When Mohamad Nor Abdullah put a white flag outside his window late at night, he did not expect the swift outpouring of support. By morning, dozens of strangers knocked on his door, offering food, cash and encouragement.
Malaysia’s nationwide lockdown to curb a COVID-19 surge was tightened further on Saturday, banning people in certain areas from leaving their homes except to buy food and necessities.
It lurched Mohamad Nor into desperation.
Photo: AP
He ekes out a living by selling packed nasi lemak, a popular dish of coconut milk rice with condiments, at a roadside stall every morning, but that income has vanished and government aid was insufficient.
The white flag campaign that emerged on social media last week aims to help people like Mohamad Nor, who is 29 and born without arms. By chance, he saw the campaign on Facebook and decided to try to seek help.
“It was so unexpected. So many people reached out to help, support and also encouraged me,” Mohamad Nor said, sitting in his dingy room amid boxes of biscuits, rice, cooking oil and water that were swiftly donated to him.
He said that kind Samaritans offered to help pay his room rental and that the assistance should be enough to tide him through the next few months.
The #benderaputih campaign began as Malaysian society’s response to rising suicides believed to be linked to economic hardships caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Police reported 468 suicides in the first five months of this year, an average of four per day and up sharply from 631 for the whole of last year.
Social media posts urged people to hoist a white flag or cloth to signal they needed immediate help “without having to beg or feel embarrassed.” Scores of food retailers and celebrities have responded with offers of help and many Malaysians have driven around their neighborhood to find white flags.
Thousands of people have lost their jobs since Malaysia enacted various curbs on movement, including a coronavirus state of emergency that has suspended parliament until Aug. 1. The strict national lockdown imposed on June 1 is the second in more than a year.
COVID-19 cases in Malaysia have jumped to more than 778,000, nearly seven-fold from the whole of last year, with more than 5,400 deaths.
Reports of families receiving speedy help after raising a white flag have warmed the hearts of Malaysians.
A single mother and her teenage daughter who survived on biscuits for days were fed by neighbors, an indebted hawker on the verge of ending his life received cash help to start anew, a Myanmar refugee family who survive on just one meal per day were given instant food supplies.
While many hail the white flag movement as a show of unity and solidarity, not all agree.
A lawmaker from an Islamist party, which is part of the ruling coalition, attracted public anger when he told people to pray to God instead of waving a white flag in surrender.
A state chief minister slammed the campaign as propaganda against Malaysian Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin’s government.
It has sparked copycats. An animal association encouraged financially strapped people who could not afford to feed their pets to display a red flag.
Anti-government protesters over the weekend launched a black flag campaign, with opposition lawmakers and others putting up black flags on social media to demand the premier to resign, for an end to the emergency and for parliament to reopen.
Police reportedly said that they are investigating the black flag campaign for sedition, public mischief and misuse of network facilities for offensive purposes.
Muhyiddin, who took power in 2019 after political maneuvers brought down the former reformist government, faces intense challenge from the opposition and within his own coalition. Support for his leadership cannot be tested with parliament suspended.
James Chin, an Asian expert at the University of Tasmania, said that the white flag movement could fuel public anger over a perceived inept in the government’s ability to manage the crisis.
“The white flag campaign will no doubt be used as a major political weapon to show that the government is a massive failure,” he said.
In months, Lo Yuet-ping would bid farewell to a centuries-old village he has called home in Hong Kong for more than seven decades. The Cha Kwo Ling village in east Kowloon is filled with small houses built from metal sheets and stones, as well as old granite buildings, contrasting sharply with the high-rise structures that dominate much of the Asian financial hub. Lo, 72, has spent his entire life here and is among an estimated 860 households required to move under a government redevelopment plan. He said he would miss the rich history, unique culture and warm interpersonal kindness that defined life in
AERIAL INCURSIONS: The incidents are a reminder that Russia’s aggressive actions go beyond Ukraine’s borders, Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrii Sybiha said Two NATO members on Sunday said that Russian drones violated their airspace, as one reportedly flew into Romania during nighttime attacks on neighboring Ukraine, while another crashed in eastern Latvia the previous day. A drone entered Romanian territory early on Sunday as Moscow struck “civilian targets and port infrastructure” across the Danube in Ukraine, the Romanian Ministry of National Defense said. It added that Bucharest had deployed F-16 warplanes to monitor its airspace and issued text alerts to residents of two eastern regions. It also said investigations were underway of a potential “impact zone” in an uninhabited area along the Romanian-Ukrainian border. There
The governor of Ohio is to send law enforcement and millions of dollars in healthcare resources to the city of Springfield as it faces a surge in temporary Haitian migrants. Ohio Governor Mike DeWine on Tuesday said that he does not oppose the Temporary Protected Status program under which about 15,000 Haitians have arrived in the city of about 59,000 people since 2020, but said the federal government must do more to help affected communities. On Monday, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost directed his office to research legal avenues — including filing a lawsuit — to stop the federal government from sending
Three sisters from Ohio who inherited a dime kept in a bank vault for more than 40 years knew it had some value, but they had no idea just how much until just a few years ago. The extraordinarily rare coin, struck by the US Mint in San Francisco in 1975, could bring more than US$500,000, said Ian Russell, president of GreatCollections, which specializes in currency and is handling an online auction that ends next month. What makes the dime depicting former US president Franklin D. Roosevelt so valuable is a missing “S” mint mark for San Francisco, one of just two
RSS