HARSH legal punishment is not the solution

Malaysia has always claimed itself a model for other developing countries in maintaining racial harmony. Just like managing a marriage relationship, efforts are required to consolidate racial relations and there is nothing called free lunch here.

Just like your saving accounts, you need to keep putting money in to pile up your savings. If you keep withdrawing without putting in money, it will be emptied someday.

Have the authorities done enough? Did politicians, non-government organisations, religious groups, officials, scholars and members of the public contribute their efforts?

The efforts to maintain social harmony and national unity are not limited to political slogans, political shows or superficial work, they instead involve various levels. For instance, government policies must be fair to eliminate inter-racial mistrust; communication among different races must be promoted to nurture the spirit of understanding; family education must be strengthened to teach children how to respect other races and religions and promote integration; religious empathy and tolerance, as well as the spirit of understanding and adhering to the Constitution must also be enhanced to allow the possibility of solving religious conversion issue and other disputes.

The government's priority is to restart the Special Committee to Promote Inter-religious Understanding and Harmony to restore communication and dialogue among different races and sooth the strained relations.

However, from remarks recently made by political leaders, we could sense that the authorities have relied too much on laws to maintain social harmony. For example, they have greatly stressed on the functions of the National Harmony Act being drawn up to replace the Sedition Act 1948 while neglecting the importance of humanistic education.

Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak said the government will ensure that the provisions in the National Harmony Act will maintain the three major principles to tackle activities that would lead to the feeling of hatred and insult to the institutions and existing provisions in the Constitution.

Meanwhile, Home Minister Datuk Seri Zahid Hamidi said the Home Ministry will ensure that the four major sensitive issues, namely the status of Islam as the state's official religion, Malay privileges, the status of Malay rulers and the use of Bahasa Malaysia as the official language, will not be provoked again after the Sedition Act is replaced by the National Harmony Act.

However, racial issues have frequently taken place even before the Sedition Act is repealed. Therefore, harsh legal punishment is not the solution to the problem. If law is omnipotent, the Dangerous Drugs Act 1952 imposing death penalty on drug traffickers would have long time solved the problem.

The era of Internet is also a challenge for racial and religious relations management as the Internet hits the awareness of young people. Even highly educated netizens are no longer aware enough, such as sex blogger couple Alvin Tan and Vivian Lee has exposed their religious ignorance.

Regent of Perak Raja Dr Nazrin Shah recently said that the issue of Melissa Gooi has convinced him that most people are not racists. Instead, they have healthy and reasonable thinking. The state Regent questioned whether arresting, detention, charging and sentencing would be able to solve the lack of national education knowledge among members of the public that we are facing today?

National education has indeed become a thorny problem in the era of Internet as netizens are exposed to various plausible values and thus, think that there is nothing they cannot do. Also, not many actually learn from their mistakes.

However, no matter how thorny it is to manage racial relations, the government must allocate more resources and put in more efforts to get the desired results.

- TMI