ZORRO TRULY UNMASKED

 

 

 

 

UNMASKING ZORRO

The latest in a sea of blogging profanity. An opportunistic tirade of insults directed mainly against Malays as a race and Islam as a religion. Hiding behind that thin veil of opposition to the Barisan government, UMNO and religious fundamentalism in Malaysia is one Zorro supposedly Unmasked.

WHO LIES BEHIND THAT MASK ?

Bernard Khoo by all reliable accounts was a fully ordained Catholic De La Salle Brother. A thug and a bully protected by his cassock worn as a Catholic Brother at the La Salle School Kelang where he taught in the mid to late 1960’s.

A karate black belt, he assaulted, threatened, vilified, mentally and physically abused a number of students of that school. His victims mainly Indians and Malays. All of this he dished out during his tenure as a Catholic Brother at that school.

Bernard is also vividly remembered by his victims as enforcer to another Chinese chauvinist of that period, another hoodlum parading as a missionary at that school. The irascible Reverend Brother John Neo, a cantankerous individual was the then principal of La Salle School Kelang.

Collectively they are remembered for their reign of terror and the resultant psychological damage inflicted on the vulnerable and the weak in their charge during that period and possibly beyond. To many of their victims the scars will always remain as an everlasting reminder of Bernard Khoo, John Neo and their variety of justice, truth and fairness.

NOTHING NOBLE ABOUT THIS ZORRO- HIS ATTITUDE TOWARDS INDIANS AND MALAYS

Bernard Khoo aka Zorro Unmasked had a pre occupation with intimidation. He, according to the testimony of some of his victims who won’t forget the man, appeared to derive a perverse sense of satisfaction and pleasure out of intimidation and bullying of those he considered weaker and by implication lesser beings than himself. Children of a lesser god.

Bernard Khoo also willingly undertook that same sadistic ’duty’ on behalf of his fellow bully and minority tormentor Brother John Neo, referred to irreverently then by his students as Mao Tze Tung for John Neo’s proclaimed and unabashed affection and admiration for that late Chinese dictatorial tyrant.

John Neo was also an ardent admirer of Lee Kuan Yew and the latters attitude towards Malays. He never gave up an opportunity to espouse the views of Lee on the Malays and to denegrate Malay students of that time, much to their embarassment and humiliation, in the presence of their overwhelming non Malay fellow students.

The Malays (the few who enjoyed the privilege of entry to a Catholic school) were systematically insulted as was the norm in those days. Such behaviour was not only practiced by just John Neo and Bernard Khoo. It was also the staple of some students at the school, encouraged by the conduct of their peers the Brothers of Bernard Khoo’s ilk.

Admittedly and thankfully so, as relayed to us by former students of that school, not all Catholic Brothers fell into that category of pathological racists as John Neo and Bernard Khoo were. But it was nonetheless not uncommon for the Brotherhood and the Priesthood in Catholicism to attract a disproportionately large number of these types from the local communities as recruits to their vocational ranks.

The Malays then were systemically treated as an outcast minority in these schools (with about 2 allowed in each class) even though their numbers in the population betrayed the distorted representation in enrollment of Malays in Catholic and other Christian schools in the 1960′s and 1970′s.

This too in a country, their own, that exclusion being inflicted on them a majority by a foreign Church preaching fairness and equality, Christ like charity and love. The same church that is now feigning outrage at the Al Islam publication of an essay on holy communion.

The Indians, many of whom were Tamils at the time, were a particularly soft target for physical and mental abuse. They then being on the lowest rung of the socio economic ladder, were persistently harassed, demeaned and bullied by Bernard Khoo and his fellow religious thugs.

There are at least 3 reported suicides amongst Indian workers and students at that school during that era of Bernard Khoo, John Neo and Alban Senan although other sources attest to a larger number perhaps twice that figure given.

They the Tamils did not dare resist Bernard and his cohorts bullying and assaults for fear of retribution in punitive physical form.

From this champion of freedom and justice they were perhaps instilled with the power of fear, intimidation and violence as a motivator. A lesson which some undoubtedly have gone on to take up after leaving school contributing to the disproportionate numbers from their ranks in violent crime in Malaysia .

If anyone did dare stand up or resist his bullying and that of yet another thug of that era, one Brother Alban Senan (an unmitigated, pathological sadist and racist) they paid a price in unspeakable humiliation and fear that has indisputably shaped their lives in a manner the community now lives to regret.

All of this the result of very Christian charitable conduct condoned and carried out under the watchful eye of the Roman Catholic Church and the principal of the school Brother John Neo.

Now we bear witness to one of that gang running a website, regurgitating the profanities of his discredited mantra of anti Islamic slogans of the Bush era expecting the same unquestioning responses out of fear through intimidation perhaps from his readers as he demanded of his young students then.

IS ZORRO’S PAST A REFLECTION OF THE MAN TODAY?

Today Bernard Khoo parades in his new persona as champion of the causes of missing children, clean government and democratic values. A noble pursuit indeed if Bernard Khoo did have the personal or moral integrity to throw stones at a government struggling to come to grips with its inherited burden of the British Empire the avaricious ingrates of mainly Chinese (and sprinkling of Indians) left behind at independence.

Bernard Khoo’s amorphous ideas of corruption and his championing the cause of children on his website are at best hypocritical, obscene and as unconvincing an attempt at showing a human face as Adolph Hitler’s much touted fondness for animals and his vegetarian lifestyle were attempts to dignify the latters deeds against humanity.

It is also an unwelcome and cruel reminder to those who suffered at his hands under that reign of tyranny. It has been said by many of his former victims that he ought to be outed and not trusted with the welfare or the causes of anyone let alone helpless children.

With his history of traumatising and assaulting minors ( which most students were at that relevant time) under his care, he has little credibility if any to take a stand on issues he claims disturb him enough to want to leave a legacy of change for a better world for his grandchildren.

Zorrro aka Brother Arnold aka Bernard Khoo’s public posturing on issues is an insult to children and to right thinking people who seek refuge from intimidation, bullying, violence and tyranny of every sort.

To allow Bernard Khoo aka Zorro Unmasked to continue with this public charade of his new persona when, his victims unwittingly have turned out to be the catalyst and reason perhaps for all that he demands changed in society today, is to abet the offences of this man’s past.

Bernard Khoo’s idea of welfare and good governance are not compatible with those universally accepted definitions of those same concepts. Bernard Khoo has not yet seen it fit to publicly apologise to his victims for his grievous and criminal misconduct as a religious Brother.

He abused that office of his as a religious Brother and teacher under the protection of a powerful Catholic church like his mentor Brother John Neo and the other thug and bully at the time Brother Alban Senan.

CAN A LEOPARD CHANGE ITS SPOTS?

Brother Arnold aka Zorro Unmasked now wants the world to believe he is some paragon of virtue by calling himself Zorro though still demonstrating that totalitarian self righteous mindset by excising from his blog any contribution that is even remotely at variance to his own chauvinistic views.

He spews his contumely like his other blogger vandals on Malays with the type of unsubstantiated and unwarranted claims against them he and his cohorts in the media churn out on a daily basis.

The man needs to be unmasked. He has his coterie of sycophants and apologists and that’s fine. They include former students who believe that he is forever entitled to the unquestioning respect he once fraudulently claimed (or demanded) as a religious Brother and teacher. And there are those who will seek to at any cost protect the man’s lack of integrity simply because he held sway over them once and claimed to be a man of God (ever heard of the battered wife syndrome or the Stockholm syndrome?). Such are the failings of victims and the impact of bullying on them.

LEST WE FORGET

But then again there are those, particularly his victims, who are just as capable as Bernard Khoo is of speaking out to stoke those sentiments sufficient to rail the public against real hatred, racism and the prejudices of the type people like Bernard Koo are capable of.

There is a sense of duty in many and it is encouraging to see that his victims no longer feel the need to suffer as victims and speak out now decades after the man’s rampage on the weak.

His victims will emerge in larger numbers and expose the root of all that is dysfunctional in Malaysian society today. That indoctrination into violence and intimidation imbued in them and sanctified by religion even though it has for so long been so conveniently swept under the carpet and given illegitimate credence by that veneer of religious cover.

Driven by a greater zeal and motivation for justice, these victims who have voices and who have discovered the power of their voices, come out to speak with greater conviction than when they don’t speak out and suffer in silence.

CONCLUSION

This tit for tat is not over by a long shot yet. Malaysians like any other group have to question the motives of those who stir up trouble for the slightest cause in a volatile environment as Malaysia is today.

A good starting point for the likes of Bernard Khoo to consider when vilifying others is that old saying “let him that is without sin cast the first stone”. It comes from a religious doctrine Bernard Khoo once subscribed to.

The argument that is raging against the Barisan may be legitimate. But no one is asking the question, who is the Barisan? Is it just UMNO or is it UMNO and others such as the MCA and MIC? Is it perhaps also the unaccountable former deputy finance minister whose husband as owner of a large public bank benefitted from inside information as a result of her use of confidential cabinet sensitive information? .

The husband and wife in that particular example are both Chinese.

Is it Samy Velu and corruption of the MAIKA affair during his stewardship of MIC? or is it the also the elements of MIC whose physical abuse of an actor turned porn star, or the misappropriation of hundreds of millions of dollars of money allocated and destined for poorer Indians.

Samy Velu and the MIC are not Malay either.

Yet no one asks. Who pays the piper playing that ugly tune of anti Malay anti Muslim sentiments using a small band of disgruntled Malays as their shield.

No one yet has had the intelligence to query the motives and the character of those making these bilious and vitriolic statements against individuals and groups of people like the Malays without a proper mandate from anyone but themselves, yet claiming to act for the ‘righteous democratic majority’. Yep sure!!

Gopal Raj Kumar