KL's urban strife bares poverty cuts across race<\/p>\n
By Brendan Pereira<\/p>\n
KUALA LUMPUR: Madam Ainon Kuntom remembers the night of March
\n9 like it was yesterday.<\/p>\n
That was the day she watched two Malay men alight from a car
\nand bash an Indian man for being in the wrong place at the wrong
\ntime.<\/p>\n
Shocked at what she witnessed at a road junction in a squatter
\ncolony, she walked up to one of the assailants and demanded: Why
\ndid you do this? Why has it come to this?<\/p>\n
The boy offered nothing but anger.<\/p>\n
Somewhere during that incendiary night when groups of Malays
\nand Indians clashed, it crossed her mind that she had failed in
\nher job as the director-general of the National Unity Department.<\/p>\n
She said the episode proved that unity among younger Malays,
\nChinese and Indians in the multi-racial country of 22 million was
\nonly skin-deep.<\/p>\n
She commented: \"It is only make-up. There are young people who
\nonly care for one race, and that is their own race. This denies
\nthe fact that we are a multi-racial country.\"<\/p>\n
The majority of the 170 people arrested after four days of
\nviolence were under 25 years of age. Two of the five Malay boys
\nsuspected of killing an Indian man who was visiting relatives in
\nKampung Medan were underage.<\/p>\n
But the involvement of the young in violence should not come
\nas a surprise.<\/p>\n
They belong to a generation whose knowledge of the country's
\nworst race riots is limited to only knowing when the last major
\nclash took place -- May 13, 1969.<\/p>\n
Absent is the gut-wrenching fear of violence and death, and
\nthe conviction that there is too much to lose when people take up
\narms against their fellow citizens.<\/p>\n
Also missing from this generation's DNA is a real sense of
\nownership or purpose in life. Many float from job to job, go home
\nto broken homes and live out their dreams in crime gangs or a
\ndrug fix.<\/p>\n
Put much of the blame for the March 9 convulsion on uneven
\neconomic development. The young Malays and Indians who spilled
\nblood in five squatter settlements are products of a system that
\nhas created two classes within communities, the haves and have-
\nnots.<\/p>\n
Said Mansor Mohd Noor, a researcher on race relations at the
\nScience University in Penang: \"The NEP (New Economic Policy) has
\nwidened the gap within a race. The Indians and the Malays in the
\nlower-income level have been sidelined from the high economic
\ngrowth that Malaysia enjoyed.<\/p>\n
\"With this social divide, the government should create a
\npolicy that gives priority to the socially disadvantaged,
\nirrespective of race.\"<\/p>\n
Following the race riots in 1969, the government embarked on
\nthe NEP, a program aimed at raising income and education levels
\nof the Malays, who were significantly poorer than the other
\nraces.<\/p>\n
A decade after that, the country launched its
\nindustrialization drive that helped the economy chalk double-
\ndigit growth rates.<\/p>\n
These changes on the economic landscape also led to a seismic
\nshift in demographics. Many Malays migrated to the urban centers
\nto fill assembly-line jobs. They found jobs but could not afford
\nto buy a RM25,000 (S$11,677) low-cost house on a salary of RM500.<\/p>\n
Many put up their own houses -- a collection of wooden planks
\nand sheets of corrugated iron -- on pieces of vacant land. They
\nexpected to stay there for only a few months, not 25 years.<\/p>\n
Today, their children are caught in the same cycle of poverty
\nand hopelessness. Many believe they are worse off than before.<\/p>\n
While thousands of Malays have received tertiary education on
\ngovernment scholarships and a handful benefited from a policy
\ndesigned to nurture a Malay business elite, a sizable number have
\nnot tasted the fruits of the NEP.<\/p>\n
Some have not even seen a garbage truck. A few days after the
\nviolence in Kampung Medan, a 24-year-old Malay man joked: \"I have
\nlived in this place for 15 years. This is the first time I am
\nseeing a rubbish truck.\"<\/p>\n
For years, the omnipresent mountain of garbage has been part
\nof the landscape.<\/p>\n
An estimated 250,000 Malays live in squatter colonies on the
\nfringes of the Klang Valley, the most developed area in Malaysia.
\nThey are the most visible symbol of the widening income gap
\nwithin the Malays, a gap with strong political undertones.<\/p>\n
By all accounts, Indians are in a deeper hole. They form just
\n7 percent of the population but account for 63 percent of those
\narrested under the Emergency Ordinance for violent crimes and
\nmake up 41 percent of beggars.<\/p>\n
Indians rank lowest in national elementary examinations, about
\none in every 12 Indian children does not attend primary school.
\nThere are insufficient Indians who qualify to take advantage of
\nthe number of places in a university set aside for Indians.<\/p>\n
One university dean remembers going into estates to look for
\nchildren of rubber tappers to make up the numbers.<\/p>\n
He said: \"If they had the grades, their families could not
\nafford the fees.\"<\/p>\n
P. Ramasamy, political scientist at the National University of
\nMalaysia, said recently: \"With the strong push for bumiputra
\n(indigenous) economic development, the minorities were
\nneglected.\"<\/p>\n
The Indians' descent into the status of an underclass began in
\nthe 1970s. Some point the accusing finger at the continuing
\nexistence of Tamil schools.<\/p>\n
More than 90,000 Indian children are taught in ill-equipped
\nclassrooms by lowly-paid and poorly-qualified teachers.<\/p>\n
The result: Students with nothing more than a basic education.
\nAt the same time, the ranks of urban poor were swelling.<\/p>\n
For generations, they worked rubber and palm oil plantations,
\nbut those canopies of green gave way to urban sprawl and
\nindustrialization. Indians struggled to find housing or work and
\nmany migrated to Kuala Lumpur, Ipoh and other urban centers in
\nthe country. They found work as odd-job laborers, petty traders
\nand found homes in shanty towns.<\/p>\n
Today, more than 150,000 Indians live in slums around Kuala
\nLumpur, where sanitation and paved roads are a luxury.<\/p>\n
The younger Indians in these squatter colonies belong to the
\n30 Indian gangs that operate in West Malaysia.<\/p>\n
These gangs are involved in drug trafficking and extortion.
\nThe sense of hopelessness and frustration at their lot combines
\nto make them a formidable enemy. They do not understand the odds
\nand are not afraid to die.<\/p>\n
That could explain why Indian boys patrolled the moon-lit
\nstreets of Kampung Medan on March 9, despite being outnumbered.<\/p>\n
But the tell-tale signs of trouble were already evident in the
\narea long before a quarrel over a shattered windscreen exploded.<\/p>\n
Four years ago, a teenager died and several others were
\ninjured in a gang clash. In 1999, several people were injured and
\nsix cars damaged in a gang clash. Last June, three samurai sword-
\nwielding youths slashed a foodstall worker.<\/p>\n
No one gave these incidents a second thought. Just as no one
\ngave serious thought to the country's underclass before March 9.<\/p>\n
-- The Straits Times\/Asia News Network<\/p>", "url": "https:\/\/jawawa.id\/newsitem\/kls-urban-strife-bares-poverty-cuts-across-race-1447893297", "image": "" }, "sponsor": "Okusi Associates", "sponsor_url": "https:\/\/okusiassociates.com" }