The Pakatan Harapan coalition collapsed late last month after a group of former ruling MPs, led by Datuk Seri Azmin Ali, held talks with some members of the opposition on a possible new alliance — marking the beginning of a political crisis infamously coined as #LangkahSheraton. A week-long turmoil later, Perikatan Nasional — a new coalition consisting of Bersatu, Barisan Nasional, and PAS — swept into power, with Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin as the new Prime Minister.
In the evolving post-14th General Election narrative, Pakatan Harapan had long carried the brand of multi-racial and reformist values. This posits a stark contrast to the current image of Perikatan Nasional, which has widely been seen as espousing a Malay-first ideology. On top of that, the newly sworn-in cabinet has also had its fair share of criticism for a lack of diversity and representation.
In conjunction with the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, we decided to take a look at the level and tone of racial speech in response to #LangkahSheraton as a recent assessment of racial relations in the country. There have been ample studies linking heated political rhetoric to increased mistrust and prejudice between groups, and history has taught us that consistent dissemination of hateful messages about certain communities led to polarisation and violence around the world.
For an overview of hate speech in Malaysia and how we’re dealing with it, read our primer here.
Given extant studies, we had two questions in mind for this piece — how did recent political developments affect racial speech in Malaysia? How intense has it been? We performed web scraping on Twitter from a week before #LangkahSheraton to a week after Muhyiddin’s appointment as the Prime Minister to portray a clearer trend of racial speech.
For the purpose of this article, we focused our search on a few commonly used racialised hate phrases such as “Cina babi”, “DAPig”, “Keling”, “India mabuk”, “Pendatang”, “Balik Cina/India”, “Melayu bodoh”, and “Meleis”.
As with any other racially-charged incident, #LangkahSheraton amplified hate speech amid the week-long crisis
As negotiations between political parties were going on throughout the week in a race to form parliament majority, there was a steady increase in anti-minority tweets following #LangkahSheraton. Two peaks can be observed from the graph below — one on 1st March, and the other on 6th March.
<iframe src='https://public.flourish.studio/visualisation/1605673/embed' frameborder='0' scrolling='no' style='width:100%;height:500px;'></iframe><div style='width:100%!;margin-top:4px!important;text-align:right!important;'><a class='flourish-credit' href='https://public.flourish.studio/visualisation/1605673/?utm_source=embed&utm_campaign=visualisation/1605673' target='_top' style='text-decoration:none!important'><img alt='Made with Flourish' src='https://public.flourish.studio/resources/made_with_flourish.svg' style='width:105px!important;height:16px!important;border:none!important;margin:0!important;'> </a></div>The number of anti-minority tweets first peaked on the day Muhyiddin was sworn in as the new Prime Minister, and the second peak came amid the appointment of a new Attorney-General, Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) chief Latheefa Koya’s resignation, postponement of Dewan Rakyat sitting, as well as news about Lim Guan Eng’s willingness to relinquish his position for former premier Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad to remain as Prime Minister.
Coincidentally, the peak in hateful tweets against minorities on 1st March happened amidst the arrests of pro-democracy activists, as well as two trending hashtags at the time — #NotMyPM and #DaulatTuanku. These hashtags emerged as opposing views of netizens: on one hand, #NotMyPM tweets were a form of protest against the appointment of Muhyiddin as the new Prime Minister along with fears of widespread corruption making a comeback; on the other hand, #DaulatTuanku tweets focused on singing praise for the Agong’s decision to appoint Muhyiddin, and a reaction to #NotMyPM as tweets with that hashtag were assumed to be disrespectful towards the Agong.
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Racial tweets that targeted specific ethnicities were rampant throughout the crisis
We categorised the use of various hateful words and phrases on Twitter into four groups: anti-Malay, anti-Chinese, anti-Indians, and anti-Non Malays. While total number of tweets with such terms fluctuated over the political crisis, our search found that “DAPig” was the most frequently-used word, followed by “Pendatang”, with “Keling” and “Meleis” tied at third place.
<iframe src='https://public.flourish.studio/visualisation/1607724/embed' frameborder='0' scrolling='no' style='width:100%;height:500px;'></iframe><div style='width:100%!;margin-top:4px!important;text-align:right!important;'><a class='flourish-credit' href='https://public.flourish.studio/visualisation/1607724/?utm_source=embed&utm_campaign=visualisation/1607724' target='_top' style='text-decoration:none!important'><img alt='Made with Flourish' src='https://public.flourish.studio/resources/made_with_flourish.svg' style='width:105px!important;height:16px!important;border:none!important;margin:0!important;'> </a></div><iframe src='https://public.flourish.studio/visualisation/1606828/embed' frameborder='0' scrolling='no' style='width:100%;height:500px;'></iframe><div style='width:100%!;margin-top:4px!important;text-align:right!important;'><a class='flourish-credit' href='https://public.flourish.studio/visualisation/1606828/?utm_source=embed&utm_campaign=visualisation/1606828' target='_top' style='text-decoration:none!important'><img alt='Made with Flourish' src='https://public.flourish.studio/resources/made_with_flourish.svg' style='width:105px!important;height:16px!important;border:none!important;margin:0!important;'> </a></div>“DAPig” took the first spot with two significant peaks — the day Muhyiddin was sworn in, and 6th March where PAS president Abdul Hadi Awang reportedly said calling for a no-confidence vote against Muhyiddin was akin to voting against the Agong. It was also the day Khalid Jaafar, a close confidant of Azmin Ali, was reported as saying that DAP detested Pakatan Harapan’s dominant Malay leadership and had gone as far as scheming to erase PAS’ influence in the now-defunct Pakatan Rakyat.
Nearly 20% of all tweets that mentioned “DAPig” were explicit calls for telling the Chinese to ‘go back’, to die, and branding them as communists or dogs. Meanwhile, about 21% of all “DAPig” tweets were also direct references to the political party DAP itself. There is a clear correlation made between the party and people of the Chinese ethnicity.
“Pendatang” was the second most mentioned term on our list — tweets containing the term spiked on the day Agong announced his decision that Muhyiddin is to be appointed as the new Prime Minister. 11% of tweets mentioning “pendatang” were related to calling for the death of immigrants as well as telling them to ‘go back’.
Coming in third is tweets with mentions of “Keling”, and it is notable that a significant percentage of those tweets (42%) were direct and severe references to things such as the case of LTTE supporters being acquitted, attacking Indians for their skin colour and religion, as well as calling for their death.
This phenomenon could also be related to news reports about viral videos of a robbery that occurred in Klang, well as the ones critical of the former Attorney-General for his decision to drop the terrorism charges on 21st Feb — ranging from former Education Minister Maszlee Malik‘s call for him to quit his post for not prioritising national security, to PAS’ threat of a major rally if Tommy remained as the Attorney-General.
Source: New Straits Times
“Meleis”, a term coined online which refers to Malay people who are assumed to have radicalised religious and social views, also came in third on our list. It was mostly used during the week of #LangkahSheraton — a crisis which has since been branded as a move to strengthen Bumiputera agenda. Moreover, it could also be related to news about the backlash against local punk band Bunkface, who released an anti-LGBT song during that week with lyrics such as “go die, LGBT”.
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On the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, we want to reiterate this — Malaysia needs a broader response to hate speech
The United Nations General Assembly proclaimed this day over five decades ago to commemorate struggles against racial discrimination — which includes a worldwide effort to push back against racially-charged speech. Advocacy and civil law remedies on this had long been hailed as the more positive way to go, but the recent investigations by PDRM on seditious online posts in the days following #LangkahSheraton are the latest evidence of Malaysia’s punitive and late-stage measures when it comes to hate speech.
Nonetheless, we at The Centre believe that not all hate speech should be addressed by punitive measures; a rehabilitative and societal approach can and should be put in place. We have been working on defining different intensities of hate speech — especially racially-charged ones — and researching on proportionate responses to them. For instance, we want to find out how hateful Malaysians find common terms such as “DAPig” or “pendatang”, and what could be a progressive and thoughtful response to those utterances.
Read our proposal for a broader and transparent management of hate speech in Malaysia here.
Muhyiddin had said that he is a Prime Minister for all in his first address to the nation. With the heightened racial speech and challenging times for Malaysia, it is a golden opportunity for Muhyiddin to walk the talk — to acknowledge and address hate speech in the country transparently, progressively, and compassionately.