Talking again about the UMNO Youth rampage 10 years ago at the Apcet II Conference in a KL hotel, the whole ‘organised’ rough-house ramble was put on to disrupt the conference and intimidate the participants.
What was in aid of?
Just to please a neighbouring country who was abusing the human rights and indeed the lives of a group of people of a country it should not have swallowed in the first place to incorporate into its Nusantara ‘empire’.
Many young Malaysians, including those UMNO young hooligans who participated in that act of unmitigated mob violence, seemed to have forgotten that the same neighbour had once lusted after our country and wanted to swallow us up too. We should be more sympathetic to our fellow target victims instead of resorting to violent mob rule to please an alien country.
Sure, it’s a big gorilla that would have pressured us to stop the Apcet II conference. It tried to do that with Apcet I in Manila, and while the Filipino government succumbed to the pressure, the Philippines courts did not, ordering the government to back off from a legitimate and peaceful seminar. Likewise too with Apcet III in Bangkok, which ran undisturbed by thugs.
Only Malaysia saw fit to suck up to its neighbour. And for what?
It’s not as if it’s a Muslim nation, and therefore Islamic solidarity was called for! It’s not as if it’s a Malay nation and therefore Malay solidarity was natural [it’s mainly a Javanese dominated society who persecuted the Malays in Aceh, and whose Majapahit ancestors chased Parameswara, later to be Sultan Megat Iskandar Shah, to Malacca].
It’s not as if that nation has done anything for us, except tried to invade us once, endowed us with their SW Monsoon poisonous haze and their illegal migrants. And it’s a country we nearly (again) went to war with recently over some gas fields. It’s a country we had a hacking battle with!
So OK, we brown-nosed those Javanese, because some of us fantasized there’s some form of persaudaraan berakar sama [brethren of same origin], between them and us, by preventing a regional group of peaceful NGOs from seeking a peaceful, yes, peaceful resolution to a murderous situation in a neighbouring nation, where vulnerable East Timorese were massacred by Indonesian troops.
What was the damage for that thuggish behaviour for a foreign country which didn’t even appreciate or remember what the UMNO young goons plus associates had done?
(1) We abused OUR own citizens for an alien nation.
(2) We manhandled one of OUR respectable senior scholars for an alien nation. He might/may be from the Opposition, but he's from OUR Malaysian Opposition, not of an alien nation.
(3) We wrecked a Malaysian hotel for an alien nation.
(4) We abused our peaceful international guests in a violent manner for an alien nation.
(5) We disgraced the good name of OUR nation for the benefit of an alien nation.
(6) We then abused the Apcet participants by having the police detain them, teh victims – and for what?
(7) We put them in an Abu Ghraib-ish cell! And we have the cheek to condemn the Americans?
(8) We showed the world how violent, abusive and repressive we could be, all for the benefit of an alien nation.
And it’s an alien nation that has constantly showed us disrespect and aggression from time to time!
Those UMNO people ought to get their bloody priorities right!
Good deal. Now the same guys in APCET is doing the same to Lahad Datu. UMNO tried to stop this from happening and now....it's too late. the APCET alumni is now trying to free Sabah just like East Timor.
ReplyDeleteNowhere to run, Tian Chua and Sivarasa!