KUALA LUMPUR, Sept 11 — Malay Mail Online’s “Are Malaysians Racist?” video which topped YouTube Malaysia’s chart in less than 48 hours should probably be followed by a new video titled “Are Malaysians Cynics?”

Quite a few people who viewed the video refused to believe that it was not staged, that the scenes of Malaysians sticking up for Malaysians of other races were real.

Participants in the viral video say that is simply not true.

“When there’s a negative video, people believe ‘oh yes, definitely there are racist people’, but when there’s a positive video, why are people questioning whether it’s true or fake, or staged or not?” PR consultant Azzura Soraya Hassan, 30, told Malay Mail Online.

“Can’t you just accept that something positive happened? If it’s something negative, do people ever say, ‘oh this is a fake video, it was just created to provoke us and make us angry’? Nobody says that,” she added.

Azzura, who is of mixed Malay-Indian parentage and from Sabah, also criticised detractors who said the video — which was shot by advertising agency Naga DDB and given to Malay Mail Online — was too urban-centric and that people from rural areas might have been more inclined to show racist attitudes instead.

Azzura, who has lived in Kuala Lumpur for the past 10 years, added that race appeared to be more of a factor in peninsular Malaysia, compared to Sabah where “everyone is mixed.”

“It’s a terrible assumption,” she said.

Sports coach Amir Syakirin Jamal Azmi, 27, who was one of the more vocal participants in the video said, “Nothing was staged. I was trying to hold back my anger. I wanted to punch him so bad. Towards the end, I was sitting there with my hands together, shaking” referring to the interviewer in the video who was trying to get him to say something negative about the Chinese.

He also said Malay rights groups like Perkasa and Ikatan Muslimin Malaysia (Isma) are “insecure people” and stressed he did not feel that the Malays are under threat.

(Clockwise from top left): David Guch, Amir Syakirin Jamal Azmi, Azzura Soraya Hassan and Mark Harrison were in the ‘Are Malaysians Racist?’ video and deny it was set up. — Picture by Saw Siow Feng

“You see non-Bumis working twice as hard to get to where we are, why not give them equal opportunities?” he said.

“Instead of calling people ‘pendatang’, greedy or smelly, why don’t we call each other ‘friends’?” added Amir.

He also told Malay Mail Online that critics of the video should “stand up and do something” instead of being “smartass” keyboard warriors.

Businessman David Guch, 45, also said he had no idea he was being filmed.

“At no point did I expect this to come out,” Guch said. “I had no idea what the entire thing was about.”

He also said Malaysians use the word “racism” too easily and that there was nothing wrong with people poking fun at each other’s differences.

“That’s not racist. It’s how we choose to accept each other. Everyone of us has probably said something like that in life. Are you really a racist? You’re not. We should take all our differences as lightly as we can so we can all be happy,” said Guch.

The businessman of mixed Punjabi and Chinese parentage said racism was more like apartheid or the Ku Klux Klan, a white supremacist group in America.

“We are nowhere near that,” said Guch, who runs a paintball business.

Human resources manager Mark Harrison, 35, also said the video was “not staged at all.”

Harrison, who is of mixed Chinese and Indian parentage, said he even got into a debate with the producer who told him to repeat lines like Indians are always drunk and Sabahans and Sarawakians live on trees.

“I told him towards the end, I don’t feel comfortable having this conversation. That’s when he revealed what the video was about,” Harrison told Malay Mail Online.

He added that there should be more such videos to combat racial sentiments on social media.

Amir Syakirin added, “Sometimes, it helps to have these videos out. All the nice videos are always about cats.”