KUALA LUMPUR― The dumping of a severed cow head outside Penang lawmaker RSN Rayer’s house is disrespectful of the Hindu religion and intimidates Malaysians, the Malaysia Hindu Sangam said today.
Datuk R. S. Mohan Shan, the president of the group representing all Hindu believers in the country, explained that the “cow is a holy thing for Hindus” as they worship it.
“How can they do this and just throw in front of somebody’s house?
“This is making everybody scared, this is making [people from] other religions scared and we feel the security of the country is shaken up,” he told The Malay Mail Online when contacted today, urging the police and government to probe this morning’s incident and take action.
Criticising those who threw the cow’s head this morning, Mohan said that “they didn’t respect the Hindu religion”, adding: “It’s not good for the country and especially for Hindus, our sentiments and our religion have been questioned.”
He urged the local Hindu community to remain “calm and peaceful”, but also cautioned against the testing of the limits of their patience.
“But they shouldn’t test our patience doing these things repeatedly,” he said.
He noted that this was not the first incident involving a severed cow head, pointing to a protest five years ago over the relocation of a 150-year-old Hindu temple from Section 19 to Section 23 in Shah Alam.
In August 28, 2009, a group of residents from the mainly Malay-Muslim neighbourhood of Section 23 brought a cow head to the Selangor state secretariat building as a sign of protest at the temple’s relocation there.
The courts later fined 12 of the protestors RM1,000 each for illegal assembly, while two others were fined RM3,000 each for sedition. One of the duo convicted for sedition was jailed for a week.
Mohan blamed politicians for stirring up racial and religious tension, saying that they should steer clear of such matters, saying: “They should not talk about sensitive issues, they should let the religious people deal with that.”
He named Datuk Zulkifli Noordin, Datuk Ibrahim Ali and Rayer himself as examples of individuals which the government should prosecute, referring to their statements on the repeat of a May 13 racial riot, closing down of vernacular schools and “Celaka Umno” remarks respectively.
Rayer, a Hindu, found the bloody head of a cow in front of his house at around 7am this morning as he was leaving to a temple for prayers.
The Seri Delima assemblyman said a CCTV recording showed an unidentified man, wearing a helmet with a cloth to cover his face, throwing the cow’s head at his gate at 5.58am before leaving on a motorcycle.
Rayer recently courted controversy over his “celaka, celaka, celaka Umno” remarks in last month’s state assembly sitting, sparking a demonstration by Umno Youth leaders who breached the state legislative assembly gate and stormed into the august hall.
Although they demanded that Rayer retract and apologise for his remark, the DAP assemblyman had refused to do so, insisting that he had only referred to three Umno leaders and not the whole party.
Last Thursday, Rayer was due to be charged with sedition over his May 20 “celaka Umno” remark, but the Attorney-General had ordered the prosecutors to defer his case.
On the same day, 15 men were jointly charged under Section 448 of the Penal Code for intruding and trespassing into the state legislative assembly on May 21.
-The Malay Mail
Published on Saturday, 28 June 2014
