At Last! IMPORT! (re: The Malaysian Racial Tension Situation)

After many, many years of übercyrptic pronoun-ridden dark poetry and occasional essays about some obscure potion called "Milo", Ariel Ravenstorm has, at long last, FINALLY posted about a subject of IMPORT.

Yes, despite, from what I understand, some very real and palpable risks to her person at the hands of her own government, she has posted about the demonstrations last weekend where protestors demanding fair elections were fired upon not only by fire hoses but fire hoses loaded with CHEMICALS.

Looks like the subject of this particular post is whether or not it would be a good idea for the Malaysian-Indian (btw - why is it "African-American" but "Malaysian-Indian"? Adjective after noun in Bahasa Melayu?) community to file a complaint with the British High Commission.

If I understand it correctly, Malaysia is a part of the British Commonwealth. Now, as my only personal experiences with the concept of a commonwealth involve the great nations of Kentucky, Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts (approximately in that order), I'm not entirely sure what sort of power the British might actually have in this matter. It's my understanding that Malaysia has its own king and a parliamentary form of government, thus theoretically leaving sovereignty of Malaysia in the hands of the Malaysian people, but, in practice, depositing it in the hands of a very small handful of - if I understand it correctly - a group ethnically identified as "Muslim Malays" that seem to have a distaste for ethnic Indians and Chinese living in Malaysia that makes the most rabid Klansman in the American south look like ME - and, well, The Dean.

However, as in some ways this conflict is starting to look quite like the American Civil Rights movement, I'm thinking there might be some comparison to be 1951 appeal by the Civil Rights Congress to the United Nations that the United States was practicing genocide against the African-American population. (It's going to be fun to see what Denmark Vesey has to say about THIS one.)

One particularly good paragraph reads:

We shall prove that the object of this genocide, as of all genocide, is the perpetuation of economic and political power by the few through the destruction of political protest by the many. Its method is to demoralize and divide and entire nation; its end is to increase the profits and unchallenged control by a reactionary clique. WE shall show that those responsible for this crime are not the humble but the so-called great, not the American people but their misleaders, not the convict but the robed judge, not the criminal but the police, not the spontaneous mob but organized terrorists licensed and approved by the state to incite a Roman holiday.

And, it would appear, according to the American Heritage Dictionary that a "Roman Holiday" is "A violent public spectacle or disturbance in which shame, degradation, or physical harm is intentionally inflicted on one person or group by another."

Yep ... and ... from what I've seen of it, I'd have to say that the events of last weekend in Malaysia qualified as a bonafide Roman holiday.

Ariel goes on, "My biggest grouse with the British has to be the mindset they created oday, that have given many factions the notion that the British are saviours. Today, I think the British themselves need saving but that's another discussion for another day."

Perhaps - but you do have to keep in mind that the proper goal of any decent civil rights movement is to declare one's right to be a person, to be a human being, to be given the rights of a human being on this earth, in this day, and to resolving oneself to bring this into existence by any means necessary ...