POLICE have completed investigations into Chinese education group Dong Zong, which was labelled “racist” after opposing the government’s plan to teach khat calligraphy to year four pupils in vernacular schools.

Besides questioning its chairman and secretary, Deputy Education Minister Teo Nie Ching also had her statement taken, Bukit Aman Criminal Investigation Department (CID) director Huzir Mohamed said.

“On the issue where Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad described Dong Zong as racist, police have submitted investigation papers to the Attorney-General’s Chambers and are waiting for subsequent instructions,” Huzir said in a statement today.

“Police have interviewed Dong Zong’s chairman and secretary. We also recorded the statement from deputy education minister.”

Dong Zong, which is the United Chinese School Committees’ Association, was branded “racist” by Dr Mahathir last month while he was answering questions on its opposition to khat calligraphy in a press conference.

Several police reports were lodged against the group, which was among other vernacular education groups opposed to the move to teach khat or Jawi writing as “Islamisation tool”.

Dong Zong chairman Tan Tai Kim, who gave his statement to the police on August 22, said the group is not racist but wanted more dialogue and discussion with the government before implementing changes to the vernacular school syllabus.

Putrajaya has now scaled down the teaching of khat calligraphy from six to three pages in the year four Bahasa Melayu textbook, renamed it to Jawi and made it optional. – September 2, 2019.