'ONLY NON-MUSLIMS TELL LIES': Teachers killing national unity with impunity

No words can console the grief of the parents of the orang asli children who went missing from the hostel of SK Tohoi in Kelantan 47 days ago, two of whom were found alive in a state of starvation, the remains of two discovered and the fate of three others still unknown.

What strikes the conscience are the words of Midah, mother of one of the children who said “INI SEMUA SALAH CIKGU SEKOLAH MARAH ANAK SAYA ....   KALAU TAK MARAH TAKA KAN JADI BEGINI” (as reported in the Star, 10-10-2015).

These words hit the nail on the head. What is happening in not only the remote orang asli schools run by non-orang asli teachers, but also in other sekolah kebangsaan throughout the country?

At the one day seminar on Nation Building, Unity and the Malaysian Dream: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow on 16th Sept 2015 at the Institut Integriti Malaysia at Bukit Tunku, Kuala Lumpur, a young orang asli gentleman activist told the participants how teachers in orang asli schools compel children, most of whom are non-Muslim, to read Arabic and if they cannot, they are slapped.

The parents, he said, are very angry about this. Why do they compel non-Muslim children to read Arabic?

What are the teachers up to? Are they sent to these schools to make children literate, or to convert them to Islam?

Are the teachers trying to secure a place in heaven (that is what I have heard said – that if a Muslim converts a non-Muslim, dead or alive, the converter is guaranteed a place in heaven)? Could any mufti throw some light on this, please?

In the SK Tohoi case, the story being told is that the children might have run away for fear of being punished as they had gone for a swim in a nearby river without permission.

How far is this true? An independent party should investigate, not the school or education ministry as they have a vested interest to protect the “good name” of the teachers, the school and the ministry.

Dato’ Sri Idris Jala, CEO of PEMANDU, who was on the last panel discussion at the seminar, was asked by a participant why the government does not sack the racist teachers in the schools who tell innocent children to balik Cina, balik India, hide in toilets to have food or even drink their urine. He gave a nonchalant answer: “the government does not sack its employees”.

Due to constraint of time, follow-up questions could not be put to him, e.g. how to build national unity if racism is not stopped at the roots with a very firm hand, even it means sacking those of one’s own kind who are poisoning the roots of nation building through their racist acts against children?

All the well meaning people should not merely talk about and idealise nation building and national unity but get the authorities to act, to act firmly and to act without wasting time.

The future of the nation is in the hands of the children of today. Yet the children are being left to the whims and fancies of racist teachers who are more interested in imposing their racist ideology on innocent children. We talk of children’s rights.

Have children no right to be protected from being indoctrinated by racists and bigots, to be pressured by racist teachers to do or not to do certain things pertaining to race and religion?

Whenever there is a racist incident in schools, the education ministry announces an “investigation”. These in-house investigations are carried out by the school concerned which is asked to give a report of the incident. The report goes to the district education office, then to the state education office which sends it up to the ministry.

Which of them will point a finger at themselves? Will the school guru besar (head) say that his act of asking children to eat in the toilets was wrong? No, he said the canteen was under renovation and the best place he could provide was the toilet. What happens?  He gets a RM10,000-00 grant to ‘renovate’ the canteen, not a walking certificate although he has driven a huge wedge in national unity and nation building.

Any investigations into a complaint should never be held by the party complained against. This smacks of a cover-up right from the beginning. A system that does this does not respect the rules of natural justice which require that investigations of any improprieties should be by neutral, independent parties.

Well, we might have some minister, even the PM perhaps, telling us that this is a western idea and not suitable for Malaysia. In Malaysia, if the party complained against says he has not done wrong, that is the truth of the matter.

Lying to cover-up wrongs is right if the skins of certain people need to be protected. Like the judge who had the cheeks to say that a Muslim would not tell lies, but at the same time not accepting a similar lie from a non-Muslim.

In the SK Tohoi case, an independent party should investigate the parents’ complaint of teachers who “marah” the children. What are the teachers actually doing? What kind of pressure are they subjecting the children to? What were the children afraid of?

Idris Jala as CEO of PEMANDU, an agency “mandated to catalyse bold changes in public and private sector delivery, support the ministries in the delivery planning process and provide an independent view of performance and progress to the PM and ministers” should take the bold step of appointing an independent panel to investigate the happenings in the Sekolah Kebangsaans as regards racism and start being kind to the nation by removing all racist teachers in schools.

Why not let the human rights body SUHAKAM do the investigation?  At the said forum, he was told that the nation’s financial wealth will be useless if there is no peace and unity of the people. So don’t talk about economy and money alone.

He must reconcile himself with the fact that sometimes it is necessary to be ‘cruel’ to be kind. If the worry is the rice-bowl of the racist teachers, that is for them to take care of by not being racists and not for the government to take care of at the expense of destroying the nation, for teachers are the ones who can make or break a nation.

Doesn’t NUTP, the largest teachers’ union, see the damage that racist teachers are doing to the nation? What is its stand? Does it stand behind the teachers even if they are racist? Why does it not demand their removal from the noble profession of teaching but allow them to make it ignoble?

All the words and show of sympathy by the leaders mean nothing if no corrective action is firmly taken to address the sowing of racism in schools by teachers more interested in securing a place in heaven (whether or not it is the correct teaching of religion) than creating a Nation of Unity and the Malaysian Dream”. Let’s have positive action, and stop high-sounding but empty talk. - MAILBAG