Air Dicincang Berputus

A Story of Malaysia’s minorities.

Vincent 咯
12 min readJun 16, 2020

From when I was a child until I was 17, I was scared of Malay people.

I wish I could tell you that this was because of some traumatic incident that imprinted itself upon my psyche: maybe a scary security guard who magnified in Freudian proportions to roam the depths of my subconscious; or a strict and overzealous teacher who punished me to excess. But frankly, I have no such excuse.

I grew up in a sheltered Chinese urban middle-class bubble. I went to a Chinese primary school, spoke Chinese at home, and hung out with Chinese people. I was an anti-social kid, and had few Chinese friends, let alone Malay or Indian friends. If I interacted or spoke to Malay people in those years, it was as ships passing in the night: strangers at the receptionist desk, or brief conversations with taxi driving uncles, or scoldings from unfriendly teachers. My secondary school wasn’t much different. I had little in common with, and rarely interacted with the few Malay people who orbited my sheltered and homogeneous little world.

I didn’t hate the Malays. I just knew nothing about them. I knew that they were the majority of the population in Malaysia. I knew that they controlled everything in Malaysia: from the civil service, to politics, to the government. I knew a few big names from mandatory history lessons: Mahathir. Tunku Abdul Rahman. Tun Abdul Razak. But I had never been friends with a single Malay person in my life up to that point. Back then, they were not really “people”: just “The Malays”, a flattened universal picture of people I didn’t know, who represented the entire world outside my insular, privileged, middle-class urban Chinese bubble. And so I was afraid of them.

My parents never saw a need to address this issue. I doubt they saw it as a problem at all. They were — are — wonderful people. But they had their own flaws: and being deeply racist was one of them. Once, as a joke, I asked my mother if she had any “conditions” for who I could marry. She thought about it for awhile, before answering. “They mustn’t be doing ‘improper’ jobs” — euphemistic slang for sex work, something of an inside joke between us — “Oh, and of course, they can’t be Malay, or Indian, or black.”

Even now, when I tell my parents stories about friends who have done stupid, reckless, or funny things, one of the first questions they inevitably ask me is: “were they Chinese, Malay, or Indian?” If they’re Chinese, it’s explained away as them having “issues” or “something wrong with them”. If they’re Malay or Indian, it’s because “they’re all like that one lah”. If anything, I think they were worried that Malay friends would have been a bad influence. So when I, with my practically non-existent Malay, found it best to stick to the few (safely Chinese) friends I did have, they breathed a sigh of quiet relief. This way, at least, I would be safe from their “bad influence”.

I remember volunteering for an event when I was fourteen. It was August, and we were setting up chairs for the event. We had worked hard, and now, it was lunch time. I had packed some food with me, and thought it would be a nice thing to do to offer that food to some of the other volunteers. They looked at me oddly, and refused it, laughing to themselves. I did what I thought was polite. I insisted, and was confused when they continued to say no. Weren’t they hungry? A friend who was volunteering with me pulled me aside in a hurry. He reminded: or rather, explained to me, that they were Malay, and it was Ramadan. And suddenly, I was reminded that fasting was a thing. I wasn’t being polite. I was being a culturally insensitive asshole. That episode illustrates the ignorant and sheltered child I was:

In college, having left the bubble of vernacular, private, middle-class Malaysian life, I (finally) made my first Malay friend. Since then, I’ve thankfully made friends with more Malay people, and I’ve learned how to think of them as actual people. I don’t offer food to fasting people any more. I can hold a conversation in BM. If I’m cooking for Malay friends, I don’t use lard. If we’re going out together to eat, I know to check if they’re worried about halal food before suggesting places to makan.

I have worked to recognise the ways in which I was deeply racist — not only about Malay and Indian people, but all marginalised ethnic groups who were not my own. I have struggled to confront my own prejudices and problematic beliefs, and to deprogram myself of these beliefs. I believe I’ve come a long way. But I know I have a long way to go.

When I grew older, I found a new reason to be afraid of Malay people.

I don’t know when I first learned about the phrase “Ketuanan Melayu”. Maybe I learned it in a conversation with my father, warning me over and over again never to become a civil servant, because of a ceiling of bulletproof glass. Maybe I learned it in Sejarah, when rhetoric about the social contract, historical violence, and evil and greedy Chinese people made it clear exactly what our government thought about people who looked like me. Maybe it was in 2008, when Hishammuddin — then Minister of Education — waved a Keris in the UMNO AGM, with obvious implications of violence and martial pride.

Conservative pundits in Malaysia go on and on about how lucky Malaysia’s minorities are. How lucky we are to live in a peaceful, harmonious, and stable country. This line is preached over and over again from political pulpits: Malaysia is a Peaceful Multiracial Country™. It is polished to a mirror shine, and hung over every door, like a splash of Passover blood. Malaysia is a Peaceful Multiracial Country™. It is lit with candles, and hung from ceiling beams like a lantern of New Year festivity. Malaysia is a Peaceful Multiracial Country™. It is handed out like red and green packets, from history books to speech-giving crooks, from Twitter timelines to newspaper by-lines, the story is repeated at every political turn: Malaysia is a Peaceful Multiracial Country™.

But every so often, cracks in the facade appear. And we are reminded of what lies beneath the old government line.

A Chinese pastor who has been discussing politics to his flock vanishes, and whispers abound that he has been kidnapped by government agents. A public outcry ensues. What happened to him? A token enquiry is held, and promises are made for follow up action. But nothing ever materializes. The case becomes a real-life horror story, to be chided over and reminded of in Whatsapp chain messages. Don’t go into politics. Don’t speak up about anything that might draw unwelcome attention. Or you may disappear into the backseat of a Golden Toyota one day, never to be seen again.

Pastor Raymond Koh. Source: https://www.anglicannews.org/news/2019/04/pastor-raymond-koh-was-abducted-by-state-agents-malaysian-human-rights-inquiry-finds.aspx

An Indian man is taken into police custody, on some charge or another. The next thing his family knows, he is dead. Officials rule that he died of a heart attack, or a pulmonary edema, or a fatty change of the liver. His bruised and shattered corpse, with unmistakable marks of torture and brutality, tells a different story. An inquest is demanded. It crawls through the courts at glacial speed. Conflicting reports that say he died of “natural causes” ensue. The police are found responsible. But nothing happens. No one is punished. We never learn who killed him. The story becomes a warning. Don’t argue with the police. Don’t challenge them in any way. If they ask for money, give it to them. Or the last your family will see of you is a broken body, beaten into a bloody pulp.

Source: https://www.lawyersforliberty.org/2018/09/14/5-faces-a-story-of-police-custodial-deaths-in-malaysia/

Minorities in Malaysia do not live in a state of violence. We live in its shadow. We may feel at home in Malaysia. We may love the electric humming of rusty fans, wafting the mixed smells of belacan and durian through windows overlooking market laden streets. We may yearn for the tones of fragrant mamak meals of dubious cleanliness, reminding us of school canteens and queued for Ramlee burgers, handed over by kindly aunties. We may miss random conversations held with unlikely uncles or aunties, in mixing medleys of Cantonese, Malay, or English, as we barter for price or complain about the weather.

But we will never stop being told that we aren’t “really” at home in Malaysia. At best, we are told constantly that we are guests. That we must be grateful to our gracious hosts, who have so kindly permitted us to stay in “their” country, which they own by divine and racial fiat. At worst, politicians like Hadi Awang warn us about “Malay patience” running out, ominously conjuring images of the last time Malay racial anger boiled over in 1969. That minorities cannot — must not — make too much noise. Or else…

Stop calling Malays ‘racist’, patience has its limits, says Hadi. Source: https://www.freemalaysiatoday.com/category/nation/2019/10/25/stop-calling-malays-racist-patience-has-its-limits-says-hadi/

My parents are always urging me to go overseas. They don’t understand why I’m so insistent on settling down in Malaysia. Whenever I grouse about the job market nowadays, they remind me that they’re always looking for English teachers in Japan, or China, or India. They send me Linkedin profiles about job opportunities in Hong Kong, or Tokyo, or Shanghai. They explain that this is why they sent me overseas to study in the first place: so that I could find work somewhere in a country with greater earning power than Malaysia. They tell me that I have family in Singapore, and Hong Kong, and Shanghai, and Australia, and that if I go overseas, I can be succeed in whatever I choose to do.

Part of this is good old fashioned pragmatism. Academics like Koh Sin Yee have talked about how many Malaysians have a strong culture of migration: inherited from our grandparents, many of whom were refugees of some kind or another. I see this attitude clearly in my parents. They grew up poor. They have no patience or time for sentimental ties to the nation or to the motherland: their first priority is, and always has been, finding a living. And so when I explain that Malaysia is my home, and that I love this country, and that I want to stay and fight to make it a better place, they look at me with a strange puzzlement. They understand. But they don’t get it, and a big part of this surely comes down to the fact that they are, and have always been, ruthless realists.

But I think part of this is also fear.

Both my parents lived through May 13. They weren’t at the heart of it. My mother grew up in Klang, and my father grew up in rural Penang. At most, my father remembers having his house attacked by rowdy Malay teenagers with a molotov cocktail, and my grandfather having to put out the fire in a hurry. He remembers huddling with my aunt and grandma in the storage room, unsure about what was happening. My mother doesn’t even remember anything about it. Compared to stories from the heart of KL: about movie theater massacres, or random shots fired into apartment windows for leaving the lights on, or starvation caused by martial law lockdowns, my parents were lucky.

But they’re still clearly haunted by its spectre. We talk about politics — elections, corruption, but never in public. “There are prying ears,” my father told me once in a kopitiam when I was talking too loudly about the government, shifting his eyes nervously around. During elections, they stock up on food and tell us to come home early. They warn us never to go to protests. And always be careful who you’re talking to. Because you never know who they might know.

And I’m lucky. My family is middle-class and comfortable: we are not rich, but I have never gone hungry in my life. I live in the heart of the city, surrounded by cosmopolitan, educated, urban friends, who see race as an unimportant thing. And I am Chinese. At least we only get stereotyped as money grubbing, greedy and dishonest rich businessman; unlike Indians, migrant workers, and black people who get slapped with far worse and far more negative stereotypes.

What about people who don’t have my privilege? What about Indians, who get treated even worse because they’re a small enough proportion of the population that their votes can’t swing elections? What about the poorer Malaysian minorities, who don’t have the benefit of money and family connections to protect them? What stateless Malaysians, who for some reason or another are left without citizenship and rights from the government? What about LGBTQIA+ Malaysians, who are doubly marginalised because of their sexuality and gender identities?

What about Indira Gandhi, whose husband disappeared with her daughter after forcibly converting her to Islam, and who still hasn’t seen her daughter for over ten years? What about Moorthy Maniam, who was forcibly buried as a Muslim despite his family insisting that he was a practicing Hindu? What about Pastor Raymond Koh, Joshua and Ruth Hilmy, Amri Che Mat, who were victims of “enforced disappearances” supported by state actors? What about the 257 deaths in police custody between 2002 and 2016, who were disproportionately Indian?

Indira Gandhi 2019. Source: http://www.themalaysiantimes.com.my/deep-state-hindering-efforts-to-locate-indiras-gandhis-missing-daughter-ramasamy/

Every right that Malaysia’s minorities have is bracketed and qualified. We have the right to practice our own religion (for now, as long as we don’t practice too prominently). We have the right to own homes (for now, as long as it’s not on reserved land). We have the right to walk down the street and not be killed (for now, as long as we’re not protesting and making too much noise about politics). To be a minority in Malaysia is to always be afraid that these brackets will be all that are left. That “for now” will disappear, and we will discover “what’s next”?

We are afraid for our lives: not always today, but always tomorrow. We are always afraid that if we stay in this country, one day soon, our “hosts” will grow sick of us. That first, we will have the right to our own religion taken away. That churches and temples said to be promoting apostasy will be forced to downsize further, and further, until they become illegal altogether. That quotas in the housing, stock, and job markets will expand further and further, until we are pushed off the cliff into the abyss. That kerises waved at party AGMs will turn into parangs, and we will be hacked to pieces.

Source: http://www.rockybru.com.my/2008/04/no-keris-wiedling-in-december.html

There is a Chinese proverb: “If you have not been to the Great Wall of China, you are not a good Han.” It’s not a proper proverb per se — more a folksy saying that gets at the heart of how many Chinese people think about the “mother country”: that to be a “real” Chinese person, you have to have visited Chinese landmarks, or read Chinese books, and generally “know” about Chinese culture.

I am Malaysian Chinese. This is a label I am happy with. I am happy that I can speak Chinese. I am happy that I can read Chinese books and poems. I am happy to celebrate and enjoy Chinese New Year, receive angpaus, and to gossip with hawker stall aunties about the weather, their family, and business, in a mixture of Chinese and the few strays words of Cantonese that I know.

But I have never been to the Great Wall. I have never been to China (Hong Kong doesn’t count). I have no interest or attachment to that country. Chinese culture is interesting, of course, and I am grateful that I can speak and read Chinese, if for no other reason than because it’s an increasingly important economic language. But I feel no great sentimental attachment to the nation it represents. Maybe one day I’ll read Romance of the Three Kingdoms, or Journey to the West, or the complete works of Li Bai, or Xu Zhimo. But if I don’t, it will be no great loss to me.

When I’ve met people from China — whether they be from Shanghai, or Guangdong, or Beijing — I’ve often been more irritated by the language barrier than excited to meet a “fellow” Chinese person. I don’t hate them: I just know nothing about them. The fact that we share pieces of culture and fragments of a language doesn’t change that.

China is not my home. I am tired. Tired of being told to “balik” to a China I have never been to. Tired of being told to “leave lah, if I don’t like it here”, as if complaining about the problems with Malaysia means I do not love this country. Tired of being told that there is only one way — their way — to be Malaysian.

I still believe in Malaysia: a Malaysia for Malaysians: All Malaysians, no matter their ethnicity, religion, or sexuality. I still believe in a Malaysia that embraces all its children, and provides them all a home. I still believe in an inclusive and diverse Malaysia, not built on racial hegemony or supremacy but equality and acceptance.

But the Malaysia of today is not that Malaysia.

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Vincent 咯

Exploring Malaysia, one historical chapter at a time.