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In a blog post, he said he was surprised by the advice he had received urging him not to attend the congress.
“As usual, there were extreme views but on the whole they were balanced,” he added.
The congress was criticised after fiery speeches by its chief organiser Zainal Kling, who is being investigated by the police over his comments.
Several of the resolutions mooted also came under fire, including the suggestion to abolish vernacular schools and to reserve the top positions in the country for Malays.
But Mahathir said it was common in multicultural Malaysia for people to identify with their country of origin despite some holding citizenship for three generations.
“They do not want to lose their racial identities,” he added. “They manifest this ethnic link through their languages, cultures, schools and ethnic organisations.”
He said in other multiracial countries, non-indigenous people identify almost completely with the indigenous people, adopting their language and culture.
“It is a measure of the tolerance of the indigenous people in Malaysia that gatherings which are confined to the different ethnic groups are accepted as normal.
“It cannot be that while other ethnic groups can have their gatherings to discuss their affairs, the Malays cannot, that their gatherings are racist.”
In Malaysia, he said, non-indigenous people had been accepted as citizens with one million given citizenship despite being unqualified.
He said in other former European colonies, non-indigenous people were discriminated against and even attacked by the indigenous people, which was not the case in Malaysia.
“It hurts me to think that in their own country, the indigenous people are not supposed to have their own gatherings without being accused of being racist.
“And now, of course, I will be labelled a racist for writing this.”
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