Today is the 111th birth anniversary of Bapa Malaysia, Tunku Abdul Rahman.
Sadly, there is nothing much to celebrate to mark the greater realization of Tunku’s Malaysia Dream – to make Malaysia a haven of peace, harmony and happiness – as 44 years after Tunku stepped down as the founding Prime Minister of Malaysia, the country has never been more polarized racially and religiously as today.
Nobody can now claim that Malaysia is a haven of peace, harmony and happiness?
In fact, Malaysia suffered the ignominy ten days ago when a Pakistani website gloated go that “Malaysia no longer land of peace and tolerance” after the latest outrages against racial and religious harmony in Malaysia – the Molotov cocktail attack on a church in Penang a day after the provocative banner, “Allah is Great. Jesus is the son of Allah” was hung outside five churches in Penang without the knowledge of church authorities and the vandalism of eight gravestones in a Christian cemetery in Kuantan.
Two days ago, some 30 members of six NGOs styling themselves the Council of Islamic NGOs staged a protest in Kuala Lumpur and conducted a pagan ritual where they slaughtered chicken and smeared their blood on a banner featuring Pakatan Rakyat leaders and offered RM1,200 to anyone who would slap DAP woman MP for Seputeh Teresa Kok and provide photographic evidence of their action.
Their actions were not only anti-women but anti-Islam as it is totally against Islam as the religion of peace and compassion.
Tunku would have been horrified that there are people who could not only instigate violence against women but incite racial and religious hatred, conflict and tension to threaten another May 13 riots in the name of Islam.
However, he would be even more horrified by two other events, viz:
• Two days passed without the Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak or any top government Minister publicly condemning the criminal activities of the self-styled Council of Islamic NGOs on Thursday; and
• the lackadaisical and insouciant attitude by the police completely unconcerned about the criminal intimidation, sedition and incitement of racial chaos and religious conflagration, including another May 13 riots, as if the police had received a directive from above to close its eyes and adopt a hands-off attitude and to treat the self-styled Council of Islamic NGOs with “kid gloves”.
More than 15 police reports have been lodged yesterday country-wide against the criminal intimidation, sedition, incitement of violence against Teresa Kok and another May 13 riots, committed by the 30-odd demonstrators on Thursday whose identity are easily ascertained as the whole disgraceful episode had been videotaped and given full publicity by the electronic media and UMNO blogs but no police action had been taken to pick up and question the suspects.
The Kuala Lumpur police chief Datuk Mohamad Salleh told The Malaysian Insider last night that police investigations would begin after Teresa, together with others, have lodged police reports and that no police action had been taken earlier despite the presence of police at the protest as a report had to be lodged before police could begin a probe.
He said: “This is our standard operations. There is nothing biased about it. Our actions are the same no matter who lodges a report and we will look into this.”
This is arrant nonsense. Is the KL CPO seriously saying that until a police report is lodged, a police officer would not take any action even when he is witness to the commission of serious crimes, as happened in the demonstration by the self-styled Council of Islamic NGOs committing serious offences including criminal intimidation, sedition, inciting violence and another May 13 riots?
Such a police officer would have committed a gross dereliction of duty and should be subjected to immediate disciplinary action for being a disgrace to his profession and the Royal Malaysian Police.
In fact, the police officers who were present at the demonstration of the Council of Islamic NGOs should be hauled before the disciplinary board for not stopping the demonstration and the commission of an assortment of serious crimes and not immediately lodging a police report against the crimes committed at the demonstration so that police action could be immediately taken!
The Malaysian police, under the Inspector-General of Police Tan Sri Khalid Abdu Bakar is really one of its kind in the world which can see what nobody can see and cannot see what all can see.
Two weeks before the New Year, Khalid announced that there was a plot to topple the elected government in the gathering on New Year’s eve at the Dataran Merdeka to protest price hikes, followed by warnings from the Kuala Lumpur deputy police chief Datuk Amar Singh Ishar that weapons, including grenades and gas masks, would brought to the “overthrow the government” rally.
All these police warnings have turned out be a “fairly tale” and a pure concoction of the feverish imagination of police officers as they were not backed up by any solid and credible intelligence – as proven in the weeks after the New Year as the police have not been able to produce one iota of evidence that there was a violent plot to topple the elected government at the Dataran Merdeka gathering on New Years Eve.
Clearly, the police could see what nobody else could see. Furthermore, the Police could not see what everybody could see – that the demonstration of chicken-slaughtering and the inciting of violence against Teresa by the Council of Islamic NGOs was part of a campaign of incessant incitement of racial and religious hatred, conflict and tension to raise racial and religious temperatures to generate a chaotic and combustible atmosphere to foment a repeat of May 13 riots!
The May 13 threat was first raised in the UMNO youth demonstration in Penang on 18th January and it was repeated in Kuala Lumpur on Thursday, 6th February.
How can the police stand by and allow the threat of May 13 to be wielded again and again to intimidate the people and escalate the incitement of racial and religious hatred, animosities and tension in plural Malaysia?
If Tunku is alive today, he would have no hesitation in immediately denouncing the extremist racist and religious fulminations of the self-styled Council of Islamic NGOs.
He would also have directed the IGP and the police to do their duty to uphold the law and ensure peace and harmony in the country.
Why is Najib keeping quiet for the past two days and equally pertinent, why the lackadaisical and insouciant attitude adopted by the police towards a grave threat to Malaysia’s achieving the Tunku’s dream of the country as a haven of peace, harmony and happiness in the world?
I call on IGP to form a special team to investigate the incessant incitement of racial and religious hatred, conflict and tension to create another May 13 riots in the past few months and to nip the nefarious and treacherous plot in the bud.
The police had earlier formed a special team to investigate the threat “to overthrow the government” through a violent rally at Dataran Merdeka on New Year’s Eve. This was announced on Dec. 22 by the Federal Criminal Investigation Department (CID) chief Datuk Hadi Ho Abdullah who said the team would be headed by Deputy Commissioner Datuk Mazlan Mansor.
If the police could set up a special team to investigate the “fair tale” of a plot “to topple the elected government” at the Dataran Merdeka rally on New Year’s Eve, what reason could there be for the police refusing to set up a special team to investigate a pressing and imperative threat to national security – the incessant incitement of racial and religious hatred, conflict and tension to create another May 13 riots in the past few months and the urgent need to nip the nefarious and treacherous plot in the bud before it results in a national calamity.
In the Parliamentary meeting beginning on March 10, I will ask the Home Minister to report on the outcome of the special team formed by police to investigate the threat “to overthrow the government” at the Dataran Merdeka gathering on New Year’s Eve.
I will also be asking whether a special police team had been formed to investigate the incessant incitement of racial and religious hatred, conflict and tension to create another May 13 riots, and the outcome, and if no special team had been formed by the police, why not.