Karpal: Enact Race Relations Act
By Athi Shankar
GEORGE TOWN: The DAP has demanded the federal government to take immediate steps to legislate the long pending Race Relations Act to curb growing racism in the country. Citing the recent racial slurs uttered by high-ranking public officers as syndromes of disharmony, DAP national chairman Karpal Singh warned that the situation could become chaotic and lead to violence if the government does not initiate steps to curb it.
He recalled that Rural and Regional Development Minister Shafie Apdal, when in charge of Unity, Culture, Arts and Heritage portfolio, had announced a few years ago that the government would legislate the Race Relations Act.
He chided the government for failing to pursue the matter further.
The veteran politician now wants the government to issue directives to the Attorney-General Chambers to immediately draft the bill pertaining to the Act.
He said the bill should be tabled at Parliament, preferably in the next session, to enable the government to obtain public feedback, including the opinions of both Barisan Nasional and Pakatan Rakyat MPs, to refine and strengthen the proposed Act.
He added that the proposed Act should be a comprehensive, punitive and deterrent legal mechanism against all types of offences related to racism and utterance of racist remarks, which, sadly, have become the order of the day.
“When government officers utter racial slurs on a routine basis, it is a serious matter. The need for a Race Relations Act has become urgent,” the two-term Bukit Gelugor MP told reporters in his office today.
He was commenting on recent racial slurs uttered by two headmistresses in Kulai, Johor, and Bukit Selambau, Kedah, respectively against non-Malay pupils.
Pre-planned plot
Press reports today exposed another incident in Kuala Lumpur where an ethnic Malay police inspector told off a local elderly ethnic Chinese snatch theft victim to “go back to China” because she could not speak in Bahasa Malaysia.
Given the similarities in the racial remarks, Karpal hoped that it was not a pre-planned plot by the National Civic Bureau (Biro Tata Negara).
Calling on the A-G's Chambers to prosecute “racist” officers, he expressed reservation that mere suspension and transfer would not be effective to deter future racist statements.
Karpal said Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak should put into practice his “zero tolerance to racism” agenda by legislating the proposed Act soon.
He said Najib should also be partly blamed for the growing trend of racial slurs by government officers because “he let his former aide Nasir Safar go scott-free after making racist attacks on ethnic Malaysian Indians and Chinese early this year”.
Nasir had allegedly said that ethnic Indians were beggars while ethnic Chinese were whores.
Karpal said the proposed Race Relations Act should never protect anyone from prosecution, “no matter how high the person's position is”.
On controversial rapper Wee Meng Chee, or popularly known as Namewee, Karpal said the rapper should be spared prosecution under the Sedition Act 1948 or any other draconian law.
Namewee is under investigation for producing an allegedly seditious video recently.
The rapper first ran into trouble with the authorities with his controversial “Negaraku” video clip in 2007.
“Namewee was only reacting to current trend of racial slurs being uttered by government officers.
"If Namewee were to be charged under the Sedition Act, the government officers too should be charged under the same Act,” Karpal said.
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