First off, allow me to state on record that I’m a dog person. I love dogs.
My 15-year-old dog died some time ago and now I have six cats in the house.
They’re all kucing kampung — three of them (Simba, Squealer, Snowboots) rescued from the streets and one (Jojo) gifted to me as kitten by his stray mom.
How stray dogs are treated by catchers
Distressing news came to light last fortnight about the deadly abuse of a stray dog by Kulim council workers — see BFM tweet above.
According to BFM, a police report was lodged relating to four men wearing Majlis Perbandaran Kulim Kedah vests beating a dog “with a piece of wood and a metal rod” until it died.
Today, there is a follow-up report headlined ‘12 NGOs to sue Kulim municipal council over alleged brutality against stray dogs’ (below).
Four men ganging up on one dog
The senseless acts (more than one dog was recorded abused) can be seen in footage viral on social media.
A statement by two lawyer activists Rajesh Nagarajan and Preetal Singh regarding the assault said the men struck the defenceless white stray with “numerous huge pitchfork-like weapons with brutal sharp and long ends”.
“The video showed the poor animal held down to the ground by three MPKK officers whilst sounds of its pitiful yelping and barking could be heard loud and clear,” said the activists in their Facebook.
“Even more horrifying was when another MPKK officer took another sharp pitchfork and stuck it into a few areas of the dog’s body, including its belly and head while other MPKK officers continued to hold the dog down,” said the Lawyers for Animal Rights NGO.
They finished by kicking the prone and dying dog with their heavy boots.
The public display of brutality was sickening and I support the legal action taken by the dozen animal rights groups to sue Kulim.
Equally sickening smear of ordinary Malaysians
I’ve just reread a Letter to the Editor – see above on 28 Apr 2020 – by Michelle Liu lamenting that “there are Malaysians who actually believe that Rohingya are like dogs”.
I wanted to refresh my memory as why it is that Michelle’s self-absorbed virtue signalling remains among the worst pieces of garbage I’ve ever come across in print.
One purportedly “appalling” anti-Rohingya meme fingered by Michelle was a comic strip depicting a sleeping man ending up on the floor because a dog had climbed onto the bed and gradually nudged him off.
The cartoon’s motif is familiar and akin to popular folklore about the camel incrementally edging the Arab out of his tent.
This metaphorical cartoon triggered Michelle. To her, the comic conveyed a “racist idea” that the dog is being literally likened to Rohingya, and this apparently “set off so many alarms in [her] head“ because some of fellow Malaysians are, in her fevered mind, pure “outright racists”.
Not only are Malaysians racist but Malaysians are also dehumanizing the Rohingya as animals (i.e. the cartoon dog), according to Michelle … “reduces the humanity of a person”, konon.
She then goes on to tell Malaysiakini readers that Hitler referred to Jews as ‘rats’ and the Hutu called the Tutsi ‘cockroaches’ during the Rwandan genocide.
Oh, for fuck’s sake! (This is only the second time I’ve deployed an expletive in my 10 years running this blog, and shows what I think of Michelle’s virtuous navel-gazing.)
Real cruelty and inhumanity is what was perpetrated on the stray dogs in Kulim.
The hundred of thousands of Malaysians who signed online petitions were also accused of cruelty and inhumanity towards Rohingya. What rubbish!
Hullo, Malaysians signing petitions are ‘armed’ with an Internet connection, not catch poles and pitchfork-like implements.
Neither are there Malaysians sticking sharp metal objects into any Rohingya or kicking and beating them.
Bottomline: Malaysians do not treat Rohingya like dogs or see them as ‘rats’ or ‘cockroaches’ or ‘vermin’ as Michelle’s overwrought imagination would have it.
Rohingya are seen as ‘economic migrants’ trying to enter our country illegally.
Yet to Michelle, the anti-Rohingya petitioners are furthermore scary people “willing to sidestep their sense of morality”.
On the consequences of hate speech instigating the mob, Michelle the Moral Paragon continued: “It follows that such ‘animals’ and ‘vermins’ (sic) ought to be exterminated”, adding most sanctimoniously, “I suppose it is not hard to believe that Rohingyas are dirty and diseased if we have little to no contact with them”.
She also believed that dumbed down Malaysians are guilty of making “simplistic prejudicial arguments” against the Rohingya because motivated by “prejudice”, and “hatred”.
Just because Michelle knows how to use an overabundance of ‘woke’ jargon doesn’t mean that plainspoken Malaysians, who straightforwardly express their opposition to Rohingya, are in any way dumb.
The reality is harsh for street dogs and one could say that the unfortunate strays in Kulim were “exterminated”.
No Rohingya are being treated in Malaysia literally like dogs!
Michelle’s dire projection regarding the supposed dehumanization – “there are Malaysians who actually believe that Rohingya are like dogs” she declared – is too much.
Melampau is what to call the false framing that Michelle has created about anti-Rohingya Malaysians.
Helen Ang 