CHINESE SELF-APARTHEID IN MALAYSIA. – PART I

…AND THE KINDNESS OF THE MELAYU AND THE MUSLIM CHARITY THEIR ANCESTORS HAD SHOWN TO THE IMMIGRANTS NOT APPRECIATED BY THEIR DESCENDANTS.

By Mansor Puteh

                                  

                                                  

Apartheid is by and large a system whereby a certain race is barred from assimilating with the majority race in any country. It had happened in South Africa, when the White Apartheid government barred the Black Africans from doing that.

It is abhorrent to any civilization and humankind.

It also happened in America where Africans were also barred from even taking the same bus or using public toilets with the Whites there.

In Malaysia there is a type of apartheid is certainly strange as it is weird in the civilized world.

It is therefore strange how a particular minority race would want to create their own apartheid – the ‘self-apartheid’.

The community and political leaders of this particular community insist on living on their own, and they did not want their young to fully assimilate with the majority and dominant race in the country.

Yet, there are no international laws or those in the respective countries that forbid this from happening simply because the minority race or races insist on having this sort of apartheid.

It is self-apartheid, whereby a certain immigrant race chooses to live by themselves and establishing their own schools, etc.

The Melayu are to be blamed for this, for allowing it to happen in the first place.

It was probably helped when the first prime minister of Malaysia, Tunku Abdul Rahman appointed a Chinese, Tan Siew Sin as the finance minister.

But the truth is that the Chinese and also Indians have a way of slowly seizing opportunities which were given to them which they insisted on having on the pretext that they did not want to bother with the government so they wanted to establish their own schools. They said they did not want land or financial assistance.

But over the years, they started to do that and are now demanding these from the government so much so that their vernacular schools are more entrenched now than they did before.

The issue concerning vernacular education amongst the Chinese and Tamils in Malaysia has become political issues which they have used in election campaigns to demand assistance from the government who have to bend to accommodate these outrageous demands.

And they will not stop until they are squeezed out of the system when their population sizes are further reduced and when these communities are broken up by the incursions of Melayu from all over the country who have started to march to the cities, towns and other urban centers, so much so that there is no Chinese and Indian majority area that can form the areas of dissent amongst the Chinese and Indians.

The few Indian majority areas have all been taken up, leaving with some Chinese majority areas for the Melayu to focus on.

What is needed is for the government to establish an institute of higher learning or factory and also a small township and bring in the Melayu so the Chinese in those areas are displaced by the presence of the Melayu.

A setup like this can never happen again, ever, after what had happened in the early years of the country since it gained independence, which saw how the economy of the Chinese rise and rise at the expense of the economy of the Melayu itself. .

The Chinese and the other descendants of immigrants today are still not eager to acknowledge it what their ancestors had got from the Melayu then without which they could not prosper today.

The Chinese in Malaysia have over the years created their own Chinese Apartheid, by choosing to go away from the national education system and pretending that they had established a New Chinese Colony in the country, and they do not want to show any indication that they wish to assimilate with the majority Melayu.

In other countries in Southeast Asia, where their numbers are small, they had no choice but to comply with local demands and expectations where they do not have Chinese schools or use Chinese names and they only speak in the national language of the respective countries, or else they would be left out.

The Melayu in Malaysia were kind enough to allow the Chinese to have their way. But after more than half a century, surely, this setup cannot be maintained any longer.

But this has to wait until the time when the Melayu realize their folly and when they have managed to wrest control of the economy and especially when their population size grows to eighty percent from sixty-five now.

There is no song, short story or even a novel written by the Chinese and Indian author or artiste in Malaysia which say how grateful they are for the Melayu having supported and made them prosper today.

The Melayu kindness and Muslim charity that the early Melayu had shown to the immigrants from China and India then have all been taken for granted.

If the Melayu were not kind or charitable, chances are the Chinese and Indian immigrants then could not make it with many of them suffering so badly living in Tanah Melayu or the Land of the Melayu, that they would want to return to their own homelands or jump into the sea or river.

In fact, there were quite a few of them who had done that, simply because they could not stand living in Tanah Melayu.

Many Chinese then, who became wealthy, took the next junk to return to South China where they had come from leaving those who could not still make it stay back so they could still try their luck.

Many of them got it and they became wealthy in due course.

But it was not because of blood, sweat and tears, but because some of them indulged in illegal trading and other activities.

The many others, however, became wealthy simply because of the kindness of the Melayu and their Muslim charity.

For without which, the Chinese especially would not have made it, and the population of the Chinese in Malaysia today would be a fraction of what it is.