Henry Gurney
Henry Gurney was the British High Commissioner to Malaya (before Malaysia), who was assassinated in 1951 by communist insurgents. Chin Peng as the top communist in Malaya/Malaysia is today still blamed for the evil act of murdering Gurney.
Additionally the Malaysian government has, in refusing to allow the 85 year old man to enter Malaysia [to return to his home town of Telok Intan (Anson) to die], reneged on the terms of the peace agreement it signed with the communist party, as the quid pro quo for the insurgents to disvow any further armed struggle against the government.
Additionally the Malaysian government has, in refusing to allow the 85 year old man to enter Malaysia [to return to his home town of Telok Intan (Anson) to die], reneged on the terms of the peace agreement it signed with the communist party, as the quid pro quo for the insurgents to disvow any further armed struggle against the government.
J.W Birch75 years earlier in 1875, J.W Birch was another senior British official in Malaya (advisor to the Perak Sultan) who was assassinated by Dato Maharajalela.
Unlike the fate of Chin Peng, Maharajalela is today a Malaysian folk hero.
Well, can't open those Japanese occupation. Because Bolehland royals image will collapse. Many royals are Japanese conquerer "subordinate" during WWII.
ReplyDelete:p
And yet they deny thy are not racialists.
ReplyDeleteHalf Indian..half Malay...PM for 22 years is their master.
Going backwards and keep thinking how to in votes..is the only way UMNO an ever in the 13th GE.
Chin Peng is the political target to win Muslim votes...right now.
Hooray for Najib's..."1 Malaysia".Do you know what ir means?
All BN buggers seem to know..but I still cannot figure it out.
To me...it is simply a play with words..to divide and rule races with Malays as landlords.
Heard that Chi Peng was the only one who refused to sign that agreement, whereas the other two Samsieh Falkieh and Ibrahim Mydin did ! so who's right who's wrong I don't know !
ReplyDeleteTo a certain race, their co-religionist Oxama Ladon is a heroic freedom-fighter, while others consider that Tojo wannabe to be a murderous terrorist. It all boils down to religion.
ReplyDeleteThe issue of vernacular primary schools has little to do with national integration. The medium of instruction doesn't matter. The biggest issue of vernacular primary schools is simply that the quality clearly points to the failure of Umno-led government, the legitimacy of the very philosophies and policies particularly its hegemonistic malay agenda.
ReplyDeleteIf the vernacular primary schools are allowed to expand, clearly the percentage of malays in these Chinese primary schools would expand striking at the heart of the malay agenda. It would increase integration but not the malay agenda.
There is no proof that different medium of instruction decrease national unity. What would decrease national integration would be if they thought different philosophy and for example - religion based schools. Even military schools have been shown to breed disintegration of its students from the larger population.
The idea of teaching Mandarin and Tamil to attract non-malays to national schools is a non-starter. Firstly, again the medium of instruction is a low low issue compared to the quality of education, secondly, there is already a severe shortage of Mandarin and Tamil teachers that national schools would never be able to do even a half-past-six job of it.
Thirdly, so long as Islamization of national schools is not stopped in its tracks, non-malays would always avoid it, simply because learning is just harder in a marginalized uncomfortable environment.
Vernacular schools are allowed to continue as it is simply because removing it would be perceived and rightly so, as eroding the citizen rights of non-malays, i.e. the very right of education - the only upward mobility tool the non-malays has. Non-malays second class citizenship will become third class with things like further Islamization of this country.
The issue of vernacular schools is not about national integration, it is about hegemonistic malay agenda. The fact it is an issue points to heart of our national problem.
My school in the 50s and 60s when terms like bumis and non-bumis did not exist.
ReplyDeleteBack then, there was a kind of kindred among school children then that does not exist today. We were racially different but we were all equal in every other way. Nobody was - special.
Today when a non-malay student goes to school, he has already been told over and over again by his parents that, "You will have to do superlatively in order to get into a local university."
The child comes back having done creditably well, and doesn't get the university course of his choice. But his malay classmate, with worse marks than him, gets more than he asked for.
All these double standards and retrogressive policies were put in place by our selfish politicians whose aim, rather than uplifting the malays, was to perpetually stay in power for their own good.
The end result is a new generation of Malaysians who are not united in the least.
The first thing to be done towards a real Bangsa Malaysia is to pull down all divisions that categorise us along racial and religious lines.
All, irrespective of race and religion, must be subjected to a truly merit based system in every sphere of Malaysian life.
All political parties that exploit any form of religion should be banned.
I just wish to sort out whether English medium schools will guarantee the success of Malaysia.
ReplyDeleteAccording to the some writing, the '"killing off of English medium schools" laid the foundation for the current deteriorating racial relations. I find this point of view very naive, superficial and unconvincing. Do people discriminate and hate against other races simply because they don't speak the same language?
Ethnic French, German and Italians speak their own languages in Switzerland with three official languages but has anyone heard of racial riots in Switzerland? I suppose the current deteriorating racial relations here is due to the institutionalised racism and racial inequality rather than the language people speak.
Does a good English proficiency guarantee employment upon graduation? Is the English proficiency of our graduates being over-emphasised with regards to the unemployment problem?
Malaysia and Philippines general populations have a better English proficiency than Korea and Taiwan, but the former two can in no way compete (whether in competitiveness, GDP or technology) with the two newly industrialised countries although we actually started better off than them after our independence.
Korea and Taiwan never had English medium schools and yet their high school students always top the list for the world mathematics and physics Olympiad.
The success of Hong Kong and Singapore as regional financial and trade hubs rests entirely on their competitive business environment, good governance and highly efficient administration. English is just an added advantage, not the sole sufficient condition for their success.
The so-called globalised world is always misunderstood in that everything has to be in English in order to succeed. Again, I find that naive, simple-minded and superficial. Globalisation demands for a broader worldview, critical thought and understanding of more cultures and languages rather than a monotonic all English mantra.
Shortsighted policies such as not having vernacular schools will eventually kill off Malaysia rich diversity of culture that is supposed to be a strong advantage amid the rise of China and India as the world cultural and economic superpowers.
If one ever notices, upon gaining power after independence, elites of Third World Countries (including Malaysia) trained by the colonial education system usually tend to look to their former colonial masters, rather than global models as their reference in running a country.
Summing up my point of view, thinking that English medium schools will solve all our problems and help us succeed is simply too naive and simple minded.
And then if you look at why they kill those two men, Gurney was killed because of the new villages and forced settlement of villages, primary of Chinese residents. Birch was killed because he sought to stop the slave trade and practice of slavery (so vital to folks like Maharajalela).
ReplyDeleteFunny out our textbooks gloss over what exactly JWW Birch was doing - you know, other than undermining "adat istiadat Melayu". Because slavery is an important component of this adat istiadat? Then again, killing a man by literally stabbing him in the back because of disrespect for Malay customs and towards the Sultan is hardly justifiable under any circumstance.
"The child comes back having done creditably well, and doesn't get the university course of his choice. But his malay classmate, with worse marks than him, gets more than he asked for."
ReplyDeleteThis reminded me of my own high school experience, in the 90s.
I was very fortunate to have gone to a school with a multiracial population and outlook, so much so that it was almost a microcosm of late 60's Malaysia, as expressed by the Setapak Declaration: "no single race outnumbers all the others", and it felt that way too.
As far as students were aware, race was almost never a factor...
... until the end, close to Form 5 SPM exams, when it was simply no longer possible to ignore the highly racialised issue confronting us - where to after SPM? Then, for the first time, we started to clearly separate along bumi/non-bumi lines.
Pretty sad.