In division we believe
By TAY TIAN YAN
Translated by DOMINIC LOH
Sin Chew Daily
MALAYSIA IS PERHAPS the only country in the world where a person has
to fill in his ethnic group in government forms.
I remember one other country that used to require its citizens to fill
the race column was Rwanda.
Long time ago there was no ethnic distinction in the African state.
Everyone in the country was identified as a Rwandan until the Western
colonizers arrived. The Belgian colonizers divided the people of this
country into Tutsis and Hutus.
Basically these people were similar in their languages, cultures and
religious beliefs, but why the differentiation?
The Belgians had the fanciful thinking of categorizing families owning
more than ten cows and having taller noses as Tutsis who were allowed
to become civil servants of the colonial government while the Hutus
were at the bottom of the political hierarchy.
Subsequently the colonial government issued two types of ID cards for
the Tutsis and Hutus respectively, thus dividing them permanently.
As a result, Rwanda was divided into two ethnic communities which were
persistently fighting against each other.
A war broke up between these two major communities in 1994, over a
million people were massacred, or one in six Rwandans.
After the war, the government pushed ahead national reconciliation and
the first thing it did was to abolish the ethnic distinction, meaning
Rwandans would no longer be divided into Tutsis and Hutus.
Today, Rwanda has emerged as one of the fastest growing economy and
one of the safest countries in Africa.
WHILE MANY COUNTRIES in this world are trying to annul the distinction
between races, we are still arguing whether the race column should be
removed from government forms.
The issue is not about whether the minister in the PM's dept Joseph
Entulu Belaun has misunderstood the Cabinet's decision, but that
removing the race column from government forms has been so
unbelievably hard.
So much so that the Cabinet itself gets confused, including this
gentleman from East Malaysia. In a way not known to others in this
country, he made the announcement to the media on his own accord that
the race column would be removed from all government forms.
After the news came to public attention, those liberal and matured
citizens applauded, thinking this was a symbol of the country doing
away with racial distinction and that the country no longer needed to
differentiate he people through this column.
But whether the column is eventually retained does not make any
difference, as our names have said it all.
Even this symbolic move is one step in the right direction.
Unfortunately there are certain groups of people in the likes of
Utusan Malaysia's Zaini Hassan who feel such a move would cause the
Malays and bumiputras to surrender their privileges. Perkasa's Ibrahim
Ali, meanwhile, has threatened to sue the government for contravening
the Constitution if it were to abolish the race column.
What amazed me was that our prime minister, who has remained largely
quiet in recent months, denied forcefully that the Cabinet had made
the decision to abolish the column, and had demanded hat the Iban
minister from Sarawak to apologize.
Even a leader who had so fervently promoted his Malaysia idea could
not let go of the race column. Could it be because he gave in to the
pressure from people like Zaini Hassan and Ibrahim Ali?
If Joseph were to tender an apology, that is not because he conveyed
the wrong message to the public, but because he has failed to get the
race column removed and change the way the government thinks.
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