Don’t turn neighbourhood disputes into racial issues, says lawyer

 Videos on social media often show only fragments of disputes, allowing ordinary disagreements to be blown out of proportion, a forum is told.

Sahain Nada Puthucheary, speaking at a forum in Kuala Lumpur, said Malaysians were too quick to make things into racial issues based on videos posted on social media.

KUALA LUMPUR:

Malaysians should be cautious about turning neighbourhood disputes into racial or religious controversies based on videos circulated on social media, says a lawyer.

Sahain Nada Puthucheary said videos posted online often showed only fragments of an incident, leaving viewers without the full context of what had happened.

“When things get posted online, a lot of context disappears and it becomes a two-dimensional video image that is on somebody’s phone and they’re only seeing bits and pieces of that problem,” he said at the New Muslim Community conference here.

“If somebody records two people fighting, whatever you record and post, there’s no way that it can possibly convey everything that these people were arguing about,” he said.

People should first consider whether an incident was genuinely racial in nature or simply a disagreement between individuals. Ordinary disputes between neighbours should not automatically be turned into racial or religious issues simply because those involved were from different backgrounds, he said.

“Just because I’m fighting somebody who owns a dog and that person is Chinese, I’m not fighting the Chinese community. We jump too quickly, I believe, into making things become racial issues,” Sahain said.

He said neighbourhood disputes should instead be dealt with properly before they escalate. “Many issues in Malaysia get blown completely out of proportion because somehow we think that we can rally more strength by making them religious issues or racial issues,” he said.

“Make an active effort against that – and if it’s a neighbourly issue, let the neighbours work it out,” said Sahain. - FMT