Tragic religious intolerance

"Rumah besar tak berani, Rumah tokong tak peduli".


Shame on the authorities for their double standards when demolishing illegal erected buildings.

When Port Klang councillor Zakaria Deros, the Satay King, and other UMNO councillors built their palatial mansions without planning permit, no one dared touch their houses.

When Indian or Chinese temples were built eons ago without permit, even on the (Taoist) temple's owned land as in the case of the Tou Mu Kung temple in Bukit Mertajam, Penang, the authorities took delight in smashing them down, abetted by an aggressive police force.

But even worse than the demolishing of the temples, those municipal enforcement people from the Seberang Perai Municipal Council (MPSP) refused to allow the temple people remove the icons/statues.

If the objective of the authorities was to demolish the illegally erected buildings, as had been claimed each time, why did they deliberately prevent the owners of the buildings from removing the sacred statues?

The only answer one could think of has to be that there had been malicious intent to destroy the statues. The case of an Indian temple in Kuala Lumpur having its statues whacked by the DBKL enforcement officers to smithereens with their rotan rods had been indicative of their evil design. See my previous posting DBKL smashed statues of Hindu gods!.

In the current Bukit Mertajam case, Berapit state assemblyperson Lau Chiek Tuan, in whose constituency the temple is located, lodged a report against a police sergeant involved in the operation. Lau revealed that "the policeman shouted to me saying that he did not care even if the temple members died during the incident."

If true, it tells a terrible tale of a biased police officer who was prepared to let unarmed members of the public, only protecting their temple, be killed.

Bukit Mertajam opposition parliamentarian Chong Eng lamented that it had been agreed the MPSP won't take any action until after the Penang state exco meeting this week, where the matter would be given its final assessment.

Chong said as the state exco final decision was yet to be made, the temple committee was completely caught by surprise by the Pearl Harbour-ish sneak attack, ahead of the promised final review.

She said the temple committee was not provided with any reasonable notice to remove their religious items. It only showed the officers involved had been hell-bent on destroying not only the temple but the statues as well. They showed no respect at all for the beliefs of others.

This gels with the general suspicion that the sneak attack on the temple was premeditated with malice, and a demonstration of increasing intolerance by authorities for non-Islamic religions.

I wonder whether the bigoted comments during the UMNO annual general assembly had encouraged such official viciousness and bigotry amongst the MPSP enforcement unit and the BM police.

And what does Koh TK has to say, after praising the AAB government sky-high immediately after UMNO's recent racist fora?