Malaysian Chinese Are Patriotic….

May 16th, 2007 by Nick Tay

That’s what Najib says he believes, according to todays Sun news paper. Hmm…how do I put this gently. I don’t pretend to speak for all Malaysian Chinese, as many a time I don’t consider myself Chinese. I am a Chindian, and proud of it, and to be called anything less would not give credit to my mom’s rich Indian heritage.

Back to the point. I am patriotic, of that there is no doubt. The years I spent overseas as a student, I proudly hung my Malaysian flag over my window, and each and every Merdeka, I celebrated with much joy. I would bleed to keep the red parts of the Malaysian flag red, and I have no plans to move or migrate to anywhere else, as I believe that my God placed me in Malaysia for a reason, and it is my home.

Having said all that, its very clear to me that Malaysia doesn’t love me as much as I love it. From as early as I could remember I was told many a time, by my teachers in school no less, that Malaysia is the land of the Malay people, and we are the “orang Asing”, or foreigners. My headmaster gave a hour long speech once, trying to promote the use of Bahasa malaysia among the chinese students, and his main point was ,”Come to other peoples country, speak their language”. I was very angry with his statements, as though I may have been the only student there born in another country, I was just as Malaysian as any of them. I wish I could say I stood up and argued with him, but being one of the head students, I just stood there in Silent protest. I learned an important lesson that day, no matter how many generations us Non-Bumiputras live in this nation, we will never belong to this nation, as long as we are treated as Second Class citizens.

I listened to an Interview on CNN once, where people could call up and talk to Dr.M, who was then Prime Minister of Malaysia, and one of the first callers was a non-bumiputra. I think he was Indian, though he could have been Chinese, my memory fails me, and it didn’t matter. He asked him why does Malaysia treat other races as second class citizens, and Dr.M dogged the question. Dr.M went on and on how nobody in Malaysia feels like they are first class citizens, and that the Malays complain everyday how they are not treated fairly.

“What bullshit is that”, I though to myself. I would have thought he would have the balls to anwser the question frankly and honestly, but alas Malaysian politics is like that. We never want to deal with the real issues, and we hide behind the curtins of race. The fact will always remain that until all Malaysians are treated equally in the eyes of the Law in ALL aspects, with no favour granted to one people group over another, things will never change.

Why don’t Chinese people join the Army? Why would they, if its almost garanteed that they will not enjoy the same promotions and rewards as their bumiputra counterparts, if you could call them counterparts. I wanted to join the army. I wanted to be a fighter pilot, but everybody told me that its a Malay army for Malay people. Heck, after that speach from my Headmaster, I believed everybody.

So how to make Chinese be more active in the government? Easy, do the one thing that will never happen. Treat people the same. Throw away race politics.

On this day in History..

Tags: Nation

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 16th, 2007 at 9:05 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

2 Responses to “Malaysian Chinese Are Patriotic….”

fishtail Says:
May 16th, 2007 at 9:39 am
Of course the Chinese are patriotic, but patriotism has nothing to do with voting for the ruling party. In fact, it seems likely (with what’s been going on lately: keris waving, racist remarks, huge waste of funds, etc) that patriotism could very well express itself in voting the ruling party out.

admin : agreeed
George Says:
May 22nd, 2007 at 5:55 pm
I was patriotic until I realised, like you, that it did not matter unless I was a Malay except of course when the UMNO wanted my vote. Then I was patriotic, beautiful, honest, loyal and the sun shone out of my arse. So I packed and left for a civilised country that could use my first world education, not discriminate against me and was transparent. I got all this - and more. I live in a MYR$3 million house, overlooking the sea and the CBD of thr world’s most beautiful city. My neighbours are lovely. I can vote the Govt in and I can vote the ******** out. I miss my relatives and friends but I can always visit. When I do,I read the newspapers and donot like what UMNO says. I realise that the best thing about KL is that it has regular flights out of the country.When I leave, I add mentally the words “You are” to the sign that says “welcome to Malaysia”.