Sammy Chan, 22, a blogger at Life is a drama caused a furore when she posted inflammatory racist remarks against the Indian Malaysian community after her handphone was allegedly snatched by 2 Indian youths on 23 September. The posting had since removed after the post is swarmed with comments against her racist remarks against the Indians.

Her blog which was usually only read by her close friends received a surge in visitors after the posting and when Malaysiakini reported it today, the visitor count surged to over 9,000.

The Hindu Rights Action Force (Hindraf) condemned her racist remarks posted in her blog and urged the police to take action against her.

However, today, she posted an official apology on her outburst against the Indian community, explaining that she was not a racist and was only acting out of anger in the last few days.

“I’m just a young and a fresh graduate. I hope the whole controversy will not affect my future,” she was quoted in Malaysiakini, adding that she is worried that the Internal Security Act (ISA) will be used on her.

Hindraf national coordinator R S Thanenthiran who earlier lodged a police report against her said Hindraf would accept her apology.

“We understand now that it was a ‘spur of the moment’ outburst. We sympathise with her loss of her phone. We hope that the lesson learnt from the controversy will help her to be more careful in future,” he was quoted in Malaysiakini.

This incident should be a lesson to all bloggers not to repeat the mistake and not to be over emotional in their postings. While I believe in freedom of speech, the freedom comes with responsibility. We should not in any way make inflammatory remarks against any community based on their ethnicity and religious beliefs.

On the other hand, Sammy should be given a chance since she has apologized and I hope she will be let off with a warning. There is, however, a particular racist out there who has till today refused to apologize for his remarks and stern action should be taken against him!