Biro Tatanegara - The Prime Minister's Reply

After all the questions and reports we've received on the Barisan Nasional propaganda organ in the form of Biro Tatanegara, blogged here, here and here, I had earlier submit a question to the Prime Minister's office for further clarification.

[Petaling Jaya Utara] minta Perdana Menteri menyatakan tindakan yang akan diambil ke atas pihak pensyarah Biro Tatanegara yang menggalakkan fikiran racist apabila mendesak bahaya "kalau ular dengan India depan mata, ketuk India India dulu" dan menayangkan video menuduh pemimpin Teresa Kok dan Ezam Mohd Noor sebagai penyokong "Zionist".

You can read for yourself the reply from the PM office here (well, which basically is "deny, deny, and deny further").

Biro Tatanegara (BTN) adalah sebuah agensi yang menjalankan kursus berkaitan kenegaraan dan juga semangat patriotisme di kalangan rakyat Malaysia keseluruhannya. Peserta-peserta yang menghadiri kursus berkenaan terdiri daripada pelbagai kaum dan peringkat umur.

BTN juga turut menggunakan maklumat-maklumat atau statistik yang diperolehi daripada agensi-agensi kerajaan yang lain seperti Unit Perancangan Ekonomi (EPU), Jabatan PErangkaan, Unit Penyelarasan dan Pelaksanaan (ICU), Kementerian Kewangan dan lain-lain Kementerian dalam menyampaikan fakta-fakta kepada peserta kursus dan telah menjadi dasar kepada jabatan ini tidak membenarkan penceramah BTN menyentuh apa-apa perkara yang boleh menyinggungkan perasaan mana-mana kaum, dan sekiranya ini berlaku pihak Jabatan akan menggugurkan mereka daripada menjadi penceramah BTN.

Berhubung dengan persoalan yang ditimbulkan, BTN sedar ianya di dalam blog-blog di internet, dan hasil dari siasatan kami, kata-kata seperti dinyatakan oleh YB PJ Utara tidak benar. Kemungkinan ada di antara penceramah menyatakan beberapa pepatah orang India yang berkaitan dengan hal-hal orang India yang telah disalah tafsirkan oleh pendengar. Siasatan jugak telah dijalankan dan didapati tiada sebarang bentuk rakaman ceramah yang boleh kami jadikan bukti samada tuduhan itu benar ataupun tidak.

Bentuk persoalan kedua, BTN tidak pernah menerima sebarang bentuk aduan berkenaan perkara yang disebutkan, dan sepengetahuan pihak kami tiada sebarang pebayangan video seperti yang dimaksudkan di dalam kursus-kursus yang dijalankan oleh pihak Jabatan ini.

There you go. Some take home points:

Firstly, will the earlier complainants be willing to file an official complaint? I'll be more than happy to assist, but at the same time understand the "rock and hard place" position you'll be putting yourself into.

Secondly, the next time a student goes for one of these brain-washing sessions, can we get a recording of the proceedings? I'm sure I don't have to elaborate further on this point. With such recordings, we'll have incontrovertible proof of the abuse that has been going on for too long in this organisation.

Another BTN fiasco

We've discussed the brainwashing which happens in the BTN courses before (here and here). One of the reasons why I'm so critical of the UiTM VC (besides the flaunting of his UMNO credentials and his lack of an academic CV) is the fact that he also proudly lists his credentials as a BTN speaker. One can only imagine the kind of rhetoric he would regularly spout as a speaker in one of these brainwashing sessions. The latest on the BTN issue is a letter sent to Lim Kit Siang. I'll reproduce it below.

BTN’s racist and divisive indoctrination courses

Now that Najib has apologised to non-Malays for Ahmad’s statement, I would like to bring to the attention of Najib the pain endured by the young non-Malay JPA scholars who are required to go through a five-day Biro Tatanegara programme at certain camps in the country. To be fair, many moderate Malay students too cried and were hurt by some racist comments made by the instructors.

As part of the course, which is mandatory before they are sent overseas, all non-Malays are segrgated and given lectures on the history of the country and how the immigration of the Chinese and Indians had taken place. And finally how the Chinese and Indians were given citizenship. The Malays too had their own similar sessions.

The instructors blatantly told them that they should not question the rights and privileges of the Malays as the non-Malays should be thankful that they were given citizenship status and a place to stay on their soil. My daughter together with the other non-Malay students was shocked and went back to their dormitories depressed. And to the Malay students, the instructors told them to be aware of this fact and not to mix too freely with the non-Malays.

A Malay friend of my daughter came back crying to the dormitory saying that she could not take the racist position taken by the government authority. My daughter then began questioning the bumiputra policy and was disgusted with such blatant indoctrination. This incident has also made the students harbour anger and resentment. Their fear for the authorities and losing their scholarships made them keep their cool. I am not exaggerating here - ask all the JPA students to write in anonymously and you will know the truth.

These are young minds being polluted with racism. Tens of thousands of students have gone through this programme and more will be attending it in the future. So can you blame them when they exhibit their racist tendencies when in authority? How could the JPA allow such a syllabus for the cream of the nation, who will one day be entrusted to implement government policies fairly?

So, will Najib take responsibility for the racist syllabus and subsequently the racist remarks and apologise to the tens of thousands of students and parents who were hurt by such hurtful remarks? Of course knowing the BN government, it will deny this. Believe me, this is the ABSOLUTE truth.

My call to Najib is to immediately probe into this claim with the help of a multi-racial team of officers from Suhakam BUT please maintain the anonymity of the young children who have everything to lose. This blatant racism practised and preached by the Barisan Nasional government must stop immediately.

From an outraged Malaysian parent

BTN brainwashing

I'm not surprised by the brainwashing that goes on in BTN (BiroTataNegara) sessions in public universities. I would like to attend one just for the experience. In the meantime, check this blog post by someone who did attend one such session. I'll reproduce it below and let our readers react as they see fit. Someone should record one of these sessions and see what the public reaction is like once its posted on youtube.


(NOTE: This is an email i received from a reader exposing the latest brain washing tricks deployed by UMNO's apparatus called Biro Tatanegara(BTN). Mind you BTN is 100% funded by tax payer's money)

Biro Tatanegara. Does it ring a bell? Government propaganda or honest student development programme? For those who aren't aware of it, Biro Tatanegara or BTN for short is under the Jabatan Perdana Menteri and it has several modules which all public university students have to attend in the name of "Student Development". On the 6th of July 2008 in UiTM Shah Alam, there were three separate talks being held under BTN with the first one being titled "Pendidikan", second one titled "Ancaman Keselamatan Negara" and the third one titled, "Patriotisma". Smell anything funny yet? No? Read on. You won't even have to smell it after you are done reading this. It'll be stuffed down your throat.

I would like to only focus on the first speaker, Dr. Idris bin Md. Noor. He was supposed to talk about education as that was the title of his speech, but the content was far different. He first went on with the usual introductions but in less than a few minutes, he suddenly touched on the forum on the discussion of social contract in Malaysia that the BAR council organized. He criticized it with all his heart, saying no one should discuss about it as it is unquestionable. Fair enough, I thought at first. Freedom of speech right? But what if he suddenly accuses the "Malay" speaker in the forum, which I'm guessing is Farish A. Noor, as a traitor to the Malay race as a whole? And while he was browsing through his files on the laptop which was projected on the big screen, it was no surprise for me that I saw files entitled "Ketuanan Melayu". He also then went on about the Malay's obsession with magic and ghosts, he said that it is all wrong beliefs through the perspective of Islam because if they really could use magic and other dark arts for fighting, then they should kill Karpal Singh with it.

There are so many quotable sentences, if only I could remember it all. He even said, "Kalau ular dengan India depan mata, ketuk India dulu." He then started to become more impassioned in his speech towards the end, like someone campaigning for a political seat yet failed, and resorted to a multi-purpose hall with bumiputra students. He said so many atrocious things that I will list them down in point form.

-Explained how the Malays aren't racist but others are racist towards us.
-Bangsa Malaysia does not exist, neither does Malaysian Chinese and Indians, only in the strict Malay, Chinese and Indians. (Interestingly, behind a booklet provided to us, one of the objectives of the programme is to produce a -"Bangsa Malaysia". Obviously, he was ignorant).
-Bahasa Malaysia does not exist, it is Bahasa Melayu.
-Nothing wrong with waving the Keris.
-Bumiputra hanya 55% di Malaysia, give birth more people!
-The University and Colleges Act was partly made to ensure a Malay Vice-Chancellor in Universities which should be the way.
-Blogs are "berdosa" or sinful.
-Christians will not like Muslims.

But that isn't even the best part. The best part is, he showed a short film on the
dangers of Zionism and the illegal occupation of Palestine which was probably the only part of the speech I agreed with and I thought to myself this could be the only fact of the speech but surprise, surprise, at the end of the film, there was a montage of so-called Zionist supporters with the pictures of Anwar Ibrahim, Tian Chua, Teresa Kok, Hishamuddin Rais and Ezam Md. Nor. Then a question popped up in my head. Is Ezam still a Zionist supporter since he is in UMNO now? Does that mean the government has a Zionist supporter as well as the opposition? And expectedly, the speaker was being more anti-semitic than anti-zionist. He even explained how the Pakatan Rakyat ruled states are all going down the drain and he says, "this is what you get if you vote for the opposition!" He criticized Anwar Ibrahim and his colleagues so much along with Pakatan Rakyat while being completely oblivious towards Barisan Nasional's mistakes. As if they have perfect policies.

This was supposed to be a speech touching on education and look how it ended up. It did not even smell anything of education. It was a speech that was not meant for national unity at all. How could it be when you spread hate? I could only sit and ponder quietly while all this was happening. But the speech was not the saddest part. The saddest part was that the majority of students in the hall were cheering him on. I will type out part of the lyrics that were supplied to us, entitled, "Warisan".

Anak Kecil main api
Terbakar hatinya yang sepi
Air mata darah bercampur keringat
Bumi dipijak milik orang

Nenek moyang kaya raya
Tergadai seluruh harta benda
Akibat engketa sesamalah kita
Cinta lenyap di arus zaman ini

Indahnya bumi kita ini
Warisan berkurun lamanya
Hasil mengalir ke tangan yang lain
Pribumi merintih sendiri

Melayukan gagah di nusantara.


Who were those words referring to? Foreign powers or non-malays?

Perfect welcome to the new intake of University Students. Please spread this to others. People need to know.

I know you should.

written by A Worried Student,
06.07.2008