Selective compassion

There’s a really old Malay saying that goes “Kuman di seberang laut nampak, gajah di depan mata tak nampak”.

The more I hear this proverb, the more I am convinced whoever coined it had peered into the future, probably with two magical coconuts, from the time period in which he or she resided, to Malaysia in 2015.

It certainly feels that way.

We practice double standards in nearly everything we do. We have double standards in everything from housing policy to education and apparently, now even to charity.

Sometimes, we even have triple, quadruple and innumerable standards. Our sense of what is right, wrong and acceptable appears to be guided by two things. Whims and fancies.

Take for instance, the current issue with the 1,180 refugees off our waters. 1,180 Myanmar and Bangladeshi people are stuck on a boat, circling our waters while being bounced off countries like a ping pong ball.

A stark contrast from when we welcomed with open arms the victims of the Bosnian conflict, or had such a big outpouring of compassion for the victims of Darfur, Syria, Egypt, Yemen and Sri Lanka. Countries really far away.

Remember the calls for boycott? You could not even safely stick a Starbucks VIP or McDonald’s Drive Thru car sticker without the mortal danger of having your car windshield smashed.

How is it that screams from distant lands echoed twice in our hearts while we weren’t able to hear the pleas of those half the distance away?

Muslims. Rohingya. Asians.

Refugees. Economic migrants. Human trafficking victims.

Should it matter what we call them?

Aren’t the labels entirely ours to bestow in the first place?

Above and beyond everything else, they’re human beings. That should the primary and only reason we need to consider helping them.

There is hardly any shortage of public opinion on the matter.

The more compassionate ones would implore their friends and persuade everyone to help. Had they owned a boat, they would probably pedal themselves to go bring these people in and house them in their own homes even.

Then there are the "historical" experts. Study the history of the Rohingya and the Kamans and the violent Rakhine Riots they say. Understand why even the Myanmar Muslims dislike them. Learn about the Arakan and the Pakistani connection. If possible, read all the way to 1869.

And we have the "sociological" and "economic" experts. One thousand one hundred and eighty people would compound the problem of displaced migrants. It’s not 1,180, they will breed. They will have families.

It’s not temporary – look at the Vietnamese, they stayed 20 years! They will invite their kin and kith to come over and soon we will have 11 million Rohingya here (we already have close to 70,000) and they will steal our jobs, marry our women and burden our system.

Get a grip, it’s just 1,180 people. We already have three million migrants here, about 5% of whom do not work. There are probably more migrants in your taman.

And besides, look around you. You don’t need to go far for evidence that the "migrants" have already assimilated very much into our communities, without really intruding into the way we do things.

Is it their fault or ours? Would they have come in droves had we ourselves not offer jobs to them, out of the greedy desire for cheap labour or sheer laziness to work?

Just take from Petaling Street through Kota Raya, Medan Pasar and Jalan Ampang and you would feel like you’ve passed by at least four different Asian countries in one stroll. They did not come here to steal or beg or borrow. They came to seek out jobs that we didn’t want in the first place.

And in the case of the Rohingya, there is the additional burden of persecution on their home front.

There was a time where Asians were all bundled into one abominable package by our colonial masters. We were slightly above the blacks but still way below the whites.

But at least we were discriminated against as a bloc of Asians. Western imperialism came and went. And now it seems, we are no longer discriminated as an Asian bloc.

However, we seem to have quite ably, by ourselves, to discriminate amongst our own Asian kin.

Perhaps it’s time to remember that the same red blood flows in our veins.

Asian or Caucasian. Dark or fair skinned. Spotted or smooth complexion.

Human blood. – May 18, 2015.

* This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malaysian Insider.