Time to look at racism and racial profiling in Malaysia

MP SPEAKS | Last year we joined the world in praising New Zealand Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, for how she handled the Christchurch shooting by a self-proclaimed White supremacist.

More importantly, Malaysians were praising her for covering funeral expenses and delivering aid to the victim’s families irrespective of their immigration status.

And now, we have joined the global condemnation heaped against US President Donald Trump for the way he is responding to the protests triggered by the murder of African American George Floyd by the police.

Don’t get me wrong, for this rebuke is legitimate given America’s history of slavery and oppression against the blacks.

And also trigger-happy by white police officers.

But in doing so, have we stopped to think of racism in our country? And the fact that such racism may have caused a loss of life as well.

In his Facebook post, columnist Hafidz Baharom pointed out that Malaysian Indians are more likely to end up dead in police custody compared to Malays or Chinese.

Malaysiakini’s news report says Indians comprise just under seven percent of Malaysia’s population but comprise almost a quarter (23.4 percent) of official death in police custody. And that this figure is likely to be under-reported too.

Hafidz goes on to write that we may hear more about a carful of Indians being shot by police.

He also claims a Nepali or African’s custodial death is most likely to be classified as “sudden death” even before the autopsy is out.

Just last week a Nepalese citizen was reported dead in police custody, and a non-governmental organisation has raised concerns that the death wasn’t reported following protocol.

Suhakam’s report said that more than 100 foreigners died in custody between 2015 to 2017.

Local singer-songwriter Brendan de Cruz has publicly shared his experience of being stopped by the police who then asked him to show his passport or pull him over at a roadblock just because he is dark-skinned.

This clearly caricatures racial profiling by the Malaysian police towards those who are dark-skinned.

But leaving authorities aside, how do we ordinary Malaysians fare?

Well, we use words such as "keling" despite knowing it’s insulting to the Indians.

It’s a usual thing to hear conversations between Indians to be peppered with words such as "nattukkaran" to refer to the Malays or "sadayan" to denote the Chinese.

If we are disgusted by Trump’s bullying and threats against protestors, then we should also look at the racism that exists amongst all races in Malaysia.

We should be ashamed of our rape and murder threats against activists who call for an end to racism and xenophobia.

We should also be repulsed with ourselves for cheering at migrants and refugees who were hunted down in raids, chained like criminals and detained.

In short, we should really look at ourselves and this society we live in that has progressively become racist and xenophobic.

The good thing is that the protests in the US and the murder of Floyd have empowered some of us to speak up.

It has forced open conversations that were deemed just too sensitive to be debated publicly.

Well, guess what? These conversations are imminent and crucial.

We need to checkmate ourselves, and we need to question the government for its race-based policies.

Or we will remain a bunch of hypocrites.

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CHARLES SANTIAGO is the member of Parliament for Klang. - Mkini