The MCA wants the Education Ministry to act against a Sarawak primary school for enforcing a halal food policy, which it claims is trampling on the rights of non-Muslim pupils.
The second-biggest party in the ruling Barisan Nasional (BN) coalition said today that public school teachers do not have the right to force their own religious values on a multi-cultural student body.
“MCA finds it disturbing that the senior assistant had allegedly warned the parent ‘Jangan besar-besarkan hal, kerana ini isu yang cukup sensitif di kalangan orang-orang Islam (Don’t blow up this matter as it is a very sensitive issue among Muslims),” said the party’s deputy publicity chief Loh Seng Kok (picture).
He was citing news portal Malaysiakini that yesterday reported the allegation against SK St Thomas in Kuching.
Ten-year-old Basil anak Baginda, a pupil of St Thomas, was said to have been caned 10 times on his palms for bringing home-cooked fried rice with pork sausages to school on October 15.
His mother, Angela Jabing, had highlighted the incident to the media after failing to get a satisfactory explanation from the school administration.
At a news conference in Kuching last week, Angela was reported as saying that the school’s senior assistant told her at a meeting on October 19 that he could not remember the incident and not to blow it up as it was “sensitive”.
The mother said the school head told her the halal food policy was announced during assembly in February this year, in a bid to show respect to Muslim students.
Pork is considered a non-halal meat, or forbidden to Muslims.
Angela wants to know if St Thomas’ non-halal food policy is based on instruction from the Education Ministry, and if it applies to home-cooked food.
The ministry has yet to respond.
In his media statement, Loh noted a trend among school administrations to hush up such incidents with the excuse of “not to stir up sensitivities”.
“To sweep issues which would have unsettling impact on minority groups under the carpet is completely unacceptable,” he stressed.
The MCA man pointed out that if the school and the ministry’s policies were based on religious sensitivities, then all sorts of other meats, such as beef, should be barred altogether, as a mark of respect to Buddhists and Hindus.
Loh said St Thomas was a missionary school that had gained a reputation for multiracial harmony and urged the ministry to act before the issue gets blown out of proportion.
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Don't just try to get cheap publicity portray as tough they are fighthing for the non-malays. If you really mean business, tell that straight to the umno guys and stop all these nonsense. The race crisis that the country has gone through recently was as a result of their doing. Else, I will bet that this case which was not the first to have happened, will definitely not the last.
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