Press Statement 
by Dr. Boo Cheng Hau, DAP Johor State Youth Chief
at Skudai, Johor
on 10th  June 2002  


The Johor State DAP Youth Council held a bimonthly meeting on 8th June 2002 and passed the following three important resolutions:    

  1. Johor State DAP Youth Council protests against the Police’s unreasonable and unfounded actions to arrest the DAP’s National Chairman Lim Kit Siang for distributing fliers on the Prime Minster’s unilateral declaration that Malaysia is an Islamic State, under the Sedition Act, and to search the Perak DAP office for unfounded bases, and such that we are wary of police’s actions which have further curtailed Malaysia’s already fragile Freedom of Speech, and have made the country virtually in a “constitutionless” state,  destroyed the peaceful process of political deliberations, and despised the Malaysian people’s wisdom in making their own sound and independent political judgments;  

 

  1. The DAPSY Johor regards the Ministry of Education’s announcement that 10% of the University Matriculation program will be open to Non-Bumiputras as insincere in ending apartheid in education as no second degree apartheid is moral and fair; The separation of Bumiputra and Non-Bumiputra pre-university students  into  STPM and Matriculation programs along racial lines has been that of apartheid, and severely hindered the process of integration among young Malaysians, and prevent them from fair competition and mutual stimulation in higher learning process; DAPSY Johor also advocates abolition of separation of STPM and Matriculation programs, but establishment of a unified non-racial six-year secondary and pre-university education  and holding pre-university assessment examinations few times  all year around than once a year;  

 

  1. DAPSY Johor also condemns the Barisan National Government which has been in power for 45 years for deliberately suppressing the rights of the minorities  in learning their mother tongues on equal par based on UMNO’s unfettered Bumiputeraism or better known as Nativism during the South Africa Apartheid regime, by discriminating against the Tamil and Madarin medium schools and  denying the existence  of schools in other languages such as Iban and Kadazan; The DAPSY Johor strongly holds the view that a monolingual policy will not promote national unity, but only allowing equal development in all mother tongues and cultures of all ethnic groups will achieve such aim whereas this has been evidenced by the fact that South Africa Constitution has adopted eleven official languages and mandatory for the South African Government to ensure equal development of all languages and cultures, as opposed to two official languages of Afrikaans and English during the Apartheid regime.