KUALA LUMPUR, Sept 9 ― Putrajaya should not be afraid of abolishing the Sedition Act as most citizens do not subscribe to racism, former deputy minister Datuk Saifuddin Abdullah said, citing a video of a social experiment that showed Malaysians refusing to utter racist remarks in exchange for money.
The Malay Mail Online video titled “Are Malaysians racist?” ― which features Malaysians of various ethnic groups being told to repeat derogatory statements like the “Malays are stupid”, “the Chinese are “pendatang” (immigrants) and the “Indians are smelly” ― went viral the moment it was uploaded at noon yesterday.
As of 8.45am today, less than a day after its online debut, the five-and-a-half minute clip was shared an impressive nearly 50,000 times on Facebook and received more than 200,000 combined views on video-sharing site YouTube and MMO’s internal JW video player. It was the second-most watched video on YouTube in Malaysia.
Saifuddin, an Umno man and a known progressive, said the video showcased the true Malaysian identity, which is not being racist.
“Malaysians are not racist, except the small minority who do it for I don’t know why,” Saifuddin, who heads the Global Movement of Moderates, told Malay Mail Online.
“So, no worries ― repeal the Sedition Act,” he added.
Like Saifuddin, others who have watched the video, which was shot by advertising agency Naga DDB and given to Malay Mail Online, said it gave them hope for a future. Some said they were reduced to tears.
Media Umno Malaysia and Friends of BN - Barisan Nasional also shared the video on their Facebook pages, with the latter saying: “This video is very heartwarming”.
Several Pakatan Rakyat (PR) politicians and activists like Datuk Ambiga Sreenevasan and Datin Paduka Marina Mahathir have similarly shared the video on social media, saying it showed that Malaysians are generally decent and that there are non-racist people out there.
“Take that all you racists! Malaysians are just better than that,” Marina wrote on her Facebook page.
She later told Malay Mail Online that it was no big surprise to her that the participants in the video had genuinely rejected money offers to utter derogatory remarks about members of the other races.
“I think we’ve always known there are non-racists out there, but they are rarely given any space to say so.
“So yes, this is great, and yes, it does give hope. We need more of this to counter the racists she said.
Her words and Saifuddin’s, along with hundreds of other comments by Internet users, appeared to echo the same sentiment ― Malaysians were not surprised that their fellow countrymen had stood up for them, regardless their racial differences.
Like Saifuddin, many have also shared the view that the country does not need laws like the Sedition Act.
Putrajaya had pledged two years ago to do away with the colonial-era Act, saying it was time for a new law that would help strike the right balance between upholding the rights of Malaysians to free speech and the like, while at the same time, making sure such freedoms do not allow irresponsible individuals to run riot with the added liberties.
But just yesterday, Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak appeared to backtrack on the promise to do away with the 1948 law.
The prime minister, who has said three times before that the Sedition Act would be repealed and replaced with the proposed National Harmony Act, said the colonial era law may not be abolished if it did not result in an “improvement”.
Saying that he understood the Malay community’s concerns over the effects of the abolition of the law on Islam, the Malay rulers and Bumiputera rights, Najib insisted that the government will not act to anger or create inequality among the country’s ethnic groups.
A tug-of-war between critics of the Sedition Act and its proponents is currently ongoing, after a sudden surge in the use of the legislation against opposition lawmakers, academics, and the media shone a spotlight on the government’s delay in delivering on its 2012 promise to repeal the Act.
Defenders of the Sedition Act, primarily pro-establishment conservatives including former prime minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad, contend that its removal will open the floodgates of attacks against the Bumiputera, Islam, and the Malay rulers in the absence of the repealed Internal Security Act (ISA).
