T-Shirt Confiscations: Home Ministry breaks new ground in displaying unbelievable stupidity
Before heading for home, and before words on police brutality and the PAS muktamar, I wanted to highlight this real quick.
I nearly fell off my chair in disbelief when I read the following statement. I felt like tearing my hair out.
I’m sure many of us have seen these T-shirts in Central Market or previously in Bangsar Village. I have always thought them brilliantly hilarious (if they cost less, I would have bought dozens!). Many, I’m sure, remember the Mao Zedong spoofs (I think Mighty Maos was one of my faves).
To borrow some of (T-shirt creator/owner) Patrick’s words, it takes uncommon stupidity to think that these T-shirts glorify communism. In fact, it would basically take an inability to read.
On a day like today, I would not put illiterate government enforcement officers beyond the pale of possibility.
I also highlight Patrick’s observation that to do this while Najib pays homage to communist China…. well, is something that compels me to bang my head against the wall. In fact, Kerishamuddin’s Home Ministry might have had a more defensible (although essentially equally stupid) rationale to confiscate the t-shirts if they said they were *insulting* communism/China.
Yeargh!!
Well, Patrick’s statement in full, thanks to Uncle Kit:
On 2nd June 2009, the Publications & Quranic Texts Division of the Home Ministry raided my T-shirt stall in Central Market for the 3rd time and seized 83 shirts they claim are “obscene and contain Communist elements”. You can see the images they confiscated by following this link…
That the Ministry is clamping down on items they allege glorify (Chinese) Communism at the very moment our beloved leader is grinning for photocalls with the flatcaps in Beijing is flash-bulb irony so blinding it requires uncommon talent to miss it. The Ministry, of course, missed it by a mile.
Not many people know this but lightweight, low level officers of the Publications & Quranic Texts Division are entrusted with absolute power to make on-the-spot judgments about what is obscene, subversive, subliminally seditious, distasteful, inartistic, drug drenched, Communist, radical, Swedish. Er, ok, maybe not Swedish, but apart from that they can pass instant judgment on just about everything else under the sun. Worse, having judged, they are empowered to confiscate anything that offends their fragile sensibilities. They can say your cupboard is a badly disguised coffin, your toothbrush is a sex aid or that your plastic KL Tower statuette so thoughtfully bought for you by Aunt Mimi is plainly a male sexual organ. Having so proclaimed, they have the unchallengeable right to then cart everything away. In a blink of an eye one is judged, juried and executed by the same single entity. Issues of abuse of power loom large. You only have to click on the link above to realise that the Ministry tends towards irrational excitability in their interpretations, betraying the government’s impatience with the mildest satire and discomfort with the freedom of expression that is our guaranteed constitutional right.
What this means in practice is that the Ministry has a bunch of people running around seizing things under the flimsiest pretext. They took half my stock – 3 times – but they could just as easily have taken all. If you run a business selling things, they have an unquestionable right in law to do so and there is not much you can do about it. When a government deliberately denies a citizen his fundamental right to make a living, it had better have weighty, considered reasons for doing so. Here, we allow low level staffers to snatch away our rice bowls on a whim, without warning. Accountability, reason and judiciousness be damned.
By logical progression, since the images are now presumably “illegal”, are we to see enforcement squads jumping out from behind lampposts to rip T shirts bearing similar images off the backs of recalcitrant wearers? Will we have T shirt evaluators sitting alongside the H1N1 scanners at airports and entry points around the country? Will tourists be warned to leave their Viagra at home?
You may think that the images have no artistic or comedic merit. You may think them stupid and juvenile. But to say that they glorify Communism, are obscene and illegal, is really stretching it. And, surely, confiscation on those grounds is wholly unwarranted. Are we, as Malaysians, so sanguine that we accept the government has a right to intrude in such a way into our lives, compromise our professional integrity and devastate our businesses on nothing more than one person’s inadequate understanding of the word “obscene”??
You can read Malay Mail’s article about the raid here…
You can read the Malay Mail’s editorial about the issue here..
You can read the Star’s article about the raid here…
Rgds
Patrick Saw
I agree. this is trully a joke. well, seemed like fascism is trying to ensure that communism does not take over.
Stupid is as stupid does. It takes some intelligence and good English to laugh at spoofs, take offs and puns. The degree of jingoism the cops display only confirms their misunderstanding of even humour……..poor things!
What we have are stupid civil servants. Blame it on the education system that breeds such shallow thinking stupid morons. They cannot tell he difference between a meow and a mao.
Actually, those creative images, after watching the Youtube video, cheer me up on a gloomy morning here!
Now, the stupidity and insanity aside, the only explanation I have (being a fond conspiracy theorist) is this. Najib has just visited Communist China. Some of those creatives actually make fun of CHAIRMAN MAO, therefore can be judged as ‘disrespect’ to the great leader. The confiscation is part of the effort to help build this new relationship.
(Can someone in China help verify if this development in a small corner of KL Central Market got disproportionate coverage on the papers there? Headlines like “Even foreign government of Malaysia clamps down on disrespectful acts on our Great Leader”.)
BTW, would the use of my capitalised “CHAIRMAN MAO” above be judged as glorification of Communism??? Likely likely, because those officers may not understand these two words. LOL
Another level of stupidity.
Teach them common sense before deciding on english or BM.
Obtuseness and blind obedience are pre-requisites for low level civil service jobs offering pathetic pay but provides the thrill of brute power over a fearful public. With perks on the side and accountability to no one but their own cronies, the job may not be half bad. Attracts a certain personality type – the dumb and the dumber.
It’s our fault that we have stupid idiotic officers in the govt. We allowed the idotic ministers (with dubious PhD) to run (ruin??) the govt by employing drop-outs and unemployable graduates in the civil service. We end up with officers who are illeterate, no common sense and palinly incompetent.
I have been saying this again and again, we need professionals to run in the elections, and appointed to the highest position in the govt so that all this can be corrected. Those/Most full-time politicians are the same, all are in for power and money (= contract). One for u, one for me, none for the others. I’m glad that LGE has some sense and he sees the need to appoint capable people in Penang, be it from the opposition or career civil servants. I hope he can recruit more professionals, not fresh graduates into his party so that they can serve competently.
Most or majority of the civil servant are “me no spik inglesh” type. Or most of them have very poor command of english, as exemplified by the ever hilarious answer of “I’m in a well” when asked how are you? So it is expected that they will take offense with a T-shirt with “Mighty Maos” on it. We malay call this type of people ‘Bodoh, sombong”… They didn’t know that they are stupid and that’s the problem!
Aiyah, you guys have a heart lah. The MHA enforcement boys are so poor – lousy gaji – that they have no money to buy T-shirts and so must confiscate on any excuse. Besides, maybe Hisham-whatshisname is trying to sabotage his cousin…hoping the Communist Chinese put him under arrest as what the North Koreans had done to the American journalists. If cousin don’t come home, Hisham-whatshisname can take over lah.
Were any otters harmed during this raid?
All otters are communists. It’s true.
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