I read your recent article titled Gov't mulls China-style Net censorship with something akin to disbelief.

I quote: "We need to maintain racial harmony... This country must survive"

Oh, for heaven's sake. I'm sick and tired of being treated like a pack of racist barbarians ready to explode and attack a member of another race at the slightest provocation!

We are not animals with no concept of right and wrong.

The message I'm getting from the Malaysian government is that we Malaysian citizens cannot think for ourselves and cannot be trusted to exercise rational thought and judgment.

I like to think that most Malaysian have plenty of respect for the diverse cultures of Malaysia and quite enjoy its status as a harmonious, multi-cultural place.

It's certainly something I and many of my friends highlight with pride when we speak of Malaysia to people from outside the country.

Imposing censorship laws on internet content for reasons of "maintaining racial harmony" only sends the message that the so-called "harmony" is in fact a fragile veneer.

It's time to put the racial riots of 1969 behind us. Most of us have moved on, but Barisan Nasional doesn't seem to have done so.

Either that, or they are using the incident as a tool to achieve their own ends.

There was no internet back in 1969, let alone "bloggers who inflame racial sentiments", so you cannot infer that censoring bloggers is necessary to avoid racial riots.

Really, the fact that they need to use a 40-year-old example to justify censoring media that did not move into the mainstream until the mid-1990s says something.

If anyone from the government bothers to read this comment, I strongly suggest you think about this harder and ask yourself - what are you really trying to achieve?

What are you really trying to censor? And what message are you sending to, a) the multi-cultural, already pretty harmonious citizens of Malaysia and, b) the few countries that still have some respect for you as a civilised democracy.