SEPANG: Young people should reject moves to sow communal hate, such as the recent public protest against a hardware shop at the centre of a Jalur Gemilang controversy, says Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim.
“Youths have to beware. This is the month to celebrate National Day, but the Jalur Gemilang became a political issue,” the Prime Minister said on Monday (Aug 18).
“For extremists, anything can be exploited as an issue,” Anwar told students of Multimedia University in a dialogue session in Cyberjaya.
The uproar over an upside-down Jalur Gemilang in Kepala Batas, Penang, could have been handled differently instead of being blown out of proportion, Anwar said.
“If the person mistakenly put it up, we should correct him. If he did it out of ill will, we can take legal action. But we do not take the law into our own hands. We are a nation of laws.”
Umno Youth chief Dr Akmal Salleh has been criticised for leading a protest last week against the hardware shop after a video was shared of its owner holding a flag pole with an upside-down Jalur Gemilang.
The owner later explained that he had been using a pole to measure its height and did not even realise that the flag had been tied upside down. He later corrected the mistake.
But his apology did not satisfy Akmal and a group of Umno Youth members who proceeded to hold the protest in front of the shop to purportedly “teach the man how to put up the national flag correctly”.
Police announced that they are investigating both the hardware shop owner and Akmal.
In his speech to students, Anwar warned that fanning communal hate would only destabilise the nation.
“We need political stability. There are no countries in the world that are safe when racism and hate are widespread.
But people who fan such sentiments don’t realise that a country can be torn apart by inter-communal misunderstandings”.
