KUALA LUMPUR — The rift in Malaysian society over a spate of dress code enforcement actions by government agencies and public buildings on non-Muslim women has widened, with former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad saying that Malaysia is now sliding backwards and is acting like Saudi Arabia in its zeal to impose a dress code on the public.
“We are now sliding backwards. Soon, not only shorts will be an issue. If a woman leaves a house without a burqa, it will be considered wrong,” he said yesterday, adding that dress codes in government buildings should only apply to its employees and not to visitors, especially those who are not Muslim.
Earlier yesterday, Cuepacs, an umbrella group of 140 civil service unions, spoke up for civil servants who have been criticised for directing women to wear sarongs before entering government buildings.
Many of the civil servants had used their own money to buy sarongs for visitors who were improperly dressed.
“The aim of the dress code is get people to dress modestly, it is applicable to everyone. You cannot just go to someone’s house dressed however you want,” Cuepacs president Azih Muda told reporters yesterday.
“But no one is to blame in these incidents. The personnel are not wrong for following the rules and the client (visitor) is also not wrong as they may have forgotten about the dress code.”
“The people who are wrong are those who are posting comments (on social media) and sensationalising something that should not be sensationalised in the first place,” he said.
Mr Azih said that Cuepacs would be sending out a certificate of appreciation to a People’s Volunteer Corps (Rela) officer who on June 16 generated controversy for stopping a woman wearing shorts and making her wrap a towel around her waist before allowing her into Sungei Buloh hospital.
Meanwhile, an ethnic Chinese opposition lawmaker and a columnist engaged in a war of words after the latter labelled the lawmaker an “enemy” to her own race for donning a headscarf while in a mosque last week.
In a Facebook post, Ms Lim Fang, who is a columnist with Sin Chew Daily and China Press criticised Selangor state Speaker Hannah Yeoh of the Democratic Action Party (DAP) for allegedly giving a chance for Malay government officials to impose dress codes on Chinese women.
“If DAP’s Hannah Yeoh can assimilate into Malay society why should Chinese women be different from Malay society? The DAP should discipline the enemy within,” the columnist wrote on Wednesday.
Ms Yeoh, who is ethnic Chinese, retorted on Facebook yesterday that “extreme views exist in every faith and race” and called on fellow Malaysians to reject such mindsets if they hoped to move the country forward.
The appreciation letter signed off by Cuepacs follows a similar letter of appreciation issued by Rela to one of its security guards working at a Road Transport Department (RTD) office on Wednesday.
The guard caused an uproar in Parliament and social media earlier this month by making a middle-aged ethnic Chinese women wear a sarong over her knee-length skirt before being allowed to access the Department.
Rela had issued the letter despite Transport Minister Liow Tiong Lai clarifying that there is no “sarong policy” at the RTD and the department issuing a public apology to the woman.
Source: www.todayonline.com
