Kit Siang emails Najib on Low Yat mob incident

DAP elder statesman has suggested several items to be included in the Terms of Reference for a proposed Royal Commission on Low Yat.

KUALA LUMPUR: DAP elder statesman Lim Kit Siang has sent an email to Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak to seek a meeting with him on setting up a Royal Commission of Truth and Reconciliation on the Low Yat Incident. “We have to ensure that there will be no recurrence of race riots because of petty crimes”.

Lim, who is also DAP Parliamentary Leader and Gelang Patah MP, also suggested several items be included in the Terms of Reference for the proposed Royal Commission.

“One issue for the Commission to consider is how the country can be a world model of a successful, united, peaceful and harmonious multi-racial, multi-lingual, multi-religious and multi-cultural nation,” said Lim.

“This brings up the question of whether the police could have acted preemptively to prevent the petty crime of a mobile phone theft from being transformed into a race riot involving a few hundred people.”

Other terms, said Lim, include the attack on journalists; the role of social media with Ministers blaming it as the main culprit behind the Low Yat Mob Incident; whether one major cause of the Low Yat riot was the incessant incitement of hatred as a result of the politics of race and religion in recent years; and whether the Low Yat Incident was proof of the failure of nation-building policies, particularly the Prime Minister’s 1Malaysia signature policy, and decades of Biro Tata Negara’s “racist” courses.

“A blueprint to ensure that there will be no recurrence of race riots arising from petty crimes was particularly important for a plural society like Malaysia, said Lim.

Malaysia, as a country, should discard the bad national “denial syndrome” habit or “sweeping under the carpet” unpleasant and unhealthy events instead of facing frontally the problems and deal with the root causes and find a long-term solution, said Lim.

This was the existing government’s attitude all these decades and why there was no commission of inquiry to identify the causes of the two major race riots of May 13, 1969 in Kuala Lumpur after the 1969 general election and the 2001 Kampung Medan riots in Selangor. “These are two examples of ‘sweeping things under the carpet’.”

Sporadic events and outbursts after the Low Yat Incident have highlighted the folly of continuing with such “sweeping things under the carpet” mentality, ignoring root causes and the supporting factors conducive to the outbreak of racial incidents. “The issue must be taken seriously in a plural society like Malaysia.”