Malaysian court bans Chinese-education lobby group’s protest against ‘Islamisation’ of schools

A Malaysian court on Friday banned a planned weekend protest, organised by a powerful lobby group for the country’s Chinese-medium schools, that officials had warned could stir up ethnic strife in the multiracial country.

Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad warned last weekend that the event by the Dong Jiao Zong group had the potential to cause “chaos” as it pitted Malaysia’s minority Chinese community against the Malay-Muslim majority.

Dong Jiao Zong’s primary aim for the protest on Saturday at a college in the town of Kajang – 28km from Kuala Lumpur – was to voice its opposition to the education ministry’s plan to have all local schools teach khat, a calligraphic form of the Arabic script, or Jawi, that was once the preferred system to write the Malay language.

Local media said the court order obtained by the police cited the risk of “riots if the meeting was allowed to take place”.

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“In view of this, your presence at Dewan Kolej Universiti New Era Kajang tomorrow is forbidden and you have been warned not to gather or take part in any part of the meeting,” the order said.

The Malaysiakini news website quoted protest organiser Low Chee Cheong as saying the group would “respect the court order [and] our meeting tomorrow will be cancelled”.

In turn, several Malay groups that had planned to stage a counterprotest said they too were cancelling their event.

Officials from Mahathir’s government this week sought to calm rising tensions over the prospect of racially charged counter protests. Making matters worse, Saifullah Baiduri, leader of the Malaysian Muslim Students Coalition, stoked anger within the Chinese community by claiming that as long as Dong Jiao Zong existed the country could face a repeat of the ethnic violence between the Malays and Chinese last seen in 1969.

Dong Jiao Zong in turn said it was merely reflecting the views of the Chinese community over the khat issue in a peaceful manner.

The lightning-rod issue first emerged in July when the government said it would introduce khat lessons in all Malaysian schools, including the so-called vernacular schools where lessons are taught in Tamil and Mandarin.

Apart from the Malays, who form about 60 per cent of Malaysia’s population of 32 million people, the ethnic Tamil and Chinese are the two biggest ethnic groups in the country and the right for these communities to run schools that teach in their respective languages is enshrined in law.

Following an uproar among the Chinese over the khat plan, Mahathir’s administration reversed the decision and made the lessons optional for primary schools that teach in Mandarin and Tamil.

The content was reduced from six pages to just three in a 164-page textbook. The government also gave Chinese schools the option of polling parents to make the final decision on its inclusion.

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Dong Jiao Zong and other groups have, however, argued that the call should ultimately be made by the schools’ boards as any disagreement could lead to tensions between parents of different ethnicities who send their children to vernacular schools.

Mahathir has previously dismissed concerns that khat was linked to an Islamisation of the country’s education system, as claimed by its critics. Instead, he said it was a form of calligraphy.

The use of Jawi to write the Malay language has largely been confined to religious or cultural purposes after it was replaced by the Latin alphabet during British colonial rule.

The 94-year-old prime minister said those behind the criticism of khat were in fact dog-whistling to the Chinese population to go against his ruling coalition, which includes the predominantly Chinese Democratic Action Party (DAP).

“They just want to test DAP. If DAP agrees with the implementation, they will say DAP is being controlled. If otherwise, they will say DAP is controlling the government,” Mahathir said in August.