lim in the article critiques the unpremeditated national celebration of systems unfavourable to hawker workers: “Yet we embrace and perpetuate a social and economic system that is essentially spawning more jobs like this [Business Development Managers], and that keeps Singaporean wages competitive partly by keeping the price of hawker food low, with the result that hawkers are driven out of the profession”. Lim’s critique has striking similarities to the food sector in Malaysia which has been supported by corruption and exploitation in our immigration and labour systems, but we too continue to welcome this system to ensure the price of hawker and mamak food remains low.

It is as Muniandy aptly describes “communities and individuals become enrolled as surplus within the capitalist economy – they serve the function of increasing profit margins, thanks to the devaluation of their lives and reduction as human waste, desperate to work at any cost, whose bodies become easily replaceable by the availability of more surplus populations.” [3]. Although the identity of mamak stall has always been rooted in migration, and celebrated as our national identity, it is but in a deeply exploitative setting where migrant workers are praised for doing a job that no Malaysian would do given the harsh working conditions.

And it has only gotten worse with the new wave of raids on migrants following MCO 3.0 where videos of authorities spraying disinfectant spray on them became viral and a now-deleted tweet featuring a poster by the Malaysian Immigration department stated: “Migran Etnik Rohingya Kedatangan Anda Tidak Diundang”. One of the recent images that surfaced during the raid was a man wearing a black “I Love KL” T-Shirt illustrating the poignancy of Malaysia’s intolerance despite being the highest recipient of migrant workers in Southeast Asia.

Hence, let us reassess the identity of the mamak which has become the exemplar of food as both a point of national unity and division. Lauded as democratic and popular spaces for multiculturalism when turning a blind eye to the plight of the migrant workers operating such stalls, the pandemic has amplified this divide. As memes of missing mamak food proliferate while another mass immigration crackdown is carried out, it is a dichotomy that we should reconcile with. Malaysian food continues to be a point of national pride for most of us and as empathy can be a starting point, there is a need to demand for change to the precarious systems that will eventually result in the end of such establishments with efforts by authorities every so often to curb “social ills” such as “concerns that the young spend too much idle time in such places and get involved in unhealthy activities […] besides being favourite haunts for foreign immigrants”.

 

References

[1] Duruz, Jean, and Gaik Cheng Khoo. Eating together: Food, space, and identity in Malaysia and Singapore. Rowman & Littlefield, 2014, p. 68.

[2] Perry, Melissa Shamini. “Feasting on culture and identity: Food functions in a multicultural and transcultural Malaysia.” 3L: Language, Linguistics, Literature® 23, no. 4 (2017): 184-199, p 186.

[3] Muniandy, Parthiban. “From the pasar to the mamak stall: refugees and migrants as surplus ghost labor in Malaysia’s food service industry.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 46, no. 11 (2020): 2293-2308, p. 2305.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

by Yvonne Tan

 

Whoever you thought was an untouchable celebrity, people have now decided they are not.

As the COVID-19 pandemic carries on and livelihoods are on the deep end, more than ever people are enraged at the class divides that determine how unaffected one can be from the pandemic. This phenomenon is of course a global one. Kim Kardashian was told to “read the room” when she posted her surprise birthday trip for the whole family to a private island. Meanwhile half of Hollywood has moved to Australia, earning the nickname “Aussiewood” and enraging the nation for the double standard as many Australians remain stranded overseas since its borders were closed.

Ahmad Fuad Rahmat argued “the class war” outrage against Vivy Yusof and Ashraf Ariff was now populist. The former reacted with a series of defamation lawsuits against netizens who “allegedly slandering her on the issue of the government helping the B40 and M40 groups affected by the Covid-19 outbreak”. She continued to make social media headlines afterwards for plagiarism issues from multiple local designers and threatened legal action against some. Soon after, Vivy Yusof doubles down on COVID-19 donations and Fashion Valet celebrates its 10^th anniversary.

By now, Neelofa’s wedding and Siti Nurhaliza’s son’s tahnik ceremony has been viral for the wrong reasons. Farah Nabilah and Neelofa’s honeymoon was met with intense backlash. Come Raya where many lamented they had already made preparations only to be told MCO 3.0 would be in effect. Outrage against ministers ensued and Neelofa was once again trending on Twitter for her consistent violation of SOP even in court. Norman Hakim, famous for his police role in Gerak Khas, came under fire as well for similar Hari Raya Aidilfitri family photos.

George Packer’s op-ed “Celebrating Inequality” situates modern celebrities through the lens of class. He argues that the modern American celebrity that was once the illusive, illicit “Great Gatsby” of the roaring twenties has been transformed into “self-invented” celebrities that commodify their persona that is associated with the consuming class:

The celebrity monuments of our age have grown so huge that they dwarf the aspirations of ordinary people, who are asked to yield their dreams to the gods: to flash their favourite singer’s corporate logo at concerts, to pour open their lives (and data) on Facebook, to adopt Apple as a lifestyle. We know our stars aren’t inviting us to think we can be just like them. Their success is based on leaving the rest of us behind [1].

Although Packer exclusively looked at America, Neelofa fits the bill. Far from her days on MeleTOP, today she is an Instagram influencer representing modest fashion which led to the creation of Naelofar Hijab and The Noor, marketing exclusively religious products for her ever-growing empire. Her choice to don the niqab and remove previous photos where she did not do so, her marriage to preacher PU Riz makes her the epitome of a celebrity anchored to an essential class identity in the B40 and M40. One could argue that it is the reason for her mass appeal especially when celebrity culture is typically associated with the erosion of traditional values. We are called to adopt a more religious lifestyle together with her products, but leaves us behind as her sponsored posts feature Swarvoski, Gucci and other luxury brands.

Azwan Ali became a fierce critic of Neelofa and other celebrities in this viral video filmed at Bangsar Village. In the interview, he spoke a mishmash of things from asserting his right to speak as “hak rakyat kita sebagai orang Malaysia”, his knowledge of the law and that people should not fear to voice out their opinion. However, he offhandedly mentioned that the government is not to be blamed and that the law should be followed. I am inclined to believe Azwan Ali’s sentiment represents the outrage towards celebrities.

Amid social media calls for brands to boycott Neelofa, like Vivy Yusof before, with many petitions floating around the internet, there is a sense of participation that is central to celebrity culture. People are being sorely reminded that despite the clear double standard on display, class divides remain pervasive but there is still a clear belief that the law should be upheld, and people like Neelofa should be treated the same as everyone, rather than an overhaul of the system.

“Celebrity is a form of improvisatory, excessive public theatre. It is class pantomime” [2] where participation whether in support or in humiliation is central to celebrity culture. Some would argue that people derive entertainment from engaging even virtually via boycott campaigns, petitions, social media hashtagging and so on. Discontent is growing and only time will tell if it expands into a sustained critique of our penal institutions as for now it remains targeted to specific high-profile individuals who were once held in high regard in Malay pop culture.

During the ongoing outrage directed against Neelofa, a small tide turned a little into questioning the police on a separate matter. In stark contrast within the span of almost a month, there have been two deaths in police custody at Gombak district police headquarters (IPD). Security guard Sivabalan Subramaniam died within an hour in police custody while cow milk trader A. Ganapathy succumbed to his injuries caused by police brutality after spending over a month at the Selayang Hospital’s intensive care unit. The Gombak police chief has openly threatened the general public for questioning the events leading up to Ganapathy’s death and made an example by investigating Syed Saddiq’s TikTok video under Section 503 of the Penal Code and Section 233 of the Communications and Multimedia Act.

Some groups have called to bring back the Independent Police Complaints and Misconduct Commission (IPCMC) Bill 2019. As #JusticeForGanapathy and #BrutalityinMalaysia trends alongside #Neelofa in Malaysia, the two ends of the Malaysian social media have yet to be placed side by side as a clear representation of the deep class divides that plague Malaysia. Unlike Neelofa who is caught in a media storm, Ganapathy and Subramaniam were on the receiving end of disciplinary power exercised through its invisibility.

References

[1] Packer, G. 19 May 2013. ‘Celebrating Inequality’ The New York Times [https://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/20/opinion/inequality-and-the-modern-culture-of-celebrity.html]

[2] Tyler, I. and Bennett, B., 2010. ‘Celebrity chav’: Fame, femininity and social class. European journal of cultural studies, 13(3), pp.375-393, p. 380.

 

 

by Yvonne Tan

 

24 April 2021, Fahmi Reza lifted up the three-finger salute after being detained for alleged sedition. Far from Dang Wangi police station, the United Front of Thammasat and Demonstration stood for 112 minutes, symbolic for their rejection of the lèse-majesté law, Section 112 and their friends who have been imprisoned under the criminal code for their role in the Thai democracy demonstrations. The Hunger Games salute was also prominent, which was initially used to signal the three demands of the rallies in its early stage of last year: resignation of Prayut Chan-o-cha and his cabinet, end intimidation of the people and redrafting a new constitution.

On the same day in Indonesia as well, there were protests outside of the ASEAN Secretariat to oppose the ongoing ASEAN leaders’ meeting with Myanmar’s military junta chief, Min Aung Hlaing in attendance. They flash the three-finger salute to show solidarity with the people in Myanmar, who have also adopted the symbol to represent their ongoing Civil Disobedience Movement. These events, as you may know, also fall under the wider solidarity movement encapsulated by the hashtag #MilkTeaAlliance.

Nevertheless, an intriguing part of the hashtag and its offline solidarity mobilization has also fostered dialogue of reevaluating racist propaganda by respective governments. Take for example Thailand and Myanmar. Just as in Malaysia, migrants from Myanmar bore the brunt of the blame during COVID-19 in Thailand.

Besides viewing Myanmar people as indispensable cheap migrant labourers, Thai people have been taught by their national curriculum that Myanmar people were a threat to the Thai nation-state, based on state “interpretation” of the Burmese-Siamese war and the fall of the Kingdom of Ayutthaya attributed to the Burmese in 1767. It goes vice versa as well, as Myanmar people recognized they also had a similar education system where they were taught to view Thailand as the adversary in their history textbooks.

However, becoming disillusioned with their own authoritarian governments and subsequently reevaluating the narratives they propagated, Tanyalak Thongyojaroen explicates this phenomenon:

Thais have learned about Myanmar people in their everyday lives rather than solely from state-developed propaganda textbooks in social-studies classes. “Actually, Myanmar people are good,” a Thai protester told me last week. “I have to be here to support them because we want genuine democracy.”

Bridging mutual understanding of the sociopolitical situation in Myanmar and the immense sacrifice its people are making every day for a chance of having a civilian government with Thai students who have risked their future at an opportunity of a more democratic Thailand has led them to protest numerous times together on Thai soil. This led to both protestors adopting similar slogans such as “Let it end with our generation”, “You messed with the wrong generation”, “We reject military coup of all kinds” and adopting similar resistance symbols.

This brings us to Malaysia. Myanmar people continues to be viewed through the lens of not only as “migrant workers” but Pendatang Asing Tanpa Izin. The rhetoric of PATI spread like wildfire during COVID-19, implying there was immense trust in our systems to ensure no one was wrongly charged and belief that they were spreading the government’s resources thin. This is despite having little to no transparency and the immigration department’s long history of corruption and abuses, on top of its links to human trafficking. When the deportation of the 1,086 Myanmar nationals went through despite the Kuala Lumpur High Court order, while there were revived #MigranJugaManusia online protests, there was also a strong sentiment that they should simply be “sent back to where they came from”.

This sort of sentiment is not new of course. It has also been a year since Zafar Ahmad Abdul Ghani, a Rohingya refugee who fled persecution, continues to be the victim of online attacks when false demands for a Malaysian citizenship were attributed to him. Until today he receives death threats and has been diagnosed with depression. The anti-migrant rhetoric has become so prominent that during the ASEAN summit on the same 24 April, Muhyiddin Yassin mentioned that he would like Myanmar asylum seekers, including Rohingya refugees, to be granted “safe return” due to Malaysia’s “anti-refugee sentiments”. This is despite the fact that terrible crimes against humanity are currently being carried out by the military junta throughout Myanmar. He stated “our resources and capacity are stretched in the management of refugees and asylum seekers, further compounded by the COVID-19 pandemic. Our detention centres are now already overcrowded […] they were once accorded sympathy, but the mood on the ground has turned from affinity to anger, with anti-refugee sentiment rapidly building up”.

It was once impossible for Thai and Myanmar people to stand in solidarity against their respective military coups, but they have shown us it is possible. With renewed camaraderie, the Thai pro-democracy protestors have been highly critical of Prayut’s support for the Tatmadaw and blocking fleeing refugees from Myanmar. Although the problem is far from solved, as some circles have seen the refugee crisis as a point of praise for Prayut’s military coup unlike Myanmar’s, there are still strong voices holding the government accountable to do right by their neighbours.

2018 was supposed to be a watershed moment for Malaysia with many articles citing what had happened as an opportunity for the region. Failure to view our struggles as interconnected against our increasingly authoritarian governments is a failure to understand why people from Myanmar have to flee in the first place. It is but easy to fall back on the economic prosperity of one’s country as a reason to morally judge and treat those from countries that are not so lucky.

And it is but worse to believe one’s country would be threatened by the influx of those fleeing persecution who value peace, is but a highly powerful rhetoric that has gripped us for far too long. The coronavirus pandemic has provided an opportunity for the strongmen of the Southeast Asian region to consolidate more power and in the process “over-emphasize our personal responsibility for the [coronavirus] problem, demanding that we pay more attention to […] behavioral issues. Such a focus on individual responsibility, necessary as it is to some degree, functions as ideology the moment it serves to obfuscate the bigger questions of how to change our entire economic and social system” [1]. With this overemphasis on individual responsibility, it is but tragic to use the responsibility as a means to embolden ourselves towards supporting the removal of the people of Myanmar in Malaysia. Our neighbours have seen through this, and have stood together in rejection of despotic regimes.

Out of fear, Myanmar people have not publicly protested en masse in Malaysia unlike its diaspora in Thailand, Australia, Taiwan, Japan and so on. However, one high profile act of resistance was by Hein Htet Aung, from Selangor FC II. He celebrated his goal win with the three-finger salute. He was then suspended for a game, with netizens supporting the idea of “not bringing over one’s politics to another’s soil”. Echoing the same fear of importing instability, it is only fitting to say, “it must be a fragile system if it can be brought down by a few berries”.

References

[1] Žižek, Slavoj. Pandemic!: COVID-19 shakes the world. OR Books 2020, p. 88.

 

by Yvonne Tan

 

The “Bangsar brawl” which happened around 1 am on 13^th March 2021 opened up a can of worms. The graphic videos of the assault went viral all over social media which prompted many to reinforce stereotypes of drunk, fighting Indians. In true dystopian fashion, there were many filming the incident but did not help. Most importantly, an off-duty cop not only did not call for help but was also caught on video grinning.

The victim was walking to his car when a group of men attacked both him and his friend. However, the case is once again overshadowed by the fact the victim was in Bangsar was having some drinks and that besides being stabbed with a knife, was also stabbed with a beer bottle. A viral post by @theloudasians highlighted that the stereotype of “India Pemabuk”—just like “Melayu Malas”— has its roots in our colonial past.

Back in January, Sugu pleaded guilty to a charge of possessing a sickle at Hospital Raja Permaisuri Bainun in July 2020 before making a comeback on his YouTube cooking show with his wife “Sugu Pavithra” this month. Back then, the similar reductive stereotype of “India Mabuk” was also quick to be used as well, highlighting his former job as an estate worker. What once was seen as rags to riches story of a worker who was let off during the pandemic, with him and his wife’s creativity managed to create one of the most-watched cooking shows on Malaysian YouTube.

But the fact that he is “unable” to escape the stereotypes of problems that are often associated with estate workers was regularly highlighted. Many were also upset at Pavithra’s decision to take him back despite the physical abuse she had received from him. It is yet again another aspect of the story people were quick to point to the stereotype of beating their wife and kids—if not getting into a fight like in the case of Bangsar brawl—as a result of drinking.

Source: Pamphlets on Toddy Drinking by Indian Labourers, in Kedah Secretariat File, S.C. 23-1350 [1]

How do we put an end to this harmful discourse of “Melayu Malas”, “Cina tamak/tipu” and “India mabuk minum todi”? One way is to point to today’s system that has continued to uphold these problems today. Defaulting these stereotypes of character lays the fault in the victims, not the systemic problems at hand. Jagat (2015) is a film that captures these problems extraordinarily well behind the stereotypes associated with the Indian community. Bala is a relapsed drug addict, Dorai/Mexico is the reluctant gang member and Maniam a former estate worker that are father figures in Appoy’s life. With not much hope from the education system nor his family unit, he finds refuge in a gang and a life of crime.

Toddy drinking was encouraged by British estate owners as a way to “pacify” their workers which were deliberately chosen as only Indian labourers through the kangani system. The proliferation of toddy shops and open consumption was allowed. It occupied the little free time the labourers had when most recreational activities were restricted, utilizing toddy drinking as a form of social control on top of added profitable source of revenue. For the Chinese, samsu was also wildly available in stores near residences besides openly accepted opium dens served the same purpose as well.

In Malaya, three types of licensed toddy shops existed – government shops, public shops and estate shops. The latter was usually managed by the estate owners or employers. Life under Japanese control was not much better as the Malayan Indian community were sent to work on the Thai “Death Railway” project. With no control over brewing liquor coupled with hunger and malnutrition, the problem ensued.

Thondar Padai was founded in Kedah and one of the most significant anti-toddy movements after WW2 founded by A.M. Samy, an estate vehicle driver. He inspired the establishment of their own Thondar Padai organisations in other plantations. They called for the abolishment of all estate toddy shops and also in the long-run, a better socioeconomic position for estate labourers [2]. It led to the first mass movement organized by estate labourers. However, as the British were favoured the role toddy drinking played, cracked down on Thondar Padai and discouraged further anti-toddy campaigns. A.M. Samy was in 1947 and was exiled to India soon after.

Large-scale displacement of Tamil estate workers in the 1980s was another devastating effect on the community with many displaced from the estates were now forced to work in low-paid, unskilled work. The British-owned plantations were converted into housing developments where former workers can no longer afford to live. There was resistance against the evictions, however, Malaysian was in favour of developers. Rural to urban migration led to the formation of working-class gangs among unemployed youth from all communities.

During Deepavali of 2020, videos of police brutality went viral although the original poster stated “this is not supposed to be seen a racism, let’s be equal and see this as a police brutality” although all suspects arrested were Indian. This time, there was some recognition from netizens that there was obvious racial profiling by the police force. Many asked why the family members of the men were not informed of their arrest, opening up the conversation on the practice of chain remand. It meant a person could be rearrested to overcome the limitations of the Criminal Procedure Code. Despite court orders for them to be released with the chain remand, PDRM still refused to release the suspects [3].

Swimming against the currents of racial profiling, police brutality, failing education systems and colonialism, the last thing the Malaysian Indian community needs are stereotypes. Stereotypes are but easy but misinformed rationalizations. There is always a deeper underlying problem at hand, and if we never begin to change the conditions, they will continue to happen as “ethnic categories…have been and continue to be manipulated by colonial and postcolonial elites in order to further their economic interests at the expense of the working class of all ethnic groups.” [4].

 

References

[1] Krishnan, Parameswari, Azharudin Mohd Dali, Abdullah Zakaria Ghazali, and Shritharan Subramanian. “The history of toddy drinking and its effects on Indian labourers in colonial Malaya, 1900–1957.” Asian Journal of Social Science 42, no. 3-4 (2014): 321-382, p. 349.

[2] Ibid., p. 371.

[3] https://sea.mashable.com/social-good/11409/malaysian-indians-are-dying-at-a-higher-rate-in-prisons-we-need-to-talk-about-it

[4] Andrew Willford, Cage of freedom: Tamil identity and the ethnic fetish in Malaysia. University of Michigan Press, 2006, p. 293.

[5] Featured Image: The Guardian and WORLD OF BUZZ, Saying “India Mabuk” Doesn’t Help Anyone, It Probably Just Makes You A Racist, https://worldofbuzz.com/saying-india-mabuk-doesnt-help-anyone-it-probably-just-makes-you-a-racist/

by Faisal Tehrani (Translated from “Bolehkah Menyebarkan Kebencian Menerusi Sastera?”)

 

I recently read ‘Hate Speech: An Infographic’ on Projek Dialog’s website. It’s interesting because that same week, my fellow writers and I celebrated the arrival of PEN Malaysia. We’ve organised a 3-series online literary fest called ‘Sembang Baru’.

After the event, it was asked that, if PEN celebrates the freedom of expression, would the same apply to literature that promotes hate speech? What are its limits?

The question above is quite unusual and shouldn’t be taken lightly, not to mention trivial too. Since PEN International’s establishment in 1921, this organisation has faced problems when it comes to freedom of expression involving hate speech.

For your information, PEN is a universal club that brings together London-based authors, editors, bookstore owners, translators and theatre-film practitioners (specifically dramaturgists). Since its inception, PEN has focused on the work of defending and protecting authors from the pressure and tyranny of the authorities. PEN also celebrates whatever language the author chooses in his work – without prejudice – as long as the work is intended for the sake of humanity.

Faced with the question of whether PEN has ever addressed the issue of hatred through literary works, the answer is; it actually has. There was a time when PEN faced a threat by the rise of Nazism in Germany. It became clearer and more distinct at the PEN Conference in Dubrovnik in 1933. Long before that, the Nazi Party had burned thousands of copies of books deemed ‘indecent’-and in this case it was indecent or tainted because these works did not support or oppose their sort of ideas.

Consequently, during the Conference in Dubrovnik, then President of PEN, H. G. Wells reaffirmed a resolution brought by John Galsworthy as the founder and first President of PEN in which freedom of their work condemns what threatened humanity, in this case, the Nazis behaviour.

A Nazi, who attended in a delegation from Germany had obstructed Ernst Toller, a Jewish-German theatre writer living in exile from speaking out condemning Nazism (and the act of burning books). A solid, strong and formidable voice has emerged from the conference. The authors agreed to reject the German proposal to support full freedom of speech (thus accepting Nazism) and instead, return in favour of the principles they had mandated. The German troops were furious and protested, and immediately left the Conference. They even chose to leave PEN, until after the Second World War.

This incident set as a reminder for all authors where for the first conference post-war, PEN gathered again in Stockholm in 1946. The American and British PEN cooperated to form a consensus to propose two important resolutions.

First, PEN urges PEN members to continue to support the idea of ​​a peaceful and prosperous humanity that is universal’; and second, to focus on filtering (censorship).

This resolution of course wasn’t easily accepted, in fact, the debate in Stockholm continued until the next PEN Conference in Zurich in 1947. Only by then did they agree to cooperate. This resolution forms the basis of the fourth procedure in the PEN Charter.

In 2017, at the 83rd Conference in Ukraine, Article 3 of the PEN Charter was amended. PEN representatives at the time agreed that ‘hatred’ against certain races, classes and all identities should be changed to ‘all forms of hatred’, and the word ‘equality’ was brought in to strengthen the PEN Charter. It is these principles of the Charter that unite all PEN centres around the world (located in more than 100 countries).

Which forms of hate speech are rejected in literature?

This is because literary works should be given freedom in their scope to express honest criticism of any element of human culture including religion, politics and history. An author, for example, must be free to question religious practices that may be unfair to its adherents. An author must also be allowed to fully provoke criticism and question harmful political actions. For example, the discrimination policy driven by the Nazi Party led to the deaths of many innocent people as a result of the war. Authors are also allowed to freely rediscover history in their literary works.

Hate speech that is of course unacceptable is the type that leads to violence such as inciting people to punish minority groups (such as LGBT), or provokes so that minorities are denied their rights as human beings (say religious marginalised groups).

Such literary works are of course dangerous because they influence society to do something that’s contrary to the pure intention of literature itself which is to uplift humanity.

If an author or a group of writers publishes a book with the intention of upholding the supremacy of a particular race and denying the rights of other races, then that is extreme hatred. However, if this collection of authors, for example, introduces terrorist propaganda in the name of patriotism, then this is an unacceptable situation and PEN will stand side by side to fight against this ‘freedom in the name of hate speech’.

Literary works should play a role in uplifting the goodness and virtue of fellow human beings, not taking them down the road of violence and destructive war.

The experience of World War II is too bitter to repeat.

Write for humanity, not hatred.

 

References:

Projek Dialog. 2020. Hate Speech: An Infographic. Projek Dialog.com. 30 October. https://projekdialog.com/blog/hate-speech-an-infographic/