Malaysia’s racial rift: Penang art festival sparks outcry over low Malay representation

Organisers of the George Town Festival in Penang have apologised after facing backlash over a lack of Malay representation in their promotional video that critics called an “ethnic removal” of nearly half the state’s population.

Launched in 2010 to celebrate the city’s status as a Unesco World Heritage site, the festival’s omission of Malay cultural representation in its “Here & Now” video struck a nerve among some Malaysians, with Penang historian Ahmad Murad Merican accusing it of “ethnic removal of the state’s earliest residents”.

The video, which has since been taken down, dedicated its entire one-minute and 48-seconds runtime to showcasing multiple aspects of Chinese culture, as well as snippets of Indian culture in Penang.

“Penang’s mainstream ideology has silenced half of its population, [comprising of] the Malay Muslim community, their culture and descendants which have set root there,” Ahmad Murad Merican, a historian from the International Islamic University of Malaysia said on Facebook.

Elsewhere on the platform, users called the video an example of “hidden machinations that seek to undermine Malay cultural presence”, urging Malays to take a stand and ensure that their heritage is visibly and robustly represented.

Others called it “the folly of being tolerant and compromising” that had led to Malays “slowly being pushed out” from the economic powerhouse state.

Situated at the maritime crossroads where the Andaman Sea meets the busy Strait of Malacca, Penang was originally part of the Malay sultanate of Kedah until British explorer Francis Light established Britain’s first colony in the Malay Archipelago there in 1786.

The festival organisers stressed in a statement that they were not sidelining Malay culture,