November 30, 2025 · 16:28

The Great, the Good and the Immigrant

Given the pace of news these days, you may already have forgotten the story of the illegal Ethiopian immigrant. A week after landing on the Kent coast, the man tried to kiss a fourteen-year-old girl. She was minding her own business on a park bench, eating pizza with a friend; up stepped the illegal immigrant, one of 39,294 small boat arrivals to the United Kingdom to date in 2025 – and the year isn’t over yet. 

When the girl protested her age, the man told her age that ‘did not matter’. He said he wanted to have a baby with her and another one with her friend. He touched the girl’s thigh; for good measure, he also touched up an adult woman who tried to intervene. 

In court, he insisted that he was not an animal. Maybe, but he is clearly a man who thinks he has the right to touch any girl or woman without her consent. That’s evidently what men get away with in Ethiopia. To my knowledge, he has never expressed remorse; he was sorry only that his actions caused protests against his fellow-illegal immigrants. 

Political liberals may be annoyed by the term illegal immigrants. Democracy is a fine thing, but if we can’t label objects and persons by their proper nouns, we’ll never get to the heart of any issue. And if we can’t get to the heart of this issue, we don’t have a hope in hell of solving it. 

Incredibly, there are people in Britain who don’t even think we have an immigration problem. They must be living on another planet (or the Shetlands). As our brave Home Secretary, Shabana Mahmood, said when introducing her immigration reforms on 17 November 2025:

‘This country will always offer sanctuary to those fleeing danger. But we must also acknowledge that the world has changed, and our asylum system has not changed.’

Exactly. The UN conventions governing refugees were drawn up in 1951. 1951, imagine! Can you seriously expect a charter established when the world was such a different place to still be fit for purpose in 2025? 

Actually, we don’t need to go back that far. England has changed dramatically since I arrived for school 46 years ago in 1979. When I landed at Heathrow Airport, Margaret Thatcher had only just been elected and Britain, having endured a Winter of Discontent, was still reeling from the ignominy of being bailed out (in 1976) by the International Monetary Fund. 

Life then was sedate and quintessentially British. Tea remained the drink of choice; shops closed at 5 pm and telephones were coin-operated. There were rules. People expected these to be respected. To someone from a former British colony, things looked different yet also vaguely familiar. 

The Malaysian education system which produced me was based on the old British system and I settled in easily enough. I stayed on, first as a university undergraduate and then as a research student on a Physics Ph.D. programme. For my entire first decade in the United Kingdom, I was here on a student visa, which meant I could not work. 

In that era, it was a badge of honour for British Ph.D. students, especially those in the humanities, to dawdle over their theses. People commonly took 5, 8 or even more than 10 years writing up. I did not have that luxury: as a foreign student, I was not eligible for a student grant and I’d had to win special funding for my Ph.D. degree. The funding – from Southampton University – lasted 3 years, not a day longer. As my third postgraduate year kicked in, I knew I would have to write up my thesis and look for a job at the same time.

There was no Internet back then. To research career options, I headed to the University’s Careers Service, where I spoke to the Careers Officer. He made many helpful suggestions. I followed them all up, spending hours carefully parsing through corporate brochures, then honing my slim CV and crafting cover letters. Students in my time were expected to know how to write formal letters. Interviews, when you got one, were face-to-face. 

I applied to dozens of firms. All of them turned me down without even an interview. They told me that the Home Office would never grant a work permit to an entry-level employee. My Ph.D. (in Theoretical Physics) didn’t mean a thing if the work could be done by a native or a European.

My only hope was an academic job. Meanwhile the clock was ticking; if I didn’t get a move-on, time would run out on my student visa. I had to pull my research results together and write them up into a coherent whole. And I had to do this not knowing which country I would end up in or how I was going to earn a living.

Malaysia was my Plan B. As a Malaysian passport holder, I could (and can) always return there. There were only three problems: I have the wrong ethnicity (Malaysian-Chinese), the wrong religion (non-Muslim) and the wrong sexual orientation (considered haram). Even today, homosexuality is illegal in Malaysia. For someone who has tasted freedom, life in the closet is hard to contemplate.

At almost the last minute, a research fellowship at St Catherine’s College, Oxford, came up. Oxbridge fellowships are prestigious and highly competitive. But I had no connection to the University and was surprised to be shortlisted for an interview. When I walked into St Catherine’s for the very first time, it felt somewhat intimidating. I was grilled by a panel of five. You can feel when an interview is going well – and I sensed it going very well. The College offered me the job at once. What they wanted me to do was so arcane that I doubt if anyone in the Home Office understood my full job description. In those days the British government actually controlled immigration. 

That’s no longer the case. Now, alongside a legal but woefully lax official system of immigration is a black market on Tik Tok. Small boats are big business. Just look at the advertisement below.

The image comes from Global Initiative, but you can find plenty of others. Facebook, Snapchat and Instagram are all crime-enablers; the rage, however, is apparently Tik Tok. Small boat ads are so well-documented, even the BBC has mentioned them. 

People-smugglers know their target audience. They price their offerings appropriately and deploy creative tactics: for instance, giving price discounts to customers who help with social media marketing. Small boat customers, like customers of legal services, shop around before choosing their preferred country and preferred smuggler. 

This is what the Home Secretary meant when she said: 

‘Huge numbers are on the move. While some are refugees, others are economic migrants seeking to use and abuse our asylum system …’

88% of arrivals on rubber dinghies are male (see data below, taken from Migration Watch UK, Source: the Home Office). And yet, in most parts of the world, it’s women who are more likely to face persecution simply because we have XX chromosomes; historically, groups genuinely fleeing danger have been evenly split by gender. No matter how you view the world, the extreme gender skew of small boat arrivals should be a red flag.

The mix of source countries changes from year to year; in 2024 the men came mainly from Afghanistan, Syria, Iran, Vietnam, Eritrea, Sudan and Iraq (source: Migration Watch UK). Granted, these countries are all poor, but can you really call someone who has chosen to leave poverty and a Communist regime (Vietnam) or poverty and the rule of mullahs (Iran) a refugee? 

And if they really are in the grave danger they claim to be in, why not just stop in the first safe country; why cross so many more borders and crown their risk by jumping into a rubber boat? 

As Shabana Mahmood said:

‘… even genuine refugees are passing through other safe countries searching for the most attractive place to seek refuge.’

When Hitler was gassing Jews in Germany, the few Jews who managed to escape were relieved to be somewhere safe; they did not shop around on apps looking for ‘better’ countries. If you’re already in a safe country, be that Italy, France or Belgium, and you keep crossing borders and then climb into a dinghy, that act of deliberately putting yourself in more danger (and in some cases, your children, too) should surely disqualify you from gaining asylum in Britain.

Some will argue that only desperate people would put themselves in deliberate danger; therefore, they deserve our empathy and compassion. My counter-argument is that there are now plenty of legal immigration routes into Britain (many more than in my day), but if you know you would not qualify legally, you look for illegal means. 

In other words, small boat customers know very well that they’re breaking laws. If someone knowingly breaks the law before they even get to Britain, why should we expect them to obey our laws once they’re here? The simple answer is: we can’t.

Denmark was the first European country to collect data about its immigrant population. What the Danes have found is that foreigners are over-represented in Danish criminal convictions relative to their population size. 

Put simply, if 15 out of every 100 people in the population are immigrants, then, all things being equal, you would naively expect 15 out of every 100 criminals convicted to be immigrants. In 2023, 15 out of every 100 people in Denmark were immigrants. But immigrants made up 25 out of every 100 people convicted of crimes. 

The same over-representation of foreigners in Danish criminal convictions was found in 2022, 2021 and every single year for which the data was available – going all the way back to 2014, when data was first collected.

I can already hear objections. ‘This simply means that Denmark is a racist country. You’re more likely to be convicted of crime if you’re a foreigner!’ 

Not so fast. Danish data also suggests that not all immigrants are equal. Immigrants to Denmark from the Philippines, Indonesia, China, India and Argentina are less likely than locals to be convicted of crime. Bottom of the criminal list is Japan: the Japanese in Denmark are incredibly law-abiding. To sum up, not all immigrants to Denmark cause problems: only those from the Middle East and North Africa. Alas for Britain, these have been our main source countries in recent years.

Until liberals are prepared to concede that there just might be bad immigrants, debate around immigration will remain toxic. Pro-immigration Brits behave as if they stand on hallowed ground. They claim to be against ‘racism and fascism’; by implication, if you dare question immigration, you must be racist, fascist, ignorant and evil.

The slogans haven’t changed since I was at university 40 years ago. Slogans have always been cheap; in the age of instant social media, they are especially cheap. Where was the anti-racist, anti-fascist brigade when a Jewish economics lecturer in London was hounded inside his lecture hall? Professor Ben-Gad, himself an immigrant – but a highly-educated immigrant, not the sort usually favoured by the great and the good of the left – was threatened with beheading by masked pro-Gaza supporters. This happened in central London, not some godforsaken ISIS territory; if we don’t want beheadings and hand-chopping to become acceptable in Britain, we need honest dialogue in this country. 

Not all immigrants are equal. Not all immigrants are good. And not all immigrants want to integrate.

For the record, I’m not against immigration, but I am absolutely 110% against uncontrolled, unfettered immigration. I played by the rules. The immigrants I know – and I know plenty – have also played by the rules, jumping through hoops (not into rubber boats) to ensure that we obeyed the laws of this country. Some of the rules themselves have become tougher for legal immigrants, thanks to their widespread abuse by people who don’t care about rules. How is it fair on those of us who have obeyed every law, to watch people clearly exploiting loopholes and be allowed to exploit them? Those who turn up in Kent when their countries are clearly not at war; those whose asylum applications are rejected but who stay anyway, supported by our taxes, often for years, while they appeal and re-appeal: how is any of this fair?

To quote Mahmood once again:

‘…we have a proper problem and it is our moral duty to fix it. Our asylum system is broken. The breaking of that asylum system is causing huge division across our whole country, and it is a moral mission for me to resolve that division across our country.’

Her reforms are a start. Personally, I don’t think they go far enough. She hasn’t even begun to tackle the problems in our legal immigration system. But Shabana Mahmood is to be lauded because no one else has had the balls to do even as much as she has.

I, an immigrant, support her efforts. I don’t want illegal men here. And I know I’m not the only one.

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April 25, 2025 · 17:09

I Am Woman

Like many people in Britain, I was horrified by the violence at pro-transgender demonstrations last weekend.

Admittedly, we face issues we’ve not had to deal with before. For instance, I would not want a fully transitioned transgender woman to be placed into a male prison, where she would be vulnerable to attack. At the same time I do not want a man who still has a beard and balls to be in any female ward of any National Health Service hospital. These are challenges, and they won’t be solved by defacing statues.

As a writer, I’m naturally interested in language. Many demonstrators on Saturday carried placards with the words ‘cis woman’. I didn’t even know what that meant until a male gay friend used it. This same guy, let’s call him X, had a habit of insulting other men with another ‘c’ word. When I pointed out to X that he was misusing the word – he was talking about men, after all, not women – he said, ‘Ah, but c— just sounds so much worse.’

The casual sexism X displayed is so common, most people don’t even notice. But the sneer gave him away.

If you haven’t heard of ‘cis woman’, don’t worry – it’s really not worth knowing. The term is used by loud-mouthed transgendered activists and their supporters to describe biologically-born women like me, known to everyone else simply as ‘women’. The fact that I even have to talk about ‘biological women’ is proof of how insane parts of the world (mainly in the West, it must be said) have become.

That’s why judges had to get involved. What better use is there of the UK’s Supreme Court members’ time than to rule on what ‘woman’ means? On April 16 2025 they issued their unanimous conclusion: ‘sex’ under the country’s Equality Act of 2010 refers to biological sex. So, there is such a thing as biology after all.

I did not need a court to tell me. I had my first period at 13.

I’ve suffered from the cramps that come with them – that’s biology. I could have given birth naturally to a child – thanks to my biology. Chemotherapy, having saved my life, induced early menopause – also biology.

My experience of life and that of any transgendered woman are surely different. Saying this in no way denigrates either one of us.

Let me be clear: I respect the desire of anyone to change his or her biological sex. Every single person should be able to live life to the full. But please don’t tell me that a boy who goes through puberty as male, who is therefore socialised as a man, and then transitions to becoming female, is the same as me.

Indeed, difference is the essence of diversity. According to the Cambridge English Dictionary, diversity means the condition or fact of being different or varied. Isn’t the whole point to accept and celebrate our differences? Silly me, that’s what I thought.

Instead, mobs are trying to erase our differences. They forget that you cannot celebrate differences without first acknowledging they exist. It’s ironic that the people who shout loudest about diversity are the ones least able to countenance any utterance with which they disagree.

Until now, I assumed my activist days were past. But the sight of Millicent Fawcett’s statue being defaced in London changed that. And the image below galvanised me.

A lobotomy – are you serious?

Looking back in history, such vitriol should not surprise us. Whenever women have stood up and demanded rights, there has been a backlash. Always. This isn’t the first time we’ve been called names and it won’t be the last.

Women are used to fighting. We had to fight to be legally recognised as our own persons (a battle which remains unfinished, as an American history professor discovered when she tried to get a mortgage).

We had to fight for access to education, and then for access to equal education. We had to fight for the right to vote.

And now, once again, we have to fight to protect women-only spaces. Somehow, the thought of spaces from which they’re barred seems to make male stomachs churn.

I learned this first-hand when I helped establish a women’s disco in Southampton in the mid-1980s. We were ridiculed – ‘No men? Hahaha! It’ll never last!’ Except, it did; our little disco grew and was so successful that it continued for decades after I’d left town. I never imagined we would one day have to have the same battle for space, only, in a world so changed that a man can simply say he’s a woman and the law would allow him to walk right in.

This cannot be right. Incredible as this may sound, it has been the way the Equality Act has been interpreted. Worse, Stonewall, an organisation I used to support, led the charge, effectively silencing dissent. Well-meaning folks who were too scared to object fell in line and helped to conflate ‘inclusivity’ with ‘anything goes’.

It’s hardly surprising, then, that a female patient on a NHS ward was raped by a transgendered woman. Most people don’t even know this took place because the hospital covered it up, telling police that rape could not have taken place because ‘there were no men on the ward’. The incident was only revealed in the House of Lords when Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne spoke during a debate about why we must not lose single-sex wards.

It’s astonishing to me that no public figure has asked why we hear a lot more about transgendered women than transgendered men. Could biology possibly play a role? Hmm, let’s see… Transgendered women were born boys; transgendered men were born girls; and we all remember that old chestnut, don’t we, of how boys will be boys?

Guess what… boys are boys, and the profiled activists on transgender rights websites are overwhelmingly transgender women, not men (see this and this). If one side shouts more loudly than the other, what we end up with, surely, is… the same old bias.

Another legitimate question is: why has ‘T’ been lumped with ‘LG and B’?  I’ve never wanted to be a man; how did the Lesbian, Gay & Bisexual movement, of which I was once a proud member, turn into a wi-fi code? LGBTQA+++; don’t blink, lest another letter gets added.

Because politicians of all stripes have colluded with this nonsense, virulent misogyny has been allowed to fester. At the Labour Party conference in September 2021, Kier Starmer famously replied that it was ‘not right to say that only women have a cervix’.

P-LEASE. And I’m the one who should get a lobotomy?

Not only is his cowardice an insult to women, it’s also a disservice to transgendered men and women. They deserve clarity, not spineless prevarication.

We need everyone, especially politicians, to stand up for the vision of the pluralistic society we wish to see, a country which seeks to accommodate different groups, but which also does not permit a free-for-all. Transgender men and women make up no more than 0.55% of the UK’s population (even this minuscule proportion is thought to be an overestimate) and while they must be supported and protected, it is not right that their protection should come at the expense of women who make up half the population (51%).

People seem to think that the story ends with last week’s Supreme Court ruling. I’m not sure. I recognise contempt when I see it. And last weekend what I saw was pure contempt.

I wasn’t angry before, I now am. How dare you call me names I never chose! In recent days I’ve signed up to the LGB Alliance and Sex Matters . Goddamit, we will not let you walk all over us. I want to say this loudly and clearly.

We are Women. You were born by One of Us. We’re not going anywhere. Get over it.

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January 4, 2025 · 23:59

To my Father

A week ago my father took his final breath. He went quickly and peacefully after dinner. He’d had such a good day, eating all his food and even joking with his carers, that they did not have any inkling they were seeing a man in his final hours. I’m glad it happened that way.

If I could have spoken to my father, this is what I would have said.

I’m sorry, Dad, that I’m not by your side right now. I know you would have preferred to die in the house you had lived in for twenty five years. I’m really sorry I could not make that happen – you never got to see your house again.

But you were in a happy place. You didn’t like it initially, of course – who does? At Thanksgiving, when they asked you what you were thankful for, you said, ‘I’m thankful to be in this happy place.’

It was indeed a happy place, this small care home in a leafy suburb where they treated you as a person, not a number. Everyone knew your name and you knew theirs. They really looked after you. They are now shattered that you left without warning.

You were not a man of many words. We learned more about your life from files you had kept – which we found while cleaning up – than from anything you ever told us. You never talked about your achievements, almost as if you were a little embarrassed that they were not enough, that what you had done did not stack up in some people’s eyes. For a boy from a small town, born when Malaysia was still Malaya, who died 10,182 miles from his place of birth, you went a long way. You have a lot to be proud of.

Your own traditional Chinese father and mother did not speak English. You told me how, on your first day at an English-language school in Teluk Intan (Telok Anson in your days), you had no idea what the class teacher was saying. When he asked the whole class to stand up, your bum remained firmly on your seat. Fortunately, the teacher guessed that you did not understand. He was a Malay man who had married a Chinese woman and, having learned Cantonese himself, he said to you, ‘Hei sun, hei sun!’ (Get up, get up!).

From him you learned your first English words. And you never looked back. You were taught grammar the old-fashioned way. You had to learn spelling and syntax and punctuation; you knew the purpose of an apostrophe; you did not, unlike so many today, confuse ‘it’s’ with ‘its’.

But you were also a man of your generation and culture. Although you were interested in science, you never discussed science with me. When I announced my desire to become a physicist, you told me to ‘forget my fanciful dreams’. In those days, I suspect you could only imagine boys becoming physicists. Thank goodness that I inherited more than your logical mind – I also inherited your obstinacy. I ignored you. In the end I hope I made you proud.

Watching your physical deterioration this past year has been painful. There was no getting away from the reality that you no longer enjoyed the quality of life you’d previously had. You knew the end was near. You also knew the President’s name and what day of the week it was. I take comfort from the fact that you still smiled.

On your last full night on Earth, I’m told you sang through the night, keeping the entire house awake. In the morning you seemed oblivious to having been up. You continued bossing your carers about, demanding coffee.

I smile at this story. That extraordinary burst of energy would have worn anyone out.

Please, take it easy now, Dad. There is nothing more you need worry about, no one you must provide for. Sleep well.

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August 29, 2024 · 18:54

The Beginning of the End

On the first day of this year my father had a fall. His knees just buckled. My parents live in the United States, so Mum dialled 911 for the emergency services. The fire brigade arrived and took Dad to a hospital down the road.

When I heard what happened, I was filled with foreboding. My parents had reached a point in their lives when they could no longer cope on their own. There’s no shame in this, but both are stubborn and fiercely proud. Both had resisted help. They didn’t want anyone from Visiting Angels. Then, after no more than a few sessions, they sent away the home helper from Right at Home I had spent weeks trying to secure. ‘We gave it a go and it didn’t work,’ announced my mother.

Finally, it seemed to me the day of reckoning had come. And so it has turned out.

It’s extraordinary how tough growing old still is. Surely, in this era of precision technology, we should have figured out ways to make life more twilight-friendly?

The hospital kept Dad overnight for observation. He grumbled the whole time, insisting he did not need to be ‘observed’. He’s of a generation that never asks for help. He’s also a man who thinks he knows best; he won’t listen. For years, he walked with a limp. Among the papers stuffed into a side drawer, we found referrals for physiotherapy. Dad had not gone for physiotherapy, but he hoarded the slips as if they were trophies.

Two weeks later my father’s legs gave way again. The emergency services were called, he was transported to the same hospital and the cycle was repeated, only, this time, the doctors refused to release him without extensive tests.

The test results shocked us: they indicated double kidney failure. The problem wasn’t Dad’s kidneys at all; the problem was dehydration – Dad had stopped drinking water and was taking only Coca Cola. His primary physician concluded that my father had checked out mentally.

Looking back, I realise now that Dad gave up on life years ago. Retirement had been a delight at first, but without a job, my father lost his purpose. We all need a sense of purpose, however tenuous.

Dad never returned to the house in which he had lived for twenty six years. He was heart-broken about this, but he has too many medical conditions to make living in his own home an option. For the past decade, he and my mother have operated in the ‘I’m so old now, why bother?’ mode. They would go to their primary physician for regular check-ups and lab work, but if tests showed abnormalities requiring further investigation, both adamantly refused any additional diagnostics.

We now live with the consequences of those decisions. And we are seeing how cruel life can be: my father’s mind remains quite sharp, albeit with bouts of confusion, but he feels stuck as he’s bed-bound, no longer able to walk or do much for himself; my mother, on the other hand, has full use of her limbs but often can’t remember what she was thinking mere minutes before.

Both are frustrated and unhappy, my father especially so. This isn’t living, he screams. He’s screaming a lot these days. Dad is ready to go. He wants to die, only, his body won’t let him. And I cannot, in good conscience, do anything to accelerate his demise. Even if euthanasia were available, I would find it hard, as the person holding power-of-attorney over crucial healthcare decisions, to actively send my father to his death.

So we stumble on, down a path that we know is leading to the end. This is uncharted territory: none of us has been taught how to plan for that excruciating period before our final breath. The hours appear long and drawn out. Wills and funeral plans we know how to make; the UK government’s website even has a section dedicated to wills (as does the US government’s website). But on this, this struggle to die, there are no pearls of wisdom.

Inevitably, I question what I should and shouldn’t do. There isn’t a right answer or a wrong answer – nor do I believe a directive exists that could possibly cover the many grey areas. I have no wish to prolong my father’s suffering; at the same time, I wouldn’t forgive myself if we didn’t make sure that he’s as comfortable as we can possibly make him. But by making him more comfortable, I’m prolonging his life and therefore, to some extent, also prolonging want he regards as his suffering. I know this, but I have to do what I think is right.

I’m doing my very best – and that’s the most anyone could ask.

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November 13, 2023 · 13:11

Ruminations On Heritage 6: The Point of No Return

In February 2022, the woman who was then Malaysia’s Deputy Minister for Women and Family advised husbands to calm wayward wives by beating them ‘lightly’. The politician, Siti Zailah, remains a Member of Parliament. This is the sort of country I come from.  

When flight MH-17 was shot down in 2014 by a Russian missile, Malaysia’s flourishing Islamists, including the same Siti Zailah, blamed Malaysia Airlines. Allah’s wrath had apparently been incurred by the alcohol the airline continues to serve. His anger was further stoked by those sexy stewardesses parading in form-hugging kebaya blouses and skirts. The Malaysians who believe this are in the minority, but they’re allowed to make an awful lot of noise. This is the sort of country I come from.

On the things that really matter – religious extremism, endemic corruption, nepotism, cronyism and most of all, Malaysia’s entrenched racism – its leaders have been conspicuously silent. This is exactly the sort of country I come from.

A long time ago – May 13, 1969, to be precise – so-called ‘racial riots’ occurred just after a set of important elections. Most of the people killed were Malaysians of Chinese ethnicity. I remember it as a period of curfews, shop closures and adults walking in fear. When grown-ups are scared, kids get scared, too.

Afterwards, a new Prime Minister took over and a suite of racist policies, euphemistically called the New Economic Policy, was instigated. Such massive changes should have warranted close examination – as would have happened in any proper democracy.

Not Malaysia. For the next thirty years, we were told not to breathe the words ‘May 13’, as if just hearing the words would cause Malaysians to become hot and bothered and start attacking one another with parangs and krises. And like sheep, we obeyed! That, too, is the sort of country I come from.

Until those pivotal elections of 1969, there was real democracy. The largest political party, the United Malays National Organisation or UMNO, realised it could lose elections. Losing elections meant losing power and UMNO was determined not to lose power. Under the camouflage of ‘addressing racial inequality’, its leaders set about dismantling democracy, but we were too blind and naïve to notice.

That was so long ago, I hear you say: why does it matter anymore?

It matters because our present is shaped by the past. Truth matters.

Has any attempt been made by any Malaysian government since 1969 to find out the whole truth about May 13, 1969? Of course not. Until there is truth, how can there be reconciliation?

UMNO proceeded to rule until 2018. Think of it! Hegemony from 1957 to 2018 – a total of 61 years! Six decades are more than enough time to corrupt the entire country from the bottom up and dumb it down from the top to the very roots. The dumbing-down has been nothing short of phenomenal.

Earlier this year, in my home state of Perak, a woman seeking treatment at a public hospital was told off for her attire! Imagine the scenario: you need help, you go to a hospital and before anything else, the doctor lectures you about your clothes.

Here was the response from the chair of the state’s health committee:

‘If you go to a government department, there should be decorum. … If you go to a temple, there’s also no signboard, but we know we cannot wear short skirts there. It’s an unwritten understanding.’

The guy actually compared a temple to a hospital, even though a temple is a place of worship that you visit voluntarily, while a hospital IS NOT a place of worship and you go there normally under duress. His was a wonderful example of cow sense (with grave apologies to cows).

It reminded me of the last time I renewed my passport. I went to Perak’s Urban Transformation Centre (UTC) in Ipoh and the passport officer refused to serve me because I was wearing a T shirt and Bermuda shorts. My shorts were perfectly respectable – but not respectable enough, it seems, if you’re a Muslim-Malay passport officer. In Malaysia, the job of a civil servant is no longer limited to paperwork: it’s also his role to judge what you wear. He told me to come back with a sarong or trousers that would ‘cover my knees’.

The only surprise is that he didn’t also complain about my bare elbows. This will change, no doubt: Malaysia’s home-grown, Taliban-inclining political party, called Parti Islam Se-Malaysia or PAS for short, will see to that.

PAS was a fringe party when I left. It is now flying high, with more seats in Malaysia’s parliament than ever before. The politician I’ve already mentioned, Siti Zailah, is a member of PAS – a shining example of their intellectual quality.

On that same trip, on the very day my passport was renewed, I was asked by a Malaysian-Chinese businessman why I did not live there. What was it I had in England that I could not find in my land of origin?

I gave no answer, not because I didn’t know, but because the answer is so complicated that I did not know where to begin. How do you explain to someone who has never lived in a liberal democracy what it’s like to live in a country that isn’t corrupt from top to bottom, where you can trust the courts, the press isn’t muzzled, there is civic discourse and crucially, where I am equal to everyone else under the laws of the land?

The man who asked the question is obviously happy living under Ketuanan Melayu (Malay lordship). I wouldn’t be happy. And since I have a choice about where I live, I can’t see any reason to go back.

An estimated 1.8 million Malaysians live outside Malaysia (population 34 million in 2023). At least half of my classmates from secondary school and many members of my family have left. That’s a huge brain drain for any country, especially one still in development mode.

When Malaysia’s current Prime Minister, Anwar Ibrahim, visited New York recently, he was asked what he would do about this talent bleed. He gave an astonishingly lame reply about ‘enhancing incentives’.

The idea that money alone would bring us back is laughable. Financial incentives have been available to tempt Malaysians back since 2011 and only 2,500 overseas Malaysians have taken them up (Source: video below by Mariam Mokhtar), roughly 0.138% of the diaspora.

A charitable view is that Anwar just doesn’t get it. Perhaps he genuinely believes that tax breaks on luxury cars and tax breaks on just about everything else would be enough to bring us back. I will speak only for myself here, but I’d like to say it loudly and clearly: what I have in England is freedom, and this freedom is priceless.

Since freedom is a nebulous concept, an example might help. If I wrote an op-ed on the subject ‘Is Charles the King of all Britons, or does he represent the interests only of white Britons?’, I’m confident it would be accepted by a broadsheet publication here. But if I wrote an op-ed entitled ‘Is Malaysia’s King (Agong) really the King of all Malaysians, or does he favour the Malay race?’, would the official Malaysian press dare touch it?

The difference is that England goes out of its way to accommodate different viewpoints and to protect the rights of minority groups. In my adopted country I am equal by law and can rely on a judicial system I trust. No economic incentive is going to make me give this up.

Going back to Anwar Ibrahim (and his limp solutions for Malaysia’s brain drain), a less charitable view is that he actually understands what’s at stake and fears the consequences. What would Malaysia look like if all 1.8 million of us went back?

Some of us would surely join the brave Malaysians who’re still speaking up against the things its politicians don’t have the guts to discuss. We would be vocal, certainly. UMNO wouldn’t like that, and it’s unclear whether Anwar would be all that keen, either.

I once told myself that when Malaysia abolishes bumiputera rights, I will go back, at least for a time, in order to give something of myself to the country I came from. I now know this is a pipe dream. Bumiputera rights won’t be abolished anytime soon. But it took the break enforced by COVID for me to see the light.

Finally, after forty four years away, I’ve given up on Malaysia. Perhaps some immigrants reach this point, when both they and the country they left behind have changed so irrevocably that there’s no turning back.

Giving up on a dream is never easy. Part of me is angry, but mostly, I’m sad. We have all lost; even those who think they’ve gained have actually lost.

We lost the spirit of Malaysia and in losing that precious spirit we squandered the chance to build a truly great nation.

And for what? So that a small group could cling to power while enriching itself and its cronies.

I won’t be returning, but I will support the Malaysians still fighting for a better tomorrow. One of these is the writer Mariam Mokhtar. We don’t know one another; I’ve only enjoyed her articles from afar. As she describes below, her writing has been deemed so incendiary that the slavish Malaysian press won’t publish her.

That hasn’t stopped Mariam. She launched her own news platform and now makes videos, too. I discovered them while carrying out research for this blog-post and I find her analysis always spot-on. 

If you’re interested in what took place during May 13, 1969, I would recommend the book May 13 by Dr. Kua Kia Soong, director of Suaram (short for Suara Rakyat Malaysia, or Voices of the People of Malaysia). He wrote it by piecing together extracts from documents that were only declassified after thirty years. When his book came out in 2007, some Malaysian politicians wanted it banned – which is reason enough to read it.

Walau pun saya berada jauh, Malaysia tetap di hati.

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June 8, 2023 · 16:21

Ruminations on Heritage 5: Who Owns the South Sea?

I first saw the stretch of water known as the ‘South China Sea’ when I was a child. My family went on holiday to the East Coast of Peninsula Malaysia. Travel wasn’t the same in those days – it was a huge adventure. We visited the states coloured purple, green and yellow on the map and I have vivid memories of the ‘South China Sea’. It seemed to always be there: blue and gently lapping on sunny mornings, dark and roiling when the storms came.

(Source: https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/East_Coast_(Malaysia))

That trip was memorable for another reason. One night, after following a guide by torchlight for what felt like miles, I saw giant turtles with leathery backs on an isolated part of the coast. Those amazing turtles were clambering onto Malaysia’s pristine sands to lay their eggs! Almost at once, their eggs were removed. I was fascinated; at the same time I felt sorry for the poor mother turtles. I’m sure they sensed what was happening.

The ‘South China Sea’ brought more than giant turtles: it also brought people. Among these were my ancestors, some of who arrived from southern China in rickety boats.

They did not call the water that had brought them the ‘South China Sea’. In Chinese, the same stretch of water is actually known as the ‘South Sea’ (南海), meaning the sea south of the Chinese mainland.

As a child, it never occurred to me to ask why a sea on Malaysia’s eastern coast should be named after China. If you look at a map, you’ll see that the ‘South China Sea’ is really a Southeast Asian sea: it flows across Southeast Asia, eventually reaching southern China and Taiwan. But the bulk of this sea is not in North Asia.

 Source:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_China_Sea

Rather, it unfurls on the shores of Vietnam, the Philippines, Indonesia, Brunei, Singapore and, as I saw for myself, Malaysia. It swaddles the southern tip of Peninsula Malaysia, linking up with the Straits of Malacca. A more appropriate name for the ‘South China Sea’ might actually be the Southeast Asian Sea.

For me the Southeast Asian Sea isn’t just any sea: I saw it as a child, I stepped into its waters and I smelled it. It carried my ancestors and sustained others. It has given me a trove of memories. What happens in this sea matters to me. And rather a lot has been happening.

Did you know that China has claimed large parts of the Southeast Asian Sea for itself? The excuse China uses is ‘historical rights’.

The logic runs something like this: Chinese seamen ‘discovered’ reefs and islands in the Southeast Asian Sea 2,000 years ago and claimed them for China. Ever since, China has allegedly ruled over these islands. Because China claims to have governed godforsaken boulders in the middle of nowhere continuously, it also claims to own these islands and reefs. China has even created whole new islands where none existed before. It goes without saying that China owns the adjacent waters, too (and presumably, all the resources that go with them, and maybe even those turtles).

I am oversimplifying. The legal arguments are more sophisticated – you would hardly expect less from the Communist Party. For a detailed legal summary, you can see this link. But the sophisticated legal arguments really boil down to the above.

In the narrative above, the peoples of Southeast Asia are conspicuously absent. Imperial China regarded Southeast Asians as ‘southern barbarians’, as I learned when I reviewed a fascinating non-fiction book called ‘Writing the South Seas’ for the Asian Review of Books. It’s no surprise that Southeast Asians were excluded from considerations of power. Barbarians are to be civilised – they’re not capable of ‘discovering’ their own islands.

Imperial China may no longer exist, but a pattern of dominance, once established, is hard to dislodge. Attitudes die hard.

China has built islands in the Southeast Asian Sea on a scale never seen before, threatened other nations’ ships and confronted their aircraft. These are not the actions of a friendly state. Today’s China is no longer the benign Imperial China of days past, a country content with merely receiving tributes from Southeast Asia’s rulers.

Southeast Asians must unite. Otherwise, what’s the point of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN)?

Achieving unity in the region may be easier said than done; like Europeans, we have a chequered history of squabbling, but we should at least try to come together. The Southeast Asian Sea lies mainly in Southeast Asia. That’s where its resources belong and that’s where its resources should stay. Granted, we have to share these among us – but Southeast Asia has a long tradition of sharing.

Thank goodness there are signs of unity coming, slowly but surely. We can do it, we have to do it. There is no other way.

Giant turtles were not seen in Malaysia for decades, but they have apparently returned. Despite adversity and precarious numbers, the turtles have come back to reclaim their sea and shores. We need to do the same. We must reclaim our sea, our reefs, our islands and our shores. Before it’s too late.

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August 4, 2022 · 17:39

Ruminations on Heritage 4: Why I Want to Visit Taiwan

A friend just asked what I thought of Nancy Pelosi’s trip to Taiwan. My reply was succinct:

‘Of course she should have gone. F*** the Communist Party.’

I haven’t always been so clear. For years, I felt a misplaced sense of loyalty towards China, a sentiment that trickled in by osmosis from the adults around me. My father, especially, believes all things Chinese to be superior. This, despite the fact that he was born and raised in Malaysia, lives in the US and has only visited China once.

He is far from alone. Whenever I point out inconvenient truths, many relatives and friends of Malaysian-Chinese descent choose to remain silent.

Take the issue of sexism. My paternal grandparents were immigrants to Malaysia from China, where the idea that you need to have a boy-child is so ingrained that after three girls in a row, they became desperate. They gave away the third girl in the belief that a sacrifice was needed. The gods had to be appeased, and along came my father. His parents did not seem to care who they gave their daughter to – she ended up in an impoverished family living a life I can scarcely imagine. All because she was a girl.

Such behaviour is just plain illogical.

Yet, even the most Westernised of my family members prefer to overlook this. They revert instead to talking about the awful things that happen to girls and women elsewhere, as if a thousand other wrongs make a right.

Or they say, ‘Ah, but things have changed.’

Indeed, there are now tens of millions more ‘missing Chinese women’ – the girl babies who were abandoned, given away or simply murdered (see chart below from a BBC article) when the one-child policy came into force. Disparities usually become less acute as a country gets wealthier. Not so in China: the richer China grew, the more distorted its gender ratio became – a first on our planet. 

The men on the Central Politburo’s Standing Committee must have been delighted. More boys! This Standing Committee is a subset of the Communist Party’s Central Politburo and comprises just seven members – an elite amongst the elite. China’s Standing Committee has never had a woman. Not one since 1949: you can see the dour male faces for yourself by clicking individually on the links.

In Party hierarchy the Standing Committee is all-powerful; who would dare accuse any of them of sexual impropriety? Only a tennis star, it seems: Peng Shuai, and look what happened to her. Corralled, censored, silenced and now missing. The man she accused was a member of the Standing Committee from 2012 to 2017. No wonder she’s gone from the public eye.

Taiwan, with which I started, is an altogether different country. This series of islands located off China’s south eastern coast has been self-governing since 1949. Taiwan has evolved into a functioning democracy with genuinely contested elections. It allows dissent. Governments change. It has passed progressive laws. As mentioned previously, if I so chose, I could marry my girlfriend there legally.

Where Taiwan Lies

For years, friends who have been to Taiwan have extolled its scenic beauty and its food, especially the Japanese cuisine I adore. Taiwan used to be a Japanese colony – amazing Japanese food this is among the legacies.

In past decades, a distinct Taiwanese identity has also  emerged. A growing number of its citizens apparently don’t regard themselves as Chinese but as purely Taiwanese, an identity

‘not based on race or blood but… on the sentiments that we are a country with democracy, freedom, human rights and the rule of law, and we can participate in the political decision-making.’

There is something to learn from them. Heritage is an anchor, but heritage should not shackle us. It must surely be possible for us as Asians to be proud and at the same time, critical. If we can’t criticise, how will anything improve? We may even need to reject aspects of our heritage en-route to forging something new.

Of course, sentiments like these can only be expressed by people who live in countries where freedom is enshrined.

Taiwan is no renegade province owned by mainland China. It’s a separate, independent and very real country, one we should all visit – and not because Nancy Pelosi went.

Part 5 to follow

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June 20, 2022 · 16:37

Ruminations on Heritage 3: It’s Just Not Asian!

When I first came out as gay, my parents blamed England. If only they had not sent me to boarding school, ‘this’ would not have happened. It’s just not Asian!

I never asked which part wasn’t Asian. Did they mean:   

  • Being attracted to someone of the same sex?
  • Telling a fundamental truth that made others uncomfortable?
  • Daring to think outside the box?    

This took place in the mid-1980s. It would be tempting to believe that the whole world has changed since.

The map below shows the countries (in red) in which homosexuality remains illegal. There’s a very large mass of grey – not the case before – so, indeed, there has been progress. But we are nowhere near an egalitarian utopia. The Russian Federation, for instance, is hardly an oasis. Neither is China.

Source: Human Dignity Trust

Earlier this year, mainland censors erased a lesbian plot-line from the sitcom ‘Friends’. No lesbians for the mainland! Just what is the Communist Party so afraid of? Obviously, merely hearing about lesbians on TV could give Chinese women ideas. Hardly a vote of confidence in their men.

One of the other countries in red is Malaysia. It has a Muslim majority and homosexuality is illegal. I still have relatives there, one of whom is gay. He isn’t a Muslim. He has lived in Malaysia all his life. He has also been in the closet his entire life.

An early memory I have is of waking one morning to be told that this particular relation had been in a terrible road accident. When I saw the photographs, I was shocked. To describe his car as a wreck would be an understatement – it was crushed. If you looked at photos alone, you would have assumed its occupant well dead.

Apparently, the accident was his fault. My relative had come out of a junction and was hit by a bus (if my recollection serves me right). Everyone was amazed he survived the catastrophe. At the same time, they could not fathom what he was doing in that part of town. I remember the adults around me shaking their heads, asking repeatedly: what was he doing there at that hour?

Years later, he told me. He had been meeting a man.

The revelation brought lightning clarity. Disjointed memories fell into place. Finally, I understood. I felt like Archimedes with his Eureka moment. When my relative swung his car out of that junction, his mind was occupied.

Obviously, such an accident could have happened anywhere. But if this relation of mine had been able to meet a man the same way he was encouraged to date women, he is unlikely to have been skulking off to a clandestine encounter in the early hours of dawn.

I have a gay cousin who did the same: he went around surreptitiously – until his parents accused him of being a drug addict! It took a dramatic argument for him to come clean with them. That story, at least, has a good ending. My cousin lives happily with his partner and has done so for years.

Not the case of my car-crash relative, whose sexual orientation is an open secret. Granted, he is loved by the family. This makes him fortunate. Nonetheless, can you imagine the amount of sniggering he has had to endure, what it must be like living within a culture where you’re asked ‘Are you married?’ within minutes of meeting someone?

As we celebrate Pride month, I thought it time to shine a light into the closet. It looks to me like a dank, dark place. I can’t imagine living in it, or how great the mental toll must be.

I’ve often heard that ‘we in Asia have our own way of doing things’ – we don’t need to talk about them. Some people believe there are things better left unsaid. No doubt they also think I should not be writing this blog-post. But ‘ways of doing things’ evolve. Chinese women used to bind their feet: should we return to that practice? Of course not – no culture is beyond universal human values. If we find it hard to say the word ‘gay’, it’s because we still associate shame with gayness. The dictum ‘we have our own way of doing things’ is no more than a convenient cover. It allows uncomfortable topics to be avoided.

Fortunately, some changes have come; in Asia, Taiwan has led the way. The island nation legalised same-sex marriage on 17 May, 2019. Contrast that with China’s censorship of the Friends’ sit-com lesbian plot-line. Taiwan’s marriage equality is one of many reasons why it is not China – and whether Taiwan belongs with the mainland is, in my view, debatable.

All those years ago when my parents blamed England, they had a point. England did not make me gay, obviously, but it has given me a confidence, freedom and happiness I would not have enjoyed otherwise. Here I can live openly without having to hide; here I stand without fear, knowing that I am protected by law.

This freedom is indescribably precious. In a poignant moment a few years ago, my ex-wife and I welcomed a visitor from Dagestan. When he realised that he was the guest of two women who were married to each other, he was in awe. Without any hesitation whatsoever he proclaimed:

‘Today I have met people who truly are free.’

Part 4 to follow

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April 8, 2022 · 12:47

Ruminations On Heritage 2: What A Truly Multicultural Democracy Looks Like

My country of origin, Malaysia, loves selling itself as the multicultural haven that it really isn’t. My adopted land, on the other hand, just gets on with it. England is showing the world what a truly multiracial, multicultural democracy looks like.

At the start of the pandemic, we were treated to daily press briefings. The first session was hosted by the Prime Minister and his medical advisors. Thereafter, other Cabinet members presented briefings.

The parade of Secretaries and Ministers is evidence of just how far Britain has come. By now you will likely have heard of Rishi Sunak, Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Priti Patel, the Home Secretary. Both are descendants of first-generation Indian immigrants from East Africa. The former Vaccines Minister Nadhim Zahawi, who was tasked with rolling out the UK’s very successful vaccines programme, is himself a first-generation immigrant. Here he is giving one of those briefings. Zahawi is now the Education Secretary.

In England, politicians from ethnic minority groups aren’t just relegated to the side-lines, the way they are in Malaysia. Below are a few of England’s current Cabinet members.

Health Secretary: Sajid Javid;

Business Secretary: Kwasi Kwarteng;

COP26 President: Alok Sharma

In ‘Malaysia, Truly Asia’, there is virtually no ethnic diversity within a government that continues to be dominated by race-based political parties. By ‘race-based political party’, I mean a political party run along sectarian lines which admits full members from only one particular racial group.

Yes, you read that right. This may be 2022, but you still have to be Malay (or bumiputera) to be a full member of the ruling United Malays’ National Organisation (UMNO). In principle I am allowed to join, but only as part of an associated group following orders (as per Clauses 4.1.2 and 4.3 of UMNO’s Constitution). Unwanted, unwelcome, second-class: the same way I’d be treated if I lived in Malaysia.

Excerpt from UMNO’s Constitution

There is also that damp squib known as the Malaysian Chinese Association (MCA), which supposedly represents Chinese interests. Not to be outdone, Indians have the Malaysian Indian Congress (MIC).

The idea that you need to be a certain race to gain full membership of anything should be illegal. It has no place in today’s world. But race (and religion) are expedient tools for power. And the politics they nurture thrives on a self-fulfilling loop of tribalism. Nastiness is repeated ad infinitum, the audience become inured and tribalism ends up infecting a nation.

I discovered this when Sajid Javid was named Home Secretary in 2018. My phone pinged with messages. Some Malaysian family members were worried. ‘You now have a Muslim Home Secretary! London’s mayor is also a Muslim!’

Yes, and???

It transpired that a tonne of What’sApp videos were doing the rounds. One listed the British cities with Muslim mayors (hundreds, apparently). Another video purported to show a road somewhere in England being taken over by Muslim men bowed in Friday prayer. Yet another displayed Buckingham Palace. The Palace, it seemed, was going to be turned into a mosque. I wonder if someone has told Her Majesty. She is celebrating an unprecedented seventieth year as monarch and may have other plans for her home.

A few salient points are in order. First of all, a politician like Sajid Javid reached his position on merit – he was not favoured by positive discrimination. Secondly, he is a member of the Conservative Party which, whether or not you like it, is fully open to all races and faiths. Thirdly, he serves all Britons, not just British Muslims.

When a group of Asian male paedophiles was convicted of grooming white girls in Huddersfield for sex, Javid was brave enough to call a spade a spade. He described the men as ‘sick Asian paedophiles’ and commissioned research to investigate cultural connections. Here’s an excerpt of his comments:

“…the sad truth is that if you look at recent high-profile convictions of gang-based child sexual exploitation, there is a majority of people that come from Pakistani heritage backgrounds – that’s plain for everyone to see. What I’ve said is that we, in trying to deal with this, trying to turn this round, we must look at all factors and we must not be too sensitive and shy away or be oversensitive.”

Spot on.

What Javid said and the way he said it is one of the fruits of freedom. Real democracy is sometimes messy. But after the storm comes sunshine. You are able to look at your own culture with clearer eyes. You can speak hard truths without feeling defensive.

Part 3 to follow.

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April 6, 2022 · 16:49

Ruminations on Heritage 1: The Price of Freedom

Who we are, what we believe in and the values we stand for have never been more important. What would you do if a regime you strongly opposed appeared on your doorstep?

I have long asked myself that question. With Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, this is no longer a moot point.

I visited Ukraine three times in 2014 in the months after Crimea was annexed. My now ex-wife is of both Russian and Ukrainian origin and has friends in Kyiv, which we visited. We also went to Lviv. Both are charming cities. To me, Kyiv seemed more Soviet and therefore exotic, whereas Lviv, which is close to the Polish border, (see map below from nationsonline.org) reminded me of Vienna: beautiful yet familiar.

Everyone we spoke to in Ukraine shared the same aspirations. They were fed up of corruption and proud of how they had overthrown a leader who had done Moscow’s bidding.  Our Kyiv friends showed us the square where thousands had congregated for weeks in freezing conditions, protected against bullets by the stacks of tyres they put up. They saw Ukraine’s future firmly in Europe. They did not wish to be part of some reformulated Russian empire – the shackles of which they had worked so hard to throw off.

Tyres Left in Maidan, Square in Kyiv

Till then, I had known little about Russian colonisation. (NB Technically, it was Soviet colonisation.) I heard many stories on those trips, and one was so harrowing that I could not get it out of my head. I had to write about it. What emerged was flash fiction – a very short piece. Masha’s Burning Memory was included in the UK’s National Flash Fiction Day’s 2014 anthology, ‘Eating My Words‘. Our friend Olga, who had related the story, cried when she read it.

The real event on which her tale was based took place in 1933, during what is known as Holodomor or the Great Hunger. Lest we forget the past, there is a museum in Kyiv dedicated to its memory. Remarkably, Kyiv’s Holodomor Museum continued putting up defiant updates in the midst of continuous bombardment. For a full and exhaustive account of Holodomor, I recommend the book Red Famine by Anne Applebaum. It doesn’t make for easy reading, though; I haven’t been able to finish it in two years.

Church I Visited in 2014

Who knows what will be left of the church above? When I compare Russia’s subjugation of Ukraine with Britain’s colonisation of Malaya, I realise we got off very lightly. Indeed, Russia makes our British colonial masters seem positively benevolent. No wonder Ukrainians are fighting so hard.

But there is more to Ukrainian resistance than mere political self-determination. What they want is simple: freedom.

A cliché, I know, and like many clichés, buried within is a kernel of truth. I get this.

I have experienced a type of freedom in the West which I have not found elsewhere. The freedom of opportunity, freedom to fully express myself and explore, the freedom to choose.

I come from a country where little of the above exists and I cherish my freedoms. (Now that it has become common to count your freedoms, I have also begun using the plural). Alas, too many of my Western friends take their freedoms for granted. They have not known ‘un-freedom’.

Part 2 to follow.

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