Don’t turn neighbourhood disputes into racial issues, says lawyer

KUALA LUMPUR: A lawyer has cautioned Malaysians against hastily classifying neighbourhood disputes as racial or religious conflicts, particularly when such incidents are captured on social media. Sahain Nada Puthucheary made these remarks at a forum in Kuala Lumpur, emphasizing that videos shared online often fail to capture the complete context of an incident.

"When things get posted online, a lot of context disappears and it becomes a two-dimensional video image that is on somebody’s phone and they’re only seeing bits and pieces of that problem," he explained.

Puthucheary urged individuals to carefully evaluate whether a dispute was genuinely racially or religiously motivated or simply a domestic disagreement between neighbours. He stressed that it is not appropriate to automatically label every conflict involving people from different backgrounds as a racial or religious issue. "Just because I’m fighting somebody who owns a dog and that person is Chinese, I’m not fighting the Chinese community," he stated.

The lawyer advised that neighbourhood disputes should be addressed properly before they escalate into larger, more divisive problems. He lamented that many issues in Malaysia often become vastly exaggerated due to the tendency to label them as religious or racial matters. "Make an active effort against that - and if it’s a neighbourly issue, let the neighbours work it out," Puthucheary concluded.