I refer to the malaysiakini report Makkal Osai ban out of line .
The Malaysian Consultative Council of Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism and Sikhism and Taoism (MCCBCHST) should make it clear to everyone in Malaysia that it is against the banning of Makkal Osai . In fact, the MCCBCHST should go further to plead with the government to reinstate the Tamil daily immediately.
If Umno or BN chooses to support the ban on the newspaper, then it should do so with the clear understanding that it does not have MCCBCHST support for this ban.
I am Chinese and Christian and Malaysian, and I think it is outrageous that a small Tamil vernacular newspaper serving the poorest, most deprived and dispossessed community in Malaysia should be penalised for the slightest of misdemeanours.
My God would be deeply saddened that a corrupt, cynical, oppressive government is banning a poor minority newspaper, and this in His name.
I am outraged that the local BN-controlled newspapers have put a spin on the ban as if the Christians support such a ban. I can tell you categorically here and now that the vast majority of Christians in Malaysia do not support such a ban. Christians in Malaysia are neither as immature nor as sensitive as BN would like to portray them to be.
If Umno or BN want to make a hue and cry of the depiction of Jesus Christ smoking and drinking, and insist on a ban to show how pious they are or how concerned they are about my sensitivities, then that is their cynical self-serving choice born of political expediency.
It is not a choice (the ban) I would make nor I believe any right-thinking Christian will make.
BN should find some other cheap mealymouthed means to boost its popularity before the next general elections, perhaps by being 'cekap, amanah dan bersih' and if this is quite impossible, then the whole corrupt lot of them should resign immediately.
On a more depressing note, the newspaper ban is typical of BN style politics with its five decades emphasis on divide and rule. The social significance of the Makkal Osai ban is that it will make every community in Malaysia wary of each other. It makes every decent Malaysian regard the other person as rabidly aggressive, oversensitive, intolerant and punitive, and that we need BN to protect us from each other. This is the type of propaganda that BN loves to spew.
I don't need BN to protect my ethnic or religious sensitivities from the average Malaysian I meet every day at work. I do not need BN to protect me from my Hindu or Tamil brothers with whom I enjoy drinking, eating and joking with in our favourite pubs around KL. In fact, what I need is protection from BN's corruption, bailouts, racism, supremacist ideologies, and cynical divide-and-rule politics.
BN should keep its cynical politics away from issues of faith. If the MCCBCHST or churches fail to oppose this ban, then they will have nothing to say in their own defence when their own publications and activities are banned in future by BN, Umno or PAS.
As it stands now, some new converts are not allowed to practise the religion they freely choose but are sent to detention camps. Malaysians are not allowed to discuss Article 11 of our constitution in public. In addition, we can do nothing but witness unruly mobs forming outside churches and threatening violence.
As for providing places of worship, it takes about 20 years of complications and heartache to get planning permission to build a church in Selangor, another Umno-BN stronghold. The list goes on and on, and I think it farcical that BN tries to portray itself as sensitive to minority faiths. The truth is they have been downright hostile and oppressive.
I strongly urge the MCCBCHST to publicly call upon the government to lift the ban on Makkal Osai immediately.
