Unspun

Unspun‘s not given out the shit-for-brains tag for some time but the Malaysian Chinese Association’s public services and complaints department Michael Chong is a sure runaway winner.

In Chong’s world the men, it would seem, are like Ceasar’s wife – above suspicion. If there is a domestic situation that prompts the wife to take their children home to her parents, then it must be the fault of the wife.

And if the wife is from a country that is perceived by many Malaysians to be more backward than Malaysia — such as Vietnam, Indonesia and China — then all the more proof that the wife is at fault.

It probably hasn’t occurred to Chong that the men that go to him for help are precisely the very same men who cannot successfully woo the “pretty, talented and intelligent Malaysian women” he speaks of, and therefore have to resort to matchmakers.

That is an euphemism for wife buying.

So what needs to be asked is what sort of a man who has to buy a wife is likely to be as a husband and a father. Is he likely to be the understanding, loving and trusting type that can easily be duped and taken advantage of by sinister foreign women?

Or is he more likely to be emotionally and perhaps socially inapt, perhaps even violent or aggressive toward his wife and children?

So instead of warning ingenuous Malaysian Chinese men against marrying foreign women, Chong should perhaps turn to counseling them to become better and more caring husbands.

The Malaysian Chinese Association is warning its members against taking foreign wives, including from Indonesia.

Datuk Michael Chong, head of the MCA’s public services and complaints department, was quoted by Malaysian newspaper The Sun as saying that the advice had been spurred after a number of foreign wives kidnapped their Malaysian children and returned to their home countries permanently.

“From 2009 till now, I have come across 13 cases where the men complained that their wives took their children to their villages and didn’t come back,” he was quoted as saying. “Efforts to contact their wives were also futile as they have switched off their phones. They cannot be traced,” Chong said.

He said that the number of such incidents was increasing, with six incidents in 2009 and seven already so far this year.

Chong, according The Star newspaper, said statistics showed that some 10 percent of such foreign wives who returned to their home countries with the children had refused to come back to the husbands.

“Two men came back after getting badly beaten up by the locals there. Even the embassies cannot help much. They [embassy officials] can’t go to these villages either. They are helpless,” he told The Sun.

Chong told the Sun that the women, who are in their early 20s, are usually from Vietnam, Indonesia and China and their Malaysian husbands are usually in their late 30s and above. Some of them have been married for less than two years.

Chong also handed out some advice, saying that if the women wanted to take their children back to their hometowns on the pretext of having a holiday, then the husbands should accompany them.

Or, he said, do not apply for a passport for the child.

He said many of the victims had met their wives through match-making agencies.

“Don’t take a foreign wife. There are many pretty, talented and intelligent Malaysian women to choose from,” he added.

via Malaysian Chinese Warn Against Marrying Foreign Women | The Jakarta Globe.

(Disclosure: Unspun has an Indonesian wife and has no problems in applying a passport for our child. Unspun’s also unperturbed about the prospect of Wife taking child back to hometown. Its Jakarta and a very urbane part of the city where Unspun would not fear to go to (if his phone calls go unanswered) because they are even more urbane and cultured than Unspun.)