AUG 120 — My Malay neighbour’s daughter was married last Saturday. Led by the kompang squad, the bridegroom and his people paraded past my house.

Such a scene was often seen at my village when young, and is pretty rare nowadays in the city.

The bride’s sisters posed a host of questions to the bridegroom at the door, including the bride’s favorite colour, the full name of her young sister and her date of birth, among others, not unlike those encountered in a modern Chinese wedding.

I asked a young Malay man beside me, and he said only the Malays from Johor would do this.

During the feast I could see Malay and Chinese guests shaking hands, greeting, smiling, chatting, and dining on the same table. Absolutely no slightest racial hatred or discordance could be traced there. I was instantly overwhelming by the powerful feeling that people from different ethnic and cultural backgrounds could actually mingle very well.

All this while we have been constantly fooled and manipulated by irresponsible politicians who are more than eager to ignite the flames of hatred among the people. I bet you will be shocked by the extreme remarks left by web users if we were to visit some of the Chinese or Malay social media sites. or Facebook.

Sure enough we have plenty others who are diligently putting out the flames.

As for Chinese newspapers, I think we need to shoulder some of our social responsibility to a certain extent. I was recently asked by a postgraduate student in journalism: Do you Chinese newspapers filter your news?

I don’t like the word “filter.” While handling social news, we often omit pictures of bloody dead body in a show of respect for the victim’s family and the readers, and I don’t know whether that should also count as a form of “self censorship”?

We need to realize that we are a multicultural, multireligious and multiracial country, and any piece of news or picture that could potentially spark racial conflicts should be avoided and used with prudence.

Take the Low Yat incident for example, although the police had on more than one occasion reiterated that it was a theft case, the incident was still played up by some irresponsible quarters as a case of greedy Chinese traders swindling the Malay consumers.

Aggravated by the biased reports by Malay dailies and viral spread of rumors on the social media, the incident took an ugly turn to become a race-motivated riot initiated by some 500 Malay young men outside the popular Bukit Bintang IT mall.

As a matter of fact, all newspapers in this country have the common obligation of preserving religious and racial harmony in our society. If we feed unverified news or protrude the images of Chinese beating up the Malays or vice versa just to satisfy the insatiable desire for information of the readers, we actually help sow the seed of hatred.

In a country where interracial relationship is still very vulnerable, a tiny incident could potentially trigger lethal racial and religious conflicts.

To make things worse, we are unfortunate to have a “kampung minister” in PM Najib’s cabinet who would call for a separate IT mall for the Malays only. His move only serves to further alienate his party from the Chinese community of this country.

In the absence of promising prospects, little wonder that negative sentiments have filled the air of the entire society, and a powerful sense of frustration could be smelled and felt on Facebook and in day-to-day life of ordinary Malaysians.

But, if we allow such depressing atmosphere to go on, it will eventually do more harm than good for the whole country and the individuals living on this land.

We therefore need more organizations and individuals to come up and release more positive energy to our society as we work hand in hand to mold a more progressive and vibrant Malaysia.

We must realize that while we can scold the government, we must never curse our country.

We simply need to tell the difference between a government and a country.

While the government can be changed from time to time, we only have one country that is our eternal home. So, please to destroy our homeland, where we are rooted.

* This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of Malay Mail Online.