PARLIAMENT | Sarawak lawmaker Willie Mongin (GPS-Puncak Borneo) laid bare a disturbing fault line in Malaysia’s multiracial fabric, highlighting how young children are already learning to draw lines of race and faith between themselves and their classmates.

Urging government intervention, Willie (above) told the Dewan Rakyat that a teacher had approached him with concerns about pupils’ behaviour, including among primary schoolchildren aged six to 12.

“There are children who do not even want to sit next to other Christian or Muslim children, with some saying ‘I don’t want to sit with them because they eat pork (or) they wear a cross’.

“If this matter is not nipped in the bud at the primary school level, it will spread and become more serious,” he cautioned in a supplementary question to National Unity Minister Aaron Ago Dagang.