LETTER | The Association for Community and Dialogue (Acid) joins conscientious Americans and citizens around the world in condemning the cruelty among certain police officers that led to the death of George Floyd. 

It's obvious there is an underlying systemic injustice over the years on how the black community was treated in the criminal justice system in comparison to the whites. The sense of injustice has been strongly ingrained in the collective consciousness of the American black community who have been struggling over the years for a fair and just criminal system.

As Malaysians, we are in solidarity with Floyd's family, who are going through a similar sense of pain that resembles what minority communities in Malaysia feel when their loved ones are brutally handled by the police, leading to their deaths without accountability.

It is obvious there is a systemic racial superiority within the justice system that makes such accountability a difficult and uphill struggle and this is where we see the similarity between Malaysia and the United States.

Having said that, Acid also condemns senseless violence in the United States, where mobs targeted churches and buildings, which does not reflect the legitimate call of justice for Floyd but other underlying motives.

If one hears Floyd's cry, 'I can’t breathe', in the context of the world, it has a great symbolic meaning that could be related to a sense of what it means to live on this planet Earth. It calls for a world of equality and solidarity rather than division. It calls for being in harmony with nature.

The current world that is plagued by ethnic nationalism that sees other communities as threats makes breathing difficult, the gap between the super-rich and the poor as reflected in the social-economic system of the United States and the rest of the world makes breathing difficult, war and terrorism make breathing difficult, and global warming and environmental pollution have made breathing far more difficult.

What more in the current context of Covid-19 where over 300,000 have died worldwide because of negligence by elites and a health care system that was not prepared to handle a pandemic of great proportion, or wasted time of not learning from earlier SARS-CoV pandemic that could have contributed to the early development of a vaccine. Many people have died because they are unable to breathe.

Material profits rather than developing a vaccine were the focus of global political and economic elites.

'I can’t breathe' should be the rallying cry for a new world order that is built on love, solidarity, and in harmony with the environment. There is a need for global citizens to question and reform the underlying political, economic, and social system that made breathing difficult for the majority of humanity.

Ronald Benjamin is the secretary of the Association for Community and Dialogue.

The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of Malaysiakini.