What never got published...

Below is my written letter to the Editor of the New Straits Times recently but never got published for reasons of their own, but I would wish my readers to see what I wrote :-

We cannot help feeling very unhappy and concerned over the unnecessary overreaction by our politicians and people on the apparent mistreatment of certain Chinese tourists by the respective authorities of government departments. Foremost consideration should be that tourists of all nations coming to our country should respect our sovereignty and laws pertaining to our country.

They should not overstay , indulge in illicit trade and business and completely disappear in our country. It is rightful for our police and immigration personnel to thoroughly examine their papers and credentials before allowing them to step into our soil, because at the end of the day if those with bad intentions are let loose, we are the ones who will live to regret it later. These lack of thorough checks in the past have resulted in so many criminal happenings in our country today, what with weapons and drugs smuggling and "tourists prostitutes" happily carrying out their illicit trade. Need we say more ?

We know and we have seen and a lot of us have experienced the very thorough checks imposed by the United States of America and other associated countries of the West on our people and other foreigners who landed on theirs and was anything made out of these inconveniences ? If we did make an official complaints, do their government react to our complaints ? Do they get worked up over the fear that foreigners would not visit them ? Why so much fear in us over these bad tourists which should not be here in the first place ? Before they come here, their travel agencies and authorities should brief them on the need for them to be good ambassadors for their country just we Malaysians generally do when we visit theirs.

Today, we lost trace of 50,000 Chinese, and in the past the figures were even much more not only the Chinese but other foreigners as well . We are now asking our security people and those others concerned to let loose and compromise. Why should we do this just because we are afraid these people will not come here ! We do not need them ! Not these bad ones anyway ! Let us face it, those with legitimate and genuine intentions will still come and less problem for us. Why invite troubles when there are enough of them without these bad tourists ! Let us give our support and helping hands to our people who stick their necks out and get blamed for trying to do a good job to let us have peace in our environment. Why should our people become the victims of these people. Granted not all those security personnel are blameless but why generalized and demoralize the honest and loyal personnel ? I think we are a bit too much in this .

The publicity created by ourselves on trying to be goodies could easily back fire on us and for all we know it already has ! What has happened has happened and we should just try to take note that we will improve. Let our boys work properly and in an atmosphere of confidence. After all they are our servants just as all our politicians should be, without exceptions.

If our country upholds its sovereignty , others will respect it always. We should not be seen to falter or get shaken up by the presence of these bad tourists. Our travel agencies should be more strict and vigilance on the quality of the tourists that they bring home to visit us, just us they should also be equally thorough about those that they bring to visit other countries. By now we should be able to identify the "bad" tourists agencies that always "lost" their visitors. These should be given strict warning or else have their licence struck off the list.

From our own experience, these lost tourists should be very near us. They could be working as sales personnel in shops and other retail outlets and small hotels in and out of the cities. These are the ones who cannot speak a word of either English or Malay and their presence in these shopping outlets are classified as "just arrived" by these outlets. We should embark on surprise checks daily at these places and with good speed we should be able to round them up easily. However, let us leave this to the authorities concerned who know their job better than us.

This incidence of apparent police mistreatment of a Chinese tourist has been over played by the media, to the extent that one of our Ministers have to go to China to apologize to the Chinese Government for the untoward incidence. I think this is much too much already. I cannot see why we as a country with sovereignty of our own should go so low to do so, all for doing our own needfuls to safeguard our people's needs for security and integrity. If any other country had done that to any of our citizens, I am confident it will not do what we do today. As the Malay saying goes, " Dimana maruah kita ? "

Just to show to the world how good we are, we now have a special commission of enquiry by a panel of prominent people to investigate and make recommendations to the Govt. Is this neccessary and expenses justified ?