Richard Teo's No exodus of Malays from S'pore in reply to my S'pore Malays worse of than Chinese here will not convince objective-thinking Chinese who know that from the day their forefathers arrived with the British, their life has been nothing but good except for a little pain during the Japanese occupation.

Has Teo any idea about discrimination and marginalisation suffered by the Malays during the 100 years of British rule? At the time of the arrival of Portuguese, the Malays were in the process of building their empire (which includes Southern Thailand, Mindanao and Singapore) into a great nation.

They had the natural resources and the skills as seamen, traders and most of all conducted their everyday social and economic life in accordance to the rules and ethics of Islam. We could have been another Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Dubai or Abu Dhabi.

The British, later, either did not wish to help the Malays to become people of commerce (like they did in Egypt) or they preferred to use the Chinese as their support group in their own trading houses and who would later take over from them.

Thus the Chinese were allowed to go into the 'kampungs' to set up their grocery stores, to corrupt the Malays with their '555' debt books, 'nombor ekor' and alcohol. The British also made the Malays feel 'very proud' to be working as clerks, soldiers, policemen, etc.

It is quite silly to ask why there's no exodus of Singapore Malays to Malaysia whereas Chinese Malaysians are making a beeline for Singapore. My reply is how come there is no exodus of blacks from the US, of Turks from Germany or of Koreans from Japan, who also suffer discrimination and persecution.

We admit that the Malay Singaporeans have jobs and a HDB flats but do they have political rights like the Chinese in Malaysia? Will Lee Kuan Yew allow the Malays and the Indians to set up their own political parties, give them seats based on the total popular votes they receive and then form a coalition government?

We know that people (even that if they have gold bars like Chinese Vietnamese boat people) will only move away from their country when there is systematic ethnic cleansing like the Muslims and Jews in Spain, the Jews in Europe (Hitler) and the old Soviet Union, the Cambodians during Pol Pot or the Indians from Uganda (Idi Amin) and many others.

LKY is too smart for that. He would rather annihilate the Malays at PAP's own pace. For example the Malay Singaporeans have already abandoned their own language. Teo surely knows that the Chinese Malaysians (and the 'persecuted' Chinese Indonesians) who are allowed to migrate to Singapore are only those who are wanted by Singapore, eg, people with the money or the skills required by LKY's republic.

Other than that, the 'hoi polloi' can only travel daily to Singapore to work in factories or wash dishes in their restaurants.