I am a lecturer at Multimedia University in Cyberjaya and recently, one of my friends who is really a good and upright person forwarded me an e-mail claiming that the Lim Kok Wing University is covering up a kidnaping and rape by a student or students from Botswana. It goes on to make racist generalisations about Africans.

It asks people to keep forwarding this e-mail to put pressure on LKW University to give justice to this girl, which is why my friend forwarded it. However, what this kind of e-mail actually does is to foster more racist stereotypes against Africans.

What spurred me to write this letter is because such racist rumours crop up way too often, and very often it's against Africans.

A friend of mine is a lecturer at LKW University and she said: ‘I don't have any experience with Botswana students in this manner and haven't heard of any. My classes have a lot of African students but have had no such experience.They submit their assignments and do their presentations on time. God has been good and has given me good students so far. I cannot generalise any group in this way. There are many hardworking students among the Botswanians’.

As for me, as I teach at MMU, I have had several African students in the past. Some are good students, some are bad, but that just goes to show that Africans are people, too.

Even if it were true that some Botswana student had kidnaped and raped a girl, it is wrong to slander all Botswana students. Let us ask ourselves, how would we feel if just because one Malaysian student kidnaped and raped a girl in Australia, people in Australia then start categorising all Malaysians as kidnappers and rapists?

Let us not spread racism.

A few years ago, this kind of racism caused some African students to be arrested on suspicion of rape and murder. There was a huge racist outcry against African students. Big headlines were splashed all over most of our newspapers.

Turns out that the Africans were completely innocent, and were only victimised because people gave in to racist sentiments and suspected them. The actual rapist-cum- murderers were local Malaysians.

And there were no big headlines declaring the Africans innocent. Instead, a small article on the inside pages. And the majority of people continued to assume that the Africans were murderers and rapists.

This kind of stuff really makes me angry. Africans are also human beings, made in the image of God. And we Malaysians commit terrible sins against them by perpetuating the stereotypes.

Sure, there are individual Africans who are evildoers - just as there are Chinese, Indian, Malay, and lain-lain Malaysians who are evildoers.

But to racially stigmatise a whole continent is evil.