Who should get the Bahasa test

MM Online - Most kids can already speak Malay, Chinese groups say (extracts):

KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 24 — Ethnic Chinese groups and political parties have criticised a proposal to deny identity cards to children who do not understand Malay, saying that the current generation already knows how to speak the national language.

Federation of Chinese Associations Malaysia (Huazong) deputy secretary-general Datuk Chin Yew Sin said, however, that it was not easy to make it mandatory for Malaysians to be fluent in Bahasa Malaysia as mastery of the language depended on whether one frequently interacted with those who speak it.

“These days, children in primary schools can speak Bahasa Malaysia. I don’t think it’s a problem,” Chin told Malay Mail Online.

Fluency in the language, however, could be difficult, he said.

Chin said even though Bahasa Malaysia is taught in all schools, including Chinese and Tamil vernacular schools, students in the latter two would generally speak to each other and with their families at home in their mother tongue.

He suggested that more activities be held between both Chinese and Tamil vernacular schools together with national schools so that students will have the opportunity to converse in Bahasa Malaysia.

“The children of this generation are better than those before. In coming times, they’ll be better. No problem."

Politicized or/and sinister language testing has not bee new, with two notorious events occurring in Australia in earlier Mat Salleh-rized years.

But first, an extract from the Australian Law Reform Commission - Reform Journal 6 (article by Kathryn Cronin):

Colonial immigration legislation may have been effective in limiting Asian immigration, but it created diplomatic problems for Britain in its dealings with China, Japan and the Indian subcontinent. Not surprisingly, such countries resented discrimination against their nationals and their explicit designation as undesirable immigrants barred in several British colonies.

The solution – termed the ‘Natal Formula’ – was devised by the British Province of Natal. Natal’s immigration legislation did not define the immigrants sought to be excluded, but gave power to its immigration officers to require any immigrants to be subjected to a dictation test in a European language chosen by the officer.

Immigration officers could select the immigrants they did not want and devise a test they could not pass. Dictation tests could be applied on arrival or after entry. The test was a useful device to deny entry and to remove persons from the territory. [...].

Australia’s Immigration Restriction Act 1901 (Cth) incorporated the Natal Formula. The Act stated that ‘prohibited immigrants’ could be removed from Australia. A ‘prohibited immigrant’ was ‘any person who fails to pass the dictation test’. Over the years, the test was used to deny entry or secure the removal of many non-Europeans as well as socialists, Irish republicans and anti-fascist campaigners. It became the cornerstone of the White Australia policy and political conservatism,

In 1936, a British women born in India but definitely English and very Caucasian, wakakaka, who did NOT know or speak Italian was given a dictation by Aussie Immigration in the, yes, you guess right, Italian language.

Naturally she was not allowed to enter Australia. but subsequently she discovered that the Aussie army bloke she was to have married wanted to divorce his wife whose family had powerful connections.

She was unjustly badmouthed as an Eurasian prostitute and thus an undesirable character. The story showed her perseverance in combating the gross corrupt injustice and with the help of Kiwi barristers, winning in the end, though her romance with her beau was by then finished. 

That sounded like a Korean drama where the rich and powerful could do anything, wakakaka.

Two years earlier in 1934, Egon Kisch who was a Jewish Communist and anti-war activist of ethnic German origin born in the old Czechoslovakia, proved to be a far more difficult case for Australian Immigration to handle (got rid of) because he was multilingual, wakakaka.

But because Aussie Immigration was determined to block him from entering Australia, they gave him a dictation test in which he was to write the Lord's Prayer in Scottish Gaelic.

After a court case, he won when the judge ruled in that Scottish Gaelic was not "a European language" within the meaning of the Immigration Restriction Act.

Additionally, Australian police Constable Mackay, who had administered the test, although born in Scotland, was not actually able to understand the Lord's Prayer in Scottish Gaelic himself, wakakaka.

But the Aussie government continued to hound him through other means until he left for France.

Nonetheless, Prof Zainal Kling's proposal might yet have one lovely use, to test some specific people, to wit, certain UMNO members.

This is certainly a urgent need to test, more than anyone, members of a party called United Malay National Organization. Though UMNO is in itself an English abbreviation, the test should be in Bahasa (not English, wakakaka) for party members who claim to be Malays.

I heard of some UMNO branches where its proceedings such as in party meetings, forum, dialogues, etc have been conducted wholely in Tamil, wakakaka.

That's who the test in Bahasa should be applied to.