YOUTH and Sports Minister Reezal Merican Naina Merican has criticised the move of a secondary school in Johor, which was reported to be preventing students from taking part in extra-curricular activities based on race.

Reezal said the action of the school is inappropriate and backward.

“Sports should be ‘colour blind’, across cultural borders and act as an agent of unity. There is no such policy or approach in the national sports policy. We want to democratise sports starting from schools,” he said today on Twitter, in reply to a posting by @sharwinsubra05, who questioned the action of secondary school in Batu Pahat, Johor.

The user also uploaded a picture of a letter, which contained a list of clubs and associations as well as sports open to one race.

The list among others stated that Chinese language club is only open to Chinese students, football (Malays), basketball (Chinese), table tennis (Chinese), netball (Malays) and sepak takraw (Malays).

A check by Bernama found other social media users had taken the school to task.

User @gustiadipati9 in a posting said: “extra-curricular activities should evenly distributed. Why separate according to race?”

Another user @Eexyz85 wants action to be taken against the school.

The posting has so far received more than 600 repeated postings and more than 300 ‘likes’. – Bernama, April 17, 2021.