Tuesday, December 11, 2007
Recently, you could have heard about some nasty news about one of our neighbouring countries.
I shall not say what country is it, for fear of getting myself into trouble. However, I can’t stop myself from blogging this. Let’s call this country, M.
So much for calling itself a multi-racial and cosmopolitan country, M drew unwanted attention when its ‘harmonious’ reputation is at stake. Is it truly Asia when it features the different racial representative on its tourism campaign? I doubt so.
Now the country is under international scrutiny for arresting a group of citizens from its racial minority, for the reason of ‘national stability’. However, I must admit that protests and violence carried out by this minority race will not been deemed as effective if they would want M to give them more citizen rights. M’s leader had said, he would rather sacrifice public freedoms for national stability. This has brought about human rights activists accusation of racial inequality.
As far as I know, M has never lived up to its claim of government transparency. On this issue, M’s leader has made a statement, “We must never take our peace as granted.” Well, maybe that’s not peace; rather, the racial minority has been suffering in silence. Not only do these people been suffering under racial discrimination, they have also been the victims of economic deprivation. M may be thinking that it’s hard to manage a country where different groups of people have different demands and sensitivities, but it’s not a reason for them to only show concern over their own ethnic citizens. Are you aware this ethnic group, which forms more than 60% of M’s population, enjoys great privileges in business, jobs and education? This holds true even if it means that these people can be lazy, idle or sluggish.
The situation M is facing today has drawn unhappiness from the home country (let’s call this country, ID) of the involved racial minority. M’s response was to tell ID off as this is their ‘home affair.’ My reaction then was, did M ever treat these people as their own citizens? What were they thinking when they made the same accusation at us a few years ago? So much for accusing Singapore for our reluctance to allow people from a certain racial group to be appointed as top-notch civil servants, I can’t help but laugh at M’s contradiction.
Perhaps, I should just stop here. M has so many hilarious acts that are just too much to write now.
Perhaps, I will write them in every entry of these 2 months.
Perhaps, I should call this “M’s Side-Splitting Special Report”, a.k.a. MSSR.
Posted by Buzz and Mulan at 2:04 PM