At the first instance when I read the news that a 25-year-old Muslim school teacher in SJKC Nan Ya in Kota Tinggi was told to take off her “tudung” to continue teaching there by one of the school board’s directors, I have issued a statement immediately to condemn the school’s board director and demand him to apologize to the Muslim teacher without any delay.
I stress that DAP upholds the principle that everyone has the right to practise his or her respective faiths.
I was completely shocked that an UMNO cybertrooper Azmy Awang Klana Jaya published an article entitled “DAP Makin Kuat Di Johor, Islam Makim Dipihak: Guru Mualaf Dipaksa Buka Tudung” on his webpage http://azmyawangklanajaya.blogspot.com/2014/01/dap-makin-kuat-di-johor-islam-makin.html on January 17, 2014.
It is irresponsible for the blogger to link the “tudung” incident with DAP. As a matter of fact, the school board’s chairperson Phang Ah Ngang is not a DAP member. There is no reason or justification for Azmy Awang Klana Jaya to discredit DAP that has no whatsoever links with the issue at hand.
As a matter of fact, this is not the first instance where UMNO tried to put the blame on DAP when there is any discriminative statements or racist incidents happened in Johor.
In mid of last year, when a Chinese teacher allegedly saying something racial statements, banners saying “DAP Johor Sokong Cikgu Poh; Melayu Bodoh Pukimak” were hanged at several places.
It is obvious that DAP has become the easy target for UMNO. We believe that such tactic will be used repeatedly in the near future to divert the anger of the people from BN’s complete inability to resolve the recent price hike. We however would like to remind UMNO, you can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.