Chong Zhemin

If you notice my facebook badge at the right on my blog, you will see this event - Dr Mahathir Mohamad (Former Malaysian PM 1981- 2003) on War, Iraq & The USA.

I was still hesitating whether to attend this talk in Imperial College until just now when I receive two facebook messages saying that only Imperial College Students will be able to attend. This event was initially a public event, but following the complains by IC jewish society, the number of seats has been reduced and the audience limited to IC students.

Here is the message I received.

Hello Everyone,Imperial College London is forcing us to limit the audience to Imperial College London members only.

You will need an Imperial College ID to enter.

Furthermore, they have made us reduce our number of seats to 320 only.

I am very sorry about this dissapointing development and wholeheartedly apologise for any inconvenienced this causes. The situatuion is out of our hands.

here is what happened:

- We organised the events booking 2 halls and everything was fine.

- The event was reported on the IC Live! website and a discussion ensued. It can be read at: http://live.cgcu.net/news/1739

- Following this, the IC Jewish Society and the UJS complained to Imperial College that we were inviting someone who could incite anti-semitic racial hatred the day before the event (today).

- Imperial College decided to call me today and force me to make these last minute changes. It was their decision after they took legal advice. They told me that they will be deploying security that will make sure that people without IC cards are not allowed in and that I could not do anything about that. So I thought I should tell everyone later rather than see you arrive and then miss out too.

- I am sorely disappointed by the outcome and very upset. I once again sincerely apologise.

The PPS understands the reason the Jewish Soc felt apprehensive and we have resolved our issues. It is the university that is now taking this action (not Jewish Soc as they are okay with this) in what it sees is its best interest, and we the PPS, being part of the IC union have no choice but to respect that.

You can’t blame IC Jewish society for this complaint, as Mahathir has always come out with anti Jewish statements. See the speech he made during the Tenth Islamic Summit Conference. Here are some famous quotes he made,

It cannot be that there is no other way. 1.3 billion Muslims cannot be defeated by a few million Jews. There must be a way.

We are actually very strong. 1.3 billion people cannot be simply wiped out. The Europeans killed 6 million Jews out of 12 million. But today the Jews rule this world by proxy. They get others to fight and die for them.

They survived 2000 years of pogroms not by hitting back, but by thinking. They invented and successfully promoted Socialism, Communism, human rights and democracy so that persecuting them would appear to be wrong, so they may enjoy equal rights with others. With these they have now gained control of the most powerful countries and they, this tiny community, have become a world power.

Of late because of their power and their apparent success they have become arrogant. And arrogant people, like angry people will make mistakes, will forget to think.

I may not agree with Mahathir’s speech. But he must have his right to speak. We should respect him, why limit the audience to IC students? We are now in London, which is regard as one of the most democratic country in the world and yet they could not uphold the principle of freedom of speech!

Argh~maybe i should just forget about this forum. i believe there will be a lot of coverage on this event. The PPS will upload an audio recording of the event and I expect someone to post the video to youtube.