George Town Festival slammed for 'memorycide' after video omits Penang's Malay heritage

A video promoting an annual arts festival in Penang has sparked a debate over the omission of Malay-Muslim heritage in showcasing the various cultures in the state, with a prominent historian accusing organisers and authorities of continuing a trend of deliberately erasing the culture of about half of the state's population.

The nearly two-minute teaser video for the George Town Festival 2024 had moved back and forth between Chinese opera and Indian classical music without any elements of the Malay-Muslim heritage that has characterised Penang's history for centuries.

"Penang is erasing the Malay-Muslim memory in its George Town Festival 2024 teaser," said Ahmad Murad Merican, who teaches social and intellectual history at the International Institute of Islamic Thought and Civilization, the postgraduate centre of International Islamic University Malaysia.

"But it is a problem when the face of more than 50% of the people in Penang is left out."

His comments, which were first posted on Facebook, drew a number of reactions. Many said that this was nothing new and that there had been a trend of suppressing Malay elements in previous editions of the festival.

Murad blamed the National Department of Culture and Arts as well as Malay groups in Penang for failing to intervene, adding that they had allowed "memorycide" and "ethnocide" to take place.

Memorycide and ethnocide are forms of cultural genocide in sociological terms, and generally refer to the deliberate destruction of all traces and physical reminders of an ethnic group such as their way of life, language and characters.

The video has since been removed, and the organisers have released another video which also does not include any representation of Malay culture.

'Event planned to be inclusive'

Organisers confirmed that the video had been taken down, and said it regretted if the clip had "offended certain groups and individuals".

"In fact, every effort was made in the planning and promotion of George Town Festival 2024 to ensure an inclusive, comprehensive and balanced representation, including in terms of programme categories, gender groups, age and ethnicity," George Town Festival said in a statement, adding that it has invited people of various ethnic backgrounds to be part of the promotional video.

State-owned George Town World Heritage Incorporated (GTWHI), which is the main organiser, said it was taking criticism of the festival's ethnic representation seriously.

It said 53 of the 80 programmes lined up throughout the event involved "local artists in the form of films, theatre, exhibitions, installation art and interdisciplinary sensory experiences".".

A quick check of the festival website shows a 24-member organising team from Kerson Media Global Sdn Bhd - the contractor appointed to manage the event - comprising ethnic Chinese, with only one Malay.

GHTHI said the festival's cultural representation is among performance benchmarks imposed on the contractor, adding that it has advised the company "to solve this problem as soon as possible and increase the promotion of local programmes in the near future".

MalaysiaNow has reached out to Kerson Media Global Sdn Bhd.

'Serious supression of culture'

Speaking to MalaysiaNow, Murad said the festival had excluded Malay culture for more than a decade since its inception in 2010.

"It is a very serious invasion and suppression of culture and memory. That's why I mentioned ethnocide and memorycide," he said.

He said the clip showed that Malay-Muslim culture had completely disappeared from the festival.

"There are not even Malay sounds or smells anymore," Murad said, adding that the clip had featured mostly foreign faces.

The George Town Festival has its origins in celebrations to mark the city's designation as a Unesco World Heritage Site in 2008. Since 2010, the festival has been an annual celebration of arts and culture, featuring overseas artists and activists with stage shows and forums.

Murad said that over the years, Malay-Muslim culture had been given only a token place at the festival, with no serious efforts made to showcase the context of Malays as the natives of both the island and mainland Penang.

"If you ask the organisers about the festival's programmes over the past 10 years, they will reply that Malay artists have been invited.

"That's not the issue. The issue is that you invite Malays and Malay artists but leave out the perspective of the natives, so what's the point?"

He said it was a fact that Malays make up more than half of Penang's population.

"But it is a problem when the face of more than 50% of the people in Penang is left out."

Prominent community leader Abdul Rahman Maidin called on the organisers to apologise for the video, saying it gave the impression that Penang was only made up of Chinese and Indians.

"Is it an attempt to erase Malay culture from Penang?" the former president of the Malay Chamber of Commerce told MalaysiaNow.

"It exposes the political machinations to promote Chinese and Indians as the dominant overriding race," he said, adding that the authorities involved should provide an explanation.