The Price of Being Born Muslim

By TARIQ AHMAD

I am by no means an expert on the topic of Islam or Muslims. However, by accident of birth, being Muslim was thrust upon me.

My chances going in were not too bad — about a quarter of the world’s population is Muslim. I live with the title and try to make sense of the daily newsworthy events that keep my people in the news.

It was not until the fourth grade that I even knew I was Muslim. I was in grade school in Karachi, Pakistan, checking out a library book — an illustrated Bible — when my friend pointed out to me that I had picked the “wrong” book.

He appeared to be a little upset by my choice, as did some of the other kids. Any deviations from the norm, I concluded, would raise unnecessary alarm. My friend, since then, has become a militant atheist, but that is a story for another time.

S’wak, Sabah – beautiful states wrecked by bad politics

By Sim Kwang Yang

46 years ago on 16 September, Sarawak and Sabah declared themselves a part of the new federation of Malaysia.

I should know; I was a scrappy 15-year-old young lad roaming the streets of Kuching.

Together with a bunch of equally scrappy boys in the neighbourhood, we sauntered down to the fort at the river side opposite the famous clock tower in the town centre on that fateful day near mid-night.

We watched in silence as the Union jack was lowered for the last time, and the new Malaysian flag was raised for the first time.

We walked home through the deserted streets of Kuching, as Stephen Kalong Ningkan, an Iban and the first Chief Minister of Sarawak, spoke about independence on the radio.

Television was still a distant reality then.

Looking east – to Sabah and Sarawak

By Sim Kwang Yang

The running joke going the round in Sabah and Sarawak for decades has been that you hear about these two East Malaysian states only during the daily weather report following prime time news on TV.

Overnight within our new political landscape, these two large and largely forgotten, marginalised and neglected states have been the focus of media attention, thanks to the rumours of mass defection by Sabahan and Sarawakian MPs to the Pakatan Rakyat coalition.

On my recent trip back to my home town of Kuching, I was told that a senior BN Dayak politician has been informed by Anwar Ibrahim that if the federal government should change hand, the chief ministers of Sarawak and Sabah would be a Dayak and a Kadazan respectively. For those who know the politics and the demographic of these two unique states well, such an offer would tip the political scale there in a radical manner.

Then, there is the open offer by Anwar that if the Pakatan Rakyat should take power at the federal level, the oil and gas royalty for Sabah and Sarawak would be raised from 5% to 20%, one way or another. This is a sensitive issue that has hurt the feelings of Sabahans and Sarawakians since the early years of their independence through the formation of Malaysia.

Zimbabwe, Tale of a Failed State

By Kenny Gan

Rhodesia was a British colony in Southern Africa until Ian Smith unilaterally declared independence from Britain in 1965 and ruled as its first Prime Minister, heading a white minority government. In 1980, power was handed over to the natives after a bruising civil rebellion which took 30,000 lives. In that year, Robert Mugabe’s party won the elections and he went from rebel leader to its first President. The country was renamed Zimbabwe, meaning “great houses of stone” in the Shona language.

The Jewel of Africa

The newly liberated country had many advantages left by its former white masters, including excellent infrastructure, transportation and banking systems and the best health care and education system in Africa. The Z$ was stronger than the US dollar. It had the highest literacy rate in Africa which reached 85 percent at its peak.

Zimbabwe also enjoyed bountiful natural resources, with rich minerals including platinum, gold and diamonds. It is the home of Victoria Falls, one of the seven natural wonders of the world. It contains vast game reserves, which attracts tourists. With the most fertile farmlands in the continent, agriculture became the mainstay of the economy, and the country became the breadbasket of Africa exporting wheat, tobacco, corn, sugarcane and beef to its neighbours and beyond.

An Iban political fable

By Bunga Pakma

Many of us are now in “python mode,”  digesting our Christmas meals.  This is no time for anything except quality entertainment.  I’m giving you a story I translated into English from Iban a long time ago. The authour is Mr Andria Ejau, who wrote the first Iban novel.  Andria Ejau died in 1989.

This story was published in 1968 as a children’s book, with lots of illustrations, by the excellent Borneo Literature Bureau.  It’s a political fable.  I have learned that the Orang Asli also tell this story.  I believe this story will resonate as true among Urban folk as well as Forest folk.

*********

Aji Bulan, The Moon Rat

The Meeting.

Dreamers of all lands unite

By Pak Bui

To call someone a “dreamer” has become a grave insult in our pragmatic society, only marginally better than to call someone an “idealist”.

A close friend mused yesterday that life is empty without dreams. We must all have a dream of our own, to give us hope and meaning in life, my friend told me. I have ruminated over this, and I have decided I agree with this sentiment whole-heartedly.

Dreaming may be the natural state of affairs for human beings, as Zhuangzi, the revered Chinese poet and philosopher, postulated. One night, he dreamt he was a butterfly, flying carefree. When he awoke, he wondered if he was a man dreaming he was a butterfly, or if he was a butterfly who had just begun dreaming he was a man (莊周夢蝶).

Dream sequences have played major roles in religion, art and literature. Dreams played critical roles in the stories of Noah and Moses, common heritage to all three major monotheistic religions. Dreams also play important roles in Buddhism and Hinduism, and in the creation myths of the Ibans , Native Americans and the Australian aboriginal peoples.

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year !

The Malay Dilemma in Sarawak

By Keruah Usit

“When I came home on nomination day, three young men came to beat me up to teach me a lesson,” tua kampung (village head) Ahmad Sahari said. “They came into my garden on two motorcycles and attacked me when I greeted them. They punched me and struck me with their helmets.

“I was 68 years old at the time, but I used to teach ‘silat’ (Malay self-defence) and I was still strong,” Ahmad said, “so I fought them off. The young thugs didn’t expect me to be able to put up a fight. They climbed back onto their motorcycles and tried to escape.

“I picked up a branch lying by the road and swung it at one rider as he sped past. He fell off, clambered back on in a hurry, and then all three rode away up there,” he gestured, pointing at the narrow gravel lane beside his wooden house.

Three jeers for Mahathir

By Pak Bui

Hornbill Unleashed writers detest character assassination and name-calling. We prefer trying to shed what light we can on Malaysian society and politics, rather than slinging insults at public figures.

Knowing the good is doing the good, we argue, paying heed to the words Socrates spoke 2,400 years ago. The only good is knowledge and the only evil is ignorance, we remember.

So we will not immerse ourselves in the torrent of virtual curses hurled at Mahathir Mohamad in blogs and internet chat-rooms. I would argue that whatever evil Malaysia’s fourth Prime Minister has done, during and after the long winter of his reign, does not spring from some demonic possession, but from ignorance.

A friend and mentor was one of Mahathir’s victims in the ‘Operation Lalang’ Internal Security Act (ISA) sweep in 1987. He suffered unspeakable pain and humiliation in solitary confinement in Kamunting for two dark months. My friend, an intelligent and humane social activist, left prison scarred for life.

The Pakatan Rakyat common policy platform got substance

By Sim Kwang Yang

 

The Pakatan Rakyat inaugural convention was finally held last week in Shah Alam with 1,500 delegates agreeing to accept their common policy framework.

I pored through their policy paper, covering four areas: 1. Transparent and Genuine Democracy; 2. Driving a High Performance, Sustainable and Equitable Economy; 3.Social justice and Human Development, 4. Federal-State Relationship and Foreign Policy.

Policy documents are by nature very boring stuff, and I endured the boredom of going through all that political rhetoric.  But the person who drafted this policy paper (Zaid Ibrahim I think) has done a good job.  He has covered most areas of nation-building, and has struck a useful balance between brevity and scope.  Still, I find the statement on foreign policy really too brief and too anaemic.

OF HALAL HUBS AND THE ISLAMIC STATE

By Zhang ML

The Chief Minister (CM) of Sarawak, Abdul Taib Mahmud, has finally said it.

In his attempt to sell Tanjung Manis as a halal (acceptable to Muslims) food and non-food processing hub in Sarawak, as well as promoting it as part of SCORE, the CM has today proclaimed that Malaysia is an Islamic State, just as a few others before him have done.

Was this declaration made simply because he wants to attract or boost participation by locals, as well as foreign investors in the halal hub as part of SCORE? “The advantage that we have is that Malaysia is an Islamic country. Although there are halal products from non-Islamic countries, the consumers, especially the Muslims, will have the tendency to buy halal products from fellow Islamic countries…They do so because they have more confidence in halal products from Islamic countries”.

The CM did go on to admit that it was odd that the non-Islamic countries like Australia, New Zealand and others are leading in terms of producing halal products, especially dairy and meat products. Whether or not his statement about Muslim consumer behavior was true or not, he certainly seems to want us to believe it.

The three-headed hydra

By Sim Kwang Yang

The thumping landslide win by Umno’s Isa Samad over PAS in the Bagan Pinang may have been somewhat expected, but it does expose serious shortcomings within the Pakatan Rakyat coalition, to the extent that the rakyat has the right to ask: can it take power at the centre in the next general election, and if so can it rule with competence?

The Pakatan campaign in Bagan Pinang was disorganised and uncoordinated, lacking the kind of effective urgency that we witnessed in Permatang Pasir and elsewhere.

Even if Isa (right ) was not the candidate, Umno would probably have won easily still.

In a sense, it is good for Pakatan to lose this by-election. If they had won, it would’ve given PAS the impression that voters from all ethnic persuasions owe this Islamic party their die-hard support without question; it would’ve given PAS impetus to entrench their delusion that they are invincible without having to try hard to win the hearts and minds of the people.

The Pakatan coalition has been floundering for months in their public image. While one may argue that they are more democratic than BN in that all parties are free to express their different views in public, their constant public squabbles over very petty issues can only erode the confidence of the people, especially the fence sitters.

Malaysians a “diaspora”?

By Bunga Pakma

Our collective effort reaches readers in every country on the globe.  Have you ever clicked the little icon called “ClustrMaps” that sits to right across from the headline?  Do try.  Malaysians (of course) access our site most often.  Then people in the US come to read what we write.  And then plenty of people from everywhere view the essays on Hornbill Unleashed—from Albania, Bolivia, Djibouti, and Liechtenstein.  Greenland gets two hits from the past four months. Only Antarctica is not represented.  I assume that’s because the various stations there use the domain-names of the countries which support them.

After learning that we had such a following, I thought to myself that we ought to reach out.  To describe the far-flung community of Malaysians across the world as a “diaspora” is not entirely correct.  “Diaspora” is an ancient Greek word which originally applied to the community of Jews who emigrated by their own free will or were driven out by Roman imperialist force from the sliver of Palestine that was their homeland.

Everywhere the Jews went they carried the record of their history, an anthology which they themselves call the Tanakh and which Christians have appropriated and call the first part of their Bible.  The Tanakh was compiled by Jewish scholars held captive in exile by the Babylonians centuries before the Romans.  It is full of first-rate poetry, much on the themes of exile: the pain of separation from what one loves, the loss of identity and dignity, the lonely feeling of isolation among strangers, and the longing for return to a just, prosperous, godly homeland.

Of RM4.90 Maggi Mee packets and the lame PAC

By Sim Kwang Yang

There was much anticipation in the air in Malaysia, as the country awaited the report from the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) on the Port Klang Free Zone (PKFZ) scandal.

When the report was unveiled, the PAC named former transport minister Chan Kong Choy and former Port Klang Authority (PKA) general manager OC Phang as being culprits for possible criminal breach of trust. That kind of bold PAC declaration is quite unprecedented.

PAC also announced that they will look into the RM1,43 billion cost overruns in the Rawang-Ipoh 179km double rail project next.

In past decades, the findings of the Auditor-General’s Report and the sittings of the PAC that examine it have consistently and systematically been ignored by the media and the general public. A landslide majority for the ruling Barisan Nasional coalition has meant that nothing could be revealed much from those two very important institutions.

After the 2008 general elections, the proportion of Pakatan Rakyat MPs to BN MPs tilted to two to three, allowing more opposition representation in the PAC, and providing this committee with more teeth.

The ethics of rice eating fences

By Sim Kwang Yang

Pagar makan padi. That is the old Malay proverbial description of corruption.  It translates awkwardly into “rice-eating fences”, meaning that the fencing erected to protect the rice field turns around and devours the rice instead.

The Malay language is a colourful tongue in its native form, if you can steer clear from the deadened officialised version.  In this case, the old proverb portrays beautifully the concept of betrayal of public trust involved by public officials in enriching themselves.

As a human vice, corruption is as old as prostitution, and yet it has probably wrought much more havoc upon human societies than prostitution, because it can be a curse upon the stability and prosperity of nations.

In China, corruption has been an inseparable feature of government from ancient times to the present.  An old Chinese proverb has it that 9 out of 10 public officials are expected to be corrupt.  That is what I would call a conservative estimate.

The new Umno dilemma

Kaypo Anak Sarawak is a Columnist  of  Hermit Hornbill at The Borneo Post Online , His article is  published  in The Borneo Post every Sunday. (Used by permission of the Author )

ONE gets the feeling that the political ground in Malaysian national politics is going through a quiet but radical and fundamental shift; there is now a serious challenge to the many assumptions of the politics of race by an increasing number of citizens of all races.

Ever since the independence of the Federation of Malaya in 1957 and the formation of Malaysia in 1963, observers and academics who have made their career by studying and writing books on Malaysian politics have always asserted their assumption that politics in Malaysia was forever condemned to be communal.

Even among voters, the great majority of them had long subscribed to the appeal of communal political parties for racial unity for a long time past. For many decades now, they responded to the call to be united under a single-race party so as to give the party greater negotiating leverage within the ruling Barisan Nasional Coalition.

The primordial emotive and visceral power of racial slogans has allowed Umno, MCA, and MIC a gridlock on political power in West Malaysia, and therefore the nation.

Making out a case of Sexual Exploitation- A call for further investigations by the Police

By Zhang ML

A denial of rape allegations by a Penan woman made headlines in the Borneo Post on October 29. The article had a photo of an unidentified woman with her eyes blacked out and captioned “What? Me a Rape Victim?”

As I read the stories that have been unfolding since then, I cannot help concluding that this case falls within the range of the different types of sexual exploitation or exploitative relationships that girls and women find themselves caught in,.even if it is not rape.

For those of us who have been following the issue the past year or so in the mainstream and local Sarawak papers, it is safe to conclude that the woman who lodged a police report at the Long Lama police station is ‘Bibi’ (not her real name).

‘Bibi’ was interviewed at the Women’s Aid Organisation (WAO) Shelter or Refuge in KL by four members of the task force set up in October 2008 by the Ministry of Women, Family and Community Development to investigate the allegations of sexual abuses affecting Penan girls and women.

ISA – one for the dustbin of history

By Sim Kwang Yang

I remember distinctly my earliest impression of Malaysian politics when I was just a scrappy secondary school boy in Kuching. It was one of revulsion at the injustices inflicted by the Internal Security Act, and the massive arrests of social and political activists in Sarawak under this law in the 1960s.

I consoled myself that the country was in a real state of emergency then, with the security forces fighting an armed communist insurgency throughout the country. At times, there were almost daily reports of casualties suffered from both the belligerent parties on the radio (there was no television then).

Some of my former schoolmates and former teachers in my Chinese primary schools either disappeared into the jungle, or were arrested and detained under the ISA. Not being mature enough to take sides, I reluctantly accepted that some kind of extra-constitutional police power was necessary.

Unfortunately, I was cursed with a superior education, in preparation for the Cambridge Overseas School Certificate. In Form Three history lessons, we had to study about the Glorious English Revolution, the Bill of Rights, the doctrine of separation of powers, and the general principle of fundamental civil and political liberties.

Get a Brain, Morans!

By Bunga Pakma

It’s been a crazy week.  Weeks usually are crazy for all of us, I mean, we’re all run off our feet, and as Murphy predicts, awkward things happen at the worst possible time. But I knew this week was going to be especially weird when I was riding the taxi to work early Monday morning.

The driver had tuned to an English station. The talk-show host’s chatter broke for a commercial.  I heard the words “New, crunchy pizza!” “Crunchy”? Pizzas aren’t supposed to be particularly crunchy—a wordless aperçu in two-tenths of a second which woke my attention, then—“smothered in corn-flakes!” Yuck! My mind reels at the enormity of this culinary atrocity.  Perhaps, to imagine an example in the local food vocabulary, a crisp grilled ikan tenggiri drenched in licorice, gorgonzola cheese and cheap gin might convey the horror and nausea.

A minute after that, waiting at a light, I heard a brief report on the doings of the Malaysia National Ice Hockey Team. Huh?  May the players, coaches and fans forgive me, but come on, an ice hockey team in Malaysia is about as strange as a Baffin Bay Arctic Beach Resort.  Sure, it can be done. A KL arena can be turned into a mighty Cold-Storage, and folks in bikinis can get a midnight sun tan under a dome.  Think of the electric bills! Maybe I’m old-fashioned, but the “cognitive dissonance” of such projects won’t be banished from my head.

Who loves Parti Cinta Malaysia?

By Pak Bui

The new Parti Cinta Malaysia (PCM), based in Penang, has one of the weirdest names in the history of Malaysian politics. Thaksin Shinawatra’s Thai Rak Thai (Thais love Thailand) has a better ring to it, but then Thai has the advantage of being a charming, melodious language.

Parti Cinta Malaysia has the awkward feel of a name translated directly from a different language. It creates unease, reminiscent of our grey RTM news readers enunciating ‘teknologi’ or ‘universiti’ in the Bahasa Baku style: all hard consonants, and pronouncing each word as it is spelt.

A rough English translation for the PCM would be the “Malaysian Love Party”, which veers uncomfortably close to the neighbourhood of “Malaysian Orgy”.

The sheer strangeness of the name brings to mind more colourful names like the Official Monster Raving Loony Party (Britain), the Beer Lovers Party (Russia and the Ukraine), the Imperial British Conservative Party (Australia and New Zealand), the Guns and Dope Party (United States) and the Death, Dungeons and Taxes Party (Britain).

Deformed reform by UMNO: JAC and MCAC

By Sim Kwang Yang

A man who has been starving for days would have welcome a small morsel of food flung contemptuously his way I suppose.

In a country where many thoughtful citizens have been dreaming of an independent judiciary and a powerful body to curb endemic corruption, the tabling of the Judicial Appointments Council Bill (JAC) and the Malaysian Commission for Anti-Corruption Bill (Maca) by Abdullah Ahmad Badawi a year ago would tend to arouse elation that eventually something good is going to be done.

By right, such important bills should have been published long before they are tabled in Parliament, to invite public discussion from all stakeholders, which in this case, is the entire population of Malaysia. But our patriarchal arrogant BN government would never dream of consulting the rakyat, so that is that.

I do not have a copy of the bills, so I can rely only on the information and views given by experts. One such expert is Param Cumaraswamy, prominent lawyer and former UN Special Rapporteur on the Independence of Judges and Lawyers.

Umno’s arrogance can destroy BN

By Sim Kwang Yang

For the first time in a long while now, the country cannot blame Anwar Ibrahim’s machination for a regime change as the sole cause of political, social, and economic instability in Malaysia. This time, Umno is the culprit.

The coup detat within Umno, culminating in two emergency meetings of their supreme council in last year, has virtually ended the political career of the Prime Minister and Umno president Abdullah Badawi. Fortunately for Malaysia, the forced change of leadership at the very top of Umno would occur without resort to the kind of social upheaval that erupted in 1969.

Umno and their partners in the ruling coalition suffered greater losses at the polls in 2008, than they did in 1969. It became apparent immediately after the March 8 general election that Abdullah’s position as the Umno president was no longer tenable.

Political Dangers in Jailing Anwar

By Kenny Gan

Recently the High Court dismissed an application by Anwar Ibrahim to strike out his sodomy charge on the basis that two medical reports have found no evidence of penetration. The High Court refused and set Jan 25 2010 for Anwar’s trial to proceed.

Many Malaysians believe the charge against Anwar to be politically motivated and the conduct of the prosecution has reinforced their doubts. Few believe that Anwar will get a fair trial.

Will Anwar’s jailing help BN retain power or will it do the opposite and boost the opposition’s chances? If the prosecution can prove an ironclad case the political fallout will be limited but if Anwar’s conviction is seen as a travesty of justice BN will pay a heavy political price.

To gauge the political effect of jailing Anwar it is instructive to recount the impact of the 1999 sodomy conviction and compare the different socio-political environment between the two events in the intervening ten years.

The borrowed success of Singapore

By Chen Jiaqi

I met up with some old classmates several times since my university graduation, and discovered that over half of my Form V classmates had gone to study, work, or even settle down in Singapore.

I knew many of the top talents from my school ended up in Singapore, but I was not aware that the number could be so big.

Those secondary school classmates of mine were among the most brilliant in school, and Singapore was more than happy to bring these independent Chinese secondary school students there so that they could get the opportunity to advance their ambitions.

Still on my internship at a government hospital here, I had a mixed bag of feelings, and to my own disbelief, I joined their rank several years later.

A comment on racial politics and brain drain

by Straight Talking

May I too, share my thoughts with you on this issue? A consequence of our brain drain is financial drain.
Next year, 2010, our population is forecasted to reach 29,000,000. Let’s see how this relates to our financial drain. So, let’s start with our population.

Of this 29 million, 63% are between 15 and 64 years of age. The rest are the young and the old.

So, we are looking at maybe 18 million employable Malaysians. If we think of them as our “potential workforce”, then, in general, 15 would be too young, and 64 would be too old. Of course we will have people like Mahathir who will work until 100 or my 56 year old friend who never worked a day in his life.

So, let’s be realistic. Say, we take out those 18 and below as well as those 60 and above. Agreed? Now, let’s assume a percentage, say, 15% of the 18 million is either too young or too old. That gives us a net change of roughly 15 million, slogging it out, eight hours daily.

Penang Chief Minister: Singapore will collapse without Malaysians!

The Temasek Review

Speaking to reporters last night at a DAP function in Selangor, Penang Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng said jokingly that all the Malaysian government needs to do to “sabotage” Singapore is to entice the Malaysians working in Singapore back to Malaysia.

Lim lashed out at the Barisan government for not treasuring and utilizing the talents of Malaysians fully, leading to a brain drain, especially to its rival Singapore.

Since Singapore separated from Malaysia in 1965, it has adopted an open door policy towards Malaysians. Many Malaysian Chinese, who faced discrimination back in their homelands, flocked to Singapore to study and work, eventually taking up Singapore citizenship.

Racial Politics and Brain Drain

( I received this article in my email.  Since the topic of mass migration of Malaysians overseas has become a hot issue, I thought a doctor’s perspective would be useful here.  So I take the liberty of reproducing this post on our blog – Sim Kwang Yang ).

By Dr Hsu

The most important asset of a country is not its natural resources, but rather human resources. This is especially true in a knowledge-based economy, which of course will be the trend in future, if it is not already in place, in most of the western countries.

My daughter, who is in her final year of Medicine in Auckland, told me that a team of Singapore recruitment officers have just visited Auckland and talked to the Malaysian students there, offering job and training prospects for the final-year students once they graduate.

My daughter also told me that over the last few years, quite a lot of her Malaysian seniors, after graduating from medical courses in NZ, have gone to Singapore to work as house officers and subsequently stayed back in Singapore for their postgraduate training.

Similar teams are sent to Australia and the UK to recruit Malaysians there to work in Singapore.

About a year ago, in one of the articles in Reuters, this was reported:

My inner novel: imagining Malaysia

By Bunga Pakma

The rain is coming down outside my office window.  I see the drops hitting the surface of puddles and raising, without much enthusiasm, short-lived rings that spread and vanish into one another and are obliterated by the next falling meteor.  The covering sky sheens dully like tarnished aluminium; through the tinted window it more resembles lead.  Inside, the mechanically cooled air sits on my skin with a chill.

It’s December.  The Gregorian year is hurtling towards its end and its rebirth. The schools are empty.  Christians are celebrating Advent and the expectation of Christmas, and retail merchants are hoping for a spike in sales, for consumption, given any excuse, is a religion open to all.

As the days pass in Malaysia one gets a strange sense of seasons passing in review.  The past two weeks have brought us baking sun that has lifted the thermometer over 40º, thunderstorms of apocalyptic fury, and today, winter as far as we can be said to experience winter.  It’s an indoor day, and a nice hot bowl of laksa strikes one as just the thing for lunch.

Events in the public sphere seem now and again to doze as if hibernating in fits.  We haven’t suffered a political thunderstorm in a while, and the torrent of news has slowed to a drizzle.  Meantime it’s all water, and we still get wet.

What Bangsa Malaysia, 1 Malaysia ?

By Sim Kwang Yang

MALAYSIANS’ addiction to the question of race is evident in the current controversy over the idea of a Bangsa Malaysia.

I am indeed surprised that the Mentri Besar of Johore has come out in opposition to this new concept of a national “race”, in preference for the Umno orthodoxy of Malay dominance. In those years when we were in the same Chamber on top of the hill, I had known him personally to be a very nice chap, a distinguished academic, and a moderate at heart.

But then, the undercurrents within Umno are eddying with dizzying complexity on the eve of their general assembly. The national spotlight is on this monolith of a political party. More than a few ambitious Umno politicians would be itching to gain legitimacy of leadership by playing the role of champion of the Malay race. Their political survival may depend on how well they project themselves in that role.

An Umno beginner’s guide: how to defend the BTN

By Pak Bui

Imagine you are a dim-witted, self-satisfied Umno lackey. You have been given the duty of attempting to brainwash government employees with Umno propaganda using the BTN.

Lay all the groundwork. Build BTN camps in deserted jungle areas, where no outsiders can interfere. The buildings may be shoddy, the bathrooms communal, and the food no better than slop, but this is part of your cunning plan to intimidate and soften up the inmates.

Disorientate your subjects, keep them deprived of sleep, and force them to listen to lectures lauding racial supremacy and condemning some Malaysians as pendatang or immigrants. Make them watch videos of racial killings.

Do feel free to spread some love among your cronies. Allow them to build the boot camps, provide what you euphemistically call catering, then clear the food and other rubbish. Even if things fall apart or do not work, shrug and raise your eyebrows. After all, you do not have to use the toilets there yourself.

Communism, the false God that died!

Kaypo Anak Sarawak is a Columnist  of  Hermit Hornbill at The Borneo Post Online , His article is  published  in The Borneo Post every Sunday. (Used by permission of the Author )

IN the past week, Berlin in Germany was the scene of joyous celebration commemorating the 20th anniversary of the fall of the infamous Berlin Wall.

The Berlin Wall came to symbolise for the world the East West divide, and its collapse marked the end of communism in Eastern Europe, and a conclusion to the Cold War between the Soviet-led Warsaw pact Alliance and the Nato countries in Western Europe.

The Wall was not removed by any political leader, or any military force. It was removed by East and West Germans, brick by brick, with hands or chisels, at the tail end of spontaneous uprising against communist regimes all over Eastern Europe, in East Germany, the Soviet Union, Poland, Hungry, Czechoslovakia, Rumania, and the former Yugoslavia.

Communist East Germany was a vassal state of the Soviet Union, and the Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev could have sent in the tanks to quash the people’s uprising, as the Soviet did to Czechoslovakia in 1967. However, Gorbachev decided against repressing the popular uprising, the Wall came down, and the communist regime folded, paving the way for reunification for East and West Germany.

A Tale of Two Atrocities

By Pak Bui

The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is a world away from Sarawak, from a geographical point of view. But the tale of crimes and atrocities committed in the DRC by a rebel army, the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), rings bells among us here in Sarawak.

Some background information may be helpful. The DRC, formerly known as Zaire, is the third largest country in Africa, at the heart of the continent. The people of the Congo basin were enslaved in 1885 by King Leopold II of Belgium. The DRC was, in those days, a vast, private, royal rubber estate.

After independence in 1960, the people of the DRC have endured many further conflicts: civil wars, and wars involving neighbours Rwanda and Uganda.

The Rwandan war in 1994 saw the worst ethnic cleansing in the 20^th century. Most of the massacres were inflicted by Hutus on Tutsis. After the Tutsis formed the government, many Hutu militias responsible for the genocide escaped to the DRC.

Beautiful Sarawak

By Sim Kwang Yang

It is a reflection of our East-West chasm that most of my friends living on the peninsular side of Malaysia have never stepped foot in Sarawak or Sabah.

Many West Malaysians have travelled all over the globe, for education, business and pleasure.  Names of glamorous foreign places and cities roll off their tongue with an enviable familiarity.  Ask these sophisticated well-heeled jet-setters whether they have ever been to that part of Malaysia towards the direction of the sunrise, and you will draw a blank.

Now that 2009 is touted as a visit Malaysia Truly Asia year, I want to do my bit for my home state and sell you readers the idea of a visit to Sarawak.  Domestic tourism will save the country valuable foreign exchange and give Sarawak tourism a boost.  But seriously, should you not know something of your own country first, before you trot all over the world for a novel experience?