Deputy minister Steven Sim & vandalism attack at St Anne’s Church

MM Online:

Deputy minister urges calm after vandalism attack at St Anne’s Church

BY JUSTIN ONG

Deputy Youth and Sports Minister Steven Sim says the police should be given the room it needs to fully investigate the vandalism incident at the St Anne’s Church in Penang yesterday

Picture by Mukhriz Hazim 

KUALA LUMPUR, Dec 6 — The police should be given the room it needs to fully investigate the vandalism incident at the St Anne’s Church in Penang yesterday, said Deputy Youth and Sports Minister Steven Sim.

Sim, who is the MP for Bukit Mertajam where the church is located, said he contacted both the parish priest and the district police chief to confirm the incident.

“We will leave it to the police to investigate and take further action. Let us not speculate on the matter,” he wrote on Facebook.

According to the Free Malaysia Today news portal, a man entered the church compound yesterday and proceeded to deface a statue there using a can of spray paint.

He did this in view of others, including a security guard to whom he gave a written note before leaving on a motorcycle.

Police are investigating the case under Section 427 of the Penal Code for mischief that is punishable by up to five years’ imprisonment, a fine, or both.

Malaysia experiences religious polarisation as religion is one of the main platforms for local political parties.

vandalism in St Anne's 

Yes, Malaysian politics see (mis)use of religion, race and, no ... not a 'R' this time but, wakakaka, sexual escapades of various varieties (or allegations of them) quite regularly - not just frequently, which means we can expect that after, say, Sodomy 1 and 2, Semburit-ism in Sandakan, there will come Sodomy 3 and 4, wakakaka.

Strangely enough, whilst political naughtiness regularly involves misuse and unscrupulous exploitation of religion, race, sex (and sometimes the raja2), it seldom touches on corruption, wakakaka.

But to be fair, acts of desecration were/are not necessarily always linked to politics nor ethnic/religious animosity, because in Australia, a Christian-majority nation, I have read of churches being desecrated - and likewise too in Thailand when in March 2006, a man smashed an icon of the Hindu god Brahma with a hammer.

The Erawan shrine is held very much sacred by Thai Buddhists. The suspect-to-be mentally ill vandaliser was unfortunately beaten to death by two street sweepers, such is the frightening degree of religious devotion to deities and the King held in Thailand.

Hindu god Brahma at Erawan Shrine 

Wikipedia informs us:

The Erawan Shrine was built in 1956 as part of the government-owned Erawan Hotel to eliminate the bad karma believed caused by laying the foundations on the wrong date.

The hotel's construction was delayed by a series of mishaps, including cost overruns, injuries to laborers, and the loss of a shipload of Italian marble intended for the building. Furthermore, the Ratchaprasong intersection had once been used to put criminals on public display.

An astrologer advised building the shrine to counter the negative influences. The Brahma statue was designed and built by the Department of Fine Arts and enshrined on 9 November 1956. The hotel's construction thereafter proceeded without further incident. In 1987, the hotel was demolished and the site used for the Grand Hyatt Erawan Hotel.

Following the act of desecration:

An identical statue of Brahma was placed in the shrine on 21 May 2006 at 11:39, at the instant the sun was directly over head. Officials from the Department of Religious Affairs and the Maha Brahma Foundation said the new statue was made of plaster with a mixture of gold, bronze, and other precious metals, along with some fragments of the original. A duplicate statue made entirely of metal had also been cast in the same mold and is kept for safety in the National Museum of Thailand.

All feng shui stuff.

Years later, in August 2015 in the evening, a bomb exploded outside the shrine killing 20 people and injuring 125. An analyst with IHS Jane's suggested the attack had been carried out by the Pan-Turkic Turkish ultra-nationalist organization Grey Wolves in retaliation for the Thai government's deporting Uyghur terrorist suspects to China, instead of allowing them to accept asylum offered by Turkey. This remains the most likely explanation, as most of the victims were ethnic Chinese.

just outside Erawan Shrine 

When I was a kid just in my very early teens, I went to St Anne’s Church in Bukit Mertajam to celebrate the Saint's 'feast day' (usually near near of July). Though I use the word 'celebrate' I was clueless as to why I was there other than I was with neighbourhood friends who were (are?) Catholics. The crowd was staggering. That was my faint memory of being at St Anne's Church.

I hope the recent desecration can be handled well by police who have an earned notoriety of "sometimes can see, most times cannot-ness", wakakaka.

In finishing off, I have to say I am quiet impressed with Steven Sim (DAP wakakaka) as I've been reading about his excellent performances in the press over a period of time. He seems to be one of the MPs who are actually working as a people's representative.

Sim has been the MP who helped rescue an Indonesian maid Adelina Lisao from employer-abuses after his office was alerted to her case. Alas, Adelina died.

the late (and much abused) Adelina Lisao 

Her then-employer S. Ambika was accused of allegedly treating her with inordinate cruelty, even making the poor maid sleep outside the house with a Rottweiler. Ambika was charged with Lisao's murder but subsequently (and shockingly) acquitted without any explanation. Indonesia was in an uproar over the unexplained acquittal. Steven Sim informed that the acquittal is being appealed.

S. Ambika 

It's DAP people like Steven Sim who have endeared the party to the people, but it's Lim KHAT Siang who has demolished our trust in DAP.