Language march broken up with tear gas

[IanFantom]

8 000 marchers in Malaysia attempt to present a petition for the return of the right to learn school science and maths in their own national language. The government introduced PPSMI (policy of teaching science and maths in English) six years ago as part of its globalisation policy.


Link


http://www.nowpublic.com/world/berita-perhimpunan-bantah-ppsmi

It started off peacefully enough, but then ...


Link

[TonyGosling]

Rather like what was done in the past to stifle the Irish language this.
Social Engineering writ large.

[IanFantom]

Stifling of a language can take three forms:

1. Direct suppression, as in the 'Great Silence' in Ireland, or the murdering of 30 000 Esperantists by Hitler and Stalin;

2. Suppression by proxy, as in the use of puppet governments or stooges, which may or may not be the case in the current situation in Malaysia, though that is the suspicion;

3. Undermining, as is the suspicion with regard to regional rivals to English (eg Swahili), or French in the EU.

In the case of French, I was caught up in this when on contract with the European Space Agency in Italy. I found myself in a group of French speakers, but had made it clear before accepting the contract that if French was a requirement they should seek someone else. In one meeting they were just ignoring me when I tried to tell them I couldn't follow, though I was the key person in the whole project. At one stage my boss said of someone else "If he doesn't speak French, that's his problem". In the end I had to be quite forceful and threaten them with Esperanto in order to get them to use a language I could understand. That's how it goes.

For another example of how language subversion works, look at the EU proposal to consider the use of an international language other than Esperanto ( http://www.european-citizens-consultations.eu/uk/debate/2107 - see also http://www.european-citizens-consultations.eu/uk/propositions - for the list of propositions) I don't think that would have been for any other reason than to undermine the proposal to consider teaching Esperanto in the EU. It's not a one-off; there's a long history of this sort of thing. For more info on that see the reports on Ido and Interlingua at http://rik.poreo.org and then the correspondence on the same site with the puppet president of the Esperanto association.