Dress code and pornographic website

The PAS Youth movement has defended the party’s policy on women’s attire, saying it is a noble effort to ensure Kelantanese women are properly dressed.

Its chief, Salahuddin Ayub, said the policy, provided under the Kota Baru Municipal Council’s dress code, had been enforced since 1990, and was well received by the people of Kelantan despite protests from people outside the state.

“Whatever views the Kelannese hold must be respected. The dress code is only applied when they are working,” he told reporters after chairing the PAS Youth monthly meeting at Taman Melewar here yesterday.

Salahuddin was commenting on the Kelantan government’s move in imposing a RM500 penalty on women workers who do not dress decently, a move that was strongly criticised by non-governmental organisations, including Women, Family and Community Development Minister Datuk Seri Shahrizat Abdul Jalil.

A check by mStar Online, The Star’s Malay online portal, found that Internet surfers from Malaysia's fundamentalist Islamic state in Kelantan has topped the list of surfers who visited pornographic websites in the country, a newspaper reported on Sunday.

The Star daily's Sunday paper cited research from Google Trends as saying that Internet surfers in the city of Kota Baru in northeastern Kelantan and the town of Kuantan in neighbouring Pahang had the highest number of porn surfers.

Universiti Malaya psychologist Assoc Prof Dr Jas Laile Suzana Jaafar viewed the development as a normal phenomenon, especially in Kelantan which practised conservative policies in sensitive matters such as sexuality.

“If a teenager was the one who searched for it, it is normal because of puberty and he has to learn about sexuality to understand the changes they experience.

“If teenagers ask their parents or peers, how much information can they get? In Kelantan, parents are not open to talking about sexuality with their children,” she said, adding that some parents tend to regard the subject as a taboo. What an irony !


Malaysia monitoring media to ensure no threat to peace, order ?

Malaysia's leader said his government is monitoring media reports to ensure they do not threaten peace and order, a news report said on Friday.

Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, who is also the internal security minister, said the ministry is in constant contact with media organisations, issuing criticism or warnings if their news breaks ministry guidelines, The Star newspaper reported.

"If the organisations continue with the same offenses, the ministry will issue a show cause letter followed by suspension or cancellation of their license," Abdullah was quoted as saying, replying to a question in Parliament.

The report did not elaborate on the guidelines.

However, it is generally accepted that Malaysia's domestic news media are expected to tone down reports on racial or religious issues - presumed to be flash points among the ethnic Malay, Chinese and Indian communities that make up the country.

A spokesman for Mr Abdullah could not immediately be reached Friday for further details.

Most domestic news outlets in Malaysia are controlled by the ruling coalition's parties, and are generally cautious in reporting about the government.

Malaysia was ranked 92 in a list of 168 countries this year in terms of media freedom by Paris-based media advocacy group Reporters Without Borders.

Meantime, Public awareness of human rights is still lacking here despite the country’s rapid development.

Bar Council chairman Yeo Yang Poh said there were many aspects of human rights that Malaysians need to look into such as gender equality and rights for children.

”If you compare with certain countries, of course we are better (in fighting for human rights) but if you look at developed countries, we are far behind.

“We have to fight for various rights such as freedom of expression, freedom of belief, freedom of assembly and the right to clean air,” he told reporters after celebrating the Festival of Rights here yesterday.

Yeo said people should fight for their rights.

“Gather in large numbers and show that we are pro-rights. Otherwise, we will have less freedom in future,” he said.

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Medal Obsession Continues...

Ok, I've had it. I've criticised (see here and here) frequently, Malaysia universities' narcissistic obsession with collecting coloured medals at trade fairs and exhibition all around the world.

However, the ease at which these medals can be purchased and paraded as academic achievements to the clueless government and the general public who knows no better, is obviously just too irresistable for university officials.

The latest in the list of universities parading their self-gratifying achievements are Universiti Teknologi Mara (UiTM) in the Star here, and Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM) in the New Straits Times, here.

A team of nine researchers from Universiti Teknologi Mara (UiTM) carved a name for Malaysia when they brought home five gold and five silver medals from the World Exhibition of Innovation, Research and New Technologies Brussels Innova & Eureka in Belgium last month. The team submitted 10 inventions for the competition held between Nov 23 and 27.

More than 300 inventions were displayed, with participants coming from the United States, Taiwan, Romania, Belgium and Croatia.

The proud and ecstatic vice-chancellor was proudly showing off the team from UiTM for having achieved "perfect" returns, 10 submission returning with 10 medals.

...Datuk Seri Prof Ibrahim Abu Shah told a press conference yesterday that the success proved the capabilities of researchers from the university to compete at the international-level.

Now, let me bring the Professor there back down to earth before Tok Pa or Pak Lah himself starts lavishing praise on these so-called achievements.

Firstly, and as asserted in my previous commentaries on dog and pony show events, these trade fairs and exhibitions which our Malaysian universities love participating are not, as described "competitions", much less "academic competitions".

They are, and I emphasise, for-profit events for the organisers which our universities have paid a lot of money to participate, and in turn receive "tokens" of appreciation from the grateful organisations in the form of well, what better than medals?

Need evidence?

Have a look for yourself the Brussels Eureka web page which listed the number of medals awarded. Count for yourself the number of medals awarded.

Yes, that's a total 303 gold, silver and bronze medal winners, out of a total of 314 participants i.e., a 96.5% success rate. The non-medal winners (11 of them), received a "Diploma" which comes automatically with the purchase of an exhibition booth. There are no losers. Out of the number of participants, a whopping 167 or 53.2% of participants went home with "Gold-coloured" medals.

You'd also be interested to know that these colourful medal awards are not judged by distinguished academic peers but by the organisers themselves, who are in all likelihood, have little knowledge or interest with regards to the inventions' reliability, application, efficiency, safety, commercial viability or for that matter, honesty!

Now, if UiTM and other local universities attempts to boast of its impressive achievements at "international levels" based on medal collections from such trade shows, I think it's just absolutely disgraceful and its really scraping the bottom of the barrel.

You'd be interested to know, the Malaysian "academic" contingent comprising of 26 submissions would have forked out anywhere between RM300,000 to RM500,000, depending on various factors such as the size of the floor space and utilisation of supplementary services such as furniture, electricity, telephone etc., just as basic participation fees of the event. Basic accomodation and economy flights alone will easily add an additional RM200,000 or more to the cost of sending our exhibitors. This has yet to take into consideration the "cost" of preparing the relevant prototypes for the "inventions".

Essentially, each year, by taking part in some 4 to 5 such trade shows, the Malaysian public universities are spending millions in public funds, yes, our tax payers' money, on trade fair junketts to London, Brussels, Geneva, Nuremberg and other exotic destinations to collect academically worthless medals.

When instead, the precious funds which our universities are already short of, should have been spent on attaining achievements which really matter, like getting worthwhile research published in internationally renown journals.
(Source: Tony P "Education In Malaysia")


Malaysia human right UTMara medals AAB