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.