If public universities are used to distort history, glorify UMNO and poison the minds of the new generation against Opposition and dissent, they will aggravate racial polarization and destroy all efforts to forge national unity and attain  Vision 2020 of a  Bangsa Malaysia

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Media Statement
by Lim Kit Siang  
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(Parliament, Monday) The Higher Education Minister, Datuk Mustapha Mohamad has given a most unsatisfactory answer to my supplementary question in Parliament today on the biased, tendentious  and divisive new Ethnic Relations course, compulsory for public university students.

The Ethnic Relations textbook used by Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM), for instance,  is highly objectionable on at least three  specific grounds:

• Condemning  as “extremist” the 1999 Election Appeal of the  Malaysian Chinese Election Appeals Committee (Suqiu), which was endorsed in principle by the Barisan Nasional parties, including the Prime Minister at the time, Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad before the general election;

• Blaming Indian youths for the 2001 Kampong Medan incident;

• Blaming DAP for the May 13, 1969 riots;

In his reply, Mustapha defended the reference to the Suqiu election appeals as “extremist” as a “historic fact”, which is both misleading,  mischievous and utterly baseless  – while he glossed over the other  references with the vague statement that they are subject to different interpretations and open to review.

Is the biased, tendentious and divisive Ethnic Relations course the   first concrete  result of the Zahid Higher Education Report submitted last July, which could only aggravate racial polarization instead of promoting national unity among university students?

One of the 138 recommendations of the Zahid Report is that “the efforts to instill national unity be continued and extended to higher education” (No. 101).  The  Zahid Report  admitted that “curriculum is such an important part of education that it can be considered the heart of any educational institution” and its role is  “to achieve all-round self-development including spiritual, intellectual, emotional and physical development, as well as instill desirable moral values and convey knowledge and information”.

Is it now the role of the public universities, under the guise of fostering ethnic relations, to poison the minds of the new generation by feeding them with lies and half-truths about happened in recent Malaysian history?

Mustapha should realize that if the public universities are regarded by Malaysians, both the students and the public at large,  as educational centres to glorify UMNO and to poison the minds of the new generation against opposition parties and dissent, then Malaysian public universities will become even worse centres of racial polarization than in the previous decades.

If public universities are used to distort history, glorify UMNO and poison the minds of the new generation against Opposition and dissent, they will aggravate racial polarization and destroy all efforts to forge national unity and attain  Vision 2020 of a  Bangsa Malaysa.

The Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi and the Cabinet on Wednesday should give serious attention to this dangerous trend in public universities  undesirable implementation of the Zahid Higher Education Report – turning public universities into institutions of national divisiveness  instead of national unity.

(17/07/2006)