Calling Mahathir’s jibe “hate speech”, the BN strategic communications deputy director said DAP would not have remained silent on the issue if the veteran statesman had made similar remarks about the Chinese.
“For years, DAP has been up in arms whenever any random individual calls on the Chinese to go back to China, but their hypocrisy and selective blindness prevents them from acknowledging the damage Mahathir’s racist speech can cause.
“No ethnic group in Malaysia should ever be called pirates or should be asked to go back to where they came from.
“This is hate speech and PH leaders must speak up against any hate speech or risk losing the moral right to be called anti-racists,” he said in a statement today.
Mahathir, a former prime minister for 22 years, was alleged to have sullied Najib’s Indonesian ancestry by comparing him to Bugis pirates in two political speeches last month.
On Tuesday, Indonesian Vice-President Jusuf Kalla called on Mahathir to apologise for his comments, saying the PH chairman had insulted not only the Bugis community in Malaysia, but also that in Indonesia.
“Dr Mahathir should apologise because the Bugis are not just in south Sulawesi but throughout Indonesia, even in Malaysia,” he said in a statement carried by The Straits Times.
The Selangor royal court also expressed unhappiness over Mahathir’s comments, saying he had compared the Bugis with pirates, criminals and robbers.
“The verbal attacks have indirectly demeaned the history and heritage of the Selangor sultanate, which is descended from the Bugis,” it said in a statement on Nov 2.
It also called for Mahathir to be investigated under the Sedition Act or any other appropriate law over his remarks about the Bugis.
See-To said PH leaders must also “be brave and do the right thing” in the interest of continuing good relations with Indonesia.
He said there was no point trying to divert attention away from the issue by claiming that Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi had made similar remarks.
“Zahid merely mentioned that Mahathir had Indian origins. He did not call Indians pirates and neither did he tell anyone to ‘balik India’.
“Merely stating the fact that a person has Indian blood is not an insult to Indians. How is that a racist insult?”