Kids on their "Basikal Lajak"

Tracing Johor bicycle tragedy's descent down a slippery slope of racism

Vijay47: I fully agree this incident is taking us down that slippery road we are all accustomed to - racism.

Let me again state that almost everyone involved - the motorist, the teenagers, and their parents - had a share in the blame though not in equal proportions.  Many of the dead were as young as 13 or 14 years old. Where was the parents’ concern over their welfare, allowing them to be out on the roads at 3.20am, participating in dangerous antics where death was waiting to happen?

What makes me sick is their response after the guilty verdict - that they were now relieved. How easily grief can be substituted with the lust for blood. And how familiar is this accident? We witnessed exactly the same sentiments in the case of firefighter Muhammad Adib Mohd Kassim. The case was used by political opportunists.

What action was taken against those who first started the fracas at the Hindu temple that later led to Adib’s death? Similarly, would the police be now charging the teenagers’ parents for want of parental care and supervision? And unbelievably, the police are warning against those circulating old video clips of basikal lajak riders.

MS: The 30 teenagers racing their modified bicycles across the entire span of the road at 3.20 in the morning were doing exactly what their parents allowed, and in nearly all cases, enabled them to do. That they posed a threat to motorists by ensuring that the fully blocked road will guarantee a collision and endanger their own lives has been deemed irrelevant.

The hapless woman had a right to be on the road at that time. None of the 30 did. Not on those ultra-low bikes and not at that time and definitely not in the fashion they raced. If the words "dangerous and reckless" are to be used, they should have been applied to describe the conduct of the gang let loose by their parents whose irresponsibility matches those of their children.

Could then 22-year-old Sam Ke Ting have avoided colliding with these street urchins, for that is exactly what they are. No. Could those who caused the accident by the poor choice they made, doing what no normal teenagers would be allowed to do by responsible parents, have avoided doing so? Yes.

But in tribal Malaysia, none of this is worthy of consideration, especially by politicians whose personal conduct, morals and integrity are always suspect. From the get-go in February 2017, the vultures we know and detest swooped down, picking at the pieces on the road, to satisfy their lust for political dividends.

That set the tone for the rest of the tribe to do what comes naturally - ignore the facts, ignore the circumstances, ignore the cruelty to which the young woman is now subjected and see this as nothing less than a racial incident - exactly like the case of the fireman who would not have gone out if not for the hundreds of thugs who invaded the Hindu temple at 1 in the morning.

Malaysia's ignominious history: a combination of tribalism and feudalism simply ensures that every incident like this will be made racial and handled as such.