Statue of British coloniser Francis Light splashed with red paint by Penang vandals, police investigating possible BLM motive
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Police are still investigating the case under Section 427 of the Penal Code for committing mischief Picture from Twitter/AntifaM3 |
PETALING JAYA, July 3 — Penang police are considering anti-colonialist and anti-slavery sentiments as possible motives for vandals who defaced a statue of British coloniser Francis Light.
George Town OCPD assistant commissioner Soffian Santong issued a media statement today saying that the statue was found splashed with red paint on the morning of June 30 by Fort Cornwallis’ operations manager, who lodged a police report yesterday.
The case is currently being investigated under Section 427 of the Penal Code for committing mischief.
Soffian also confirmed that the operations manager was not in debt to unlicensed money lenders or “Ah Longs,” who are known to use red paint as a warning to those who failed to pay up in time.
The police are looking into the possibility that the vandals were inspired by Black Lives Matter activists in the United States and Europe who tore down monuments of slave owners and white supremacists after the death of George Floyd, an unarmed African American man who died at the hands of a white police officer in May.
The Penang vandals could face a jail term between one and five years, a fine, or both if found guilty.
The issue became a hot topic on Twitter on July 1 after user @AntifaM3 tweeted out images of Light’s defaced statue.
“Finally in 2020, the statue of a coloniser and slave owner named Francis Light in Penang, Malaysia meets the same fate as other statues around the world,” the user wrote.
A post on The Thrifty Traveller blog shows a transcript of Light’s will at the Penang state museum, which states that he did own slaves and bequeathed them to his partner Martina Rozells.
“I leave all my Caffree slaves the following choice, either to remain with Martina during her life she being willing to maintain them or each man to pay her 50 dollars and be free,” Light wrote in the document.
Light is best known for founding the British colony of Penang in 1786 and was a prominent representative of the British East India Company.
His acquisition of Penang from Sultan Abdullah Mukarram Shah allowed the British to expand rapidly into the Malay states and accelerate British colonisation in Southeast Asia as a whole.
Light’s statue in Fort Cornwallis was first erected in 1936 to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the founding of George Town.
The Star wrote that the monument has been cleaned since the vandalism incident but remnants of red paint remain visible.
Francis Light was a conman in that he cheated the Sultan of Kedah (then Sultan Abdullah Mukarram Shah) out of Penang Island, by promising military support against Siam (now Thailand) when he didn't have that authority. But as the SAS motto goes, "Who Dares Wins", and that buccaneer won.
Anyway, he colonised Penang and named it 'Prince of Wales Island'. Light died of malaria and was buried in Northam Road Protestant cemetery (Northam Road has been renamed Jalan Sultan Ahmad Shah).
The statue (above and vandalised) was actually modelled after the features of his son William as there was no photograph of Light in those days. His son William of course has since been known as the founder of Adelaide in South Australia, hence one of the first 'twinning of cities' Penang had was with Adelaide.
BTW, there is another Pommie statue at the corner of Burma Road and Pangkor Roads, just in front of the Penang Chinese Recreation Club, wakakaka. But the statue of Queen Victoria is quite fenced up.
It was actually built with funds contributed by the then-Penang Chinese community which drew mucho jealousy from the British community in Penang - the Pommie officialdom didn't contribute any money towards the erection of Queen Victoria's statue and purchase of the playground 'Victoria Green' that came along with the commemoration, as those ArMor's did in Singapore.
Yes, you could say the statue was a result of Chinese Bodek-ing, wakakaka, but to ensure those Penang Cinapeks didn't face any mucho issues with Tuan Orang Putih's in the former's businesses, wakakaka again. It was no different to subsequent Penang Chinese contributing humongously to the building of the State National Mosque, as a 'business investment' cum respect for Tunku Abdul Rahman whom the Penang Chinese loved (still do).
Hope no one is going to desecrate the mosque because of its Christian features.
Stop this nonsense. It would be hard to name one country or culture that did not practice one form of slavery or bondage etc, at some point in their history.
ReplyDeleteSlavery, as bad as it was and is, was widely practised in the West and East alike in the 19th century and before that.
Britain banned the trade of slaves in 1807, and Slavery itself in 1833, ie AFTER the era of Sir Francis Light (1740-1796). But due to long and strong cultural acceptance in Malaya, and the huge amount of money to be made thereof, slavery took a long time to be eradicated completely.
Early Malay Rulers and Leaders also practised slavery, not only to the non-Muslim Orang Asli but they also enslaved their own fellow Malays. The British initially profited from the slave trade, then they restricted it, then it became "tolerated" and eventually banned it altogether.
Many Malay words were adopted or borrowed from other languages like Portuguese, Sanskrit, English etc because there were no equivalent Malay word. There was no local need for such words until the foreigners arrived eg church (Portuguese - gereja), cupboard (Portuguese - armario), bread (Sanskrit -rotika), but the word "Hamba" did not have a foreign origin, it has always been a Malay/Indonesian word.
Sir Stamford Raffles too had slaves, in Java, Bencoolen but in line with the British anti-slavery law he introduced restrictions in slave trade in Singapore. So should we bring down his statue there too? And Raffles Hotel....?
Maybe Sir Francis Light owe Ah Long some hutang....ha ha ha...
ReplyDeleteOur fixation with statues....LEAVE THEM ALONE......
ReplyDeleteQUOTE
Perak Mufti Harussani Zakaria has declared that it is a "big sin" to build monuments in human forms
The religious leader was referring to the iconic Tugu Negara sculpture, explaining that such statues are considered haram in Islam
The Tugu Negara was officially unveiled on 8 February 1966.
He explained that building monuments in the shape of humans was haram in Islam as in the hereafter, God would ask those responsible to give life to their creations.
He told Malaysiakini that it became a bigger sin when people were invited to hold ceremonies at the National Monument as it bordered on idolatry or idol worship.
"From the beginning, we did not agree (with the National Monument's construction) as we are an Islamic country. Why are we worshipping monuments? In any case, monuments in human form are proscribed," he said.
"Any living creatures, except for trees, cannot be built as a replica or monument if it is done in a condition with all limbs complete," added Harussani, as reported by The Malay Mail Online on 4 September.
UNQUOTE
Tanjung was just a muddy swamp with a few ramshackle huts before Francis Light founded the port there.
ReplyDeletePenang at the time was described as the finest harbour on the sea-route between India and China.
The Sultan of Kedah couldn't give a fuck about God-foresaken Tanjung at the time.
Give credit where credit is due.
I am surprised KT didn't blame the British for taking over Kedah in 1909 from Siam....otherwise Toonsie would have been Thai problem....in fact Perlis, Kelantan and Terengganu would also be under Thailand today.....no PAS either....ha ha ha.....
ReplyDeleteSiam was no less a colonial hegemon and overlord in the northern Malay states than the later British.
ReplyDeleteHowever, it was politically convenenient to ignore that before Merdeka , up till today.
Of course, a Colonial Master with an Asian face often seems more palatable, even if the "Master" part is really no better , or worse in objective terms.
The same psychology seems to be at work today with easier acquiescence of CCP bullying and hegemony among Asian nations.
The blacks were hunted down, captured and forcibly thrown into the deep hull of those ships like herds of animals and brought to AmeriKKKa to be slaves. Having been enslaved for 250 years ( TWO HUNDRED and FIFTY YEARS !), black people were treated as sub-citizens, sub-Americans, and sub-humans. And this paragraph summed up their position up to this very day :
ReplyDelete" In the Deep South, a second slavery ruled. In the North, legislatures, mayors, civic associations, banks, and citizens all colluded to pin black people into ghettos, where they were overcrowded, overcharged, and under educated. Businesses discriminated against them, awarding them the worst jobs and the worst wages. Police brutalized them in the streets. And the notion that black lives, black bodies, and black wealth were rightful targets remained deeply rooted in the broader society.
White supremacy is not merely the work of hotheaded demagogues, or a matter of false consciousness, but a force so fundamental to America that it is difficult to imagine the country without it."
The statues of Confederate 'heroes' erected throughout the south, some as late as the 2000s, are not to honor those men as much as to remind the black population exactly who was boss. The statues in question almost entirely were erected as instruments of oppression for the black population.
Those statues were erected entirely to propagate the apartheid Jim Crow system and should be removed.
The outcry precipitated by the knees of the white cop on George Floyd's neck which killed him had resonated throughout the planet...and those equally oppressed colored people in other countries have taken up the call for protest too.
The gall of these white supremacists to continue trumpeting their love of 'freedom and democratic values' is utterly disgusting to say the least.
And our blind mice here typically become abject apologist for their white masters...how far are you willing to go to kowtow to them...your copious diarrhoea here stinks like hell.
American black slaves were hunted by Arabs in Africa, sold to British ships, transported to be sold as slaves (for cotton plantation) in America - so involved were Arabs, Brits and American plantation owners
Delete"The same psychology seems to be at work today with easier acquiescence of CCP bullying and hegemony among Asian nations."
ReplyDeleteTo the HK废青？
To those 台毒 morons?
& to demoNcratic mfers like u?
No!
To all of u, Colonial Masters, past or present, with European faces r often seems more palatable.