The ICERD discourse
In Twitter, the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination or widely known as ICERD issue started on October 25. The reason behind this is because Minister in Prime Minister’s Office (National Unity and Social Wellbeing) Waytha Moorthy said that Malaysia government will ratify six treaties including ICERD in early 2019. The statement was made on October 24 which caused a debate on Twitter.
Top influencer on October 25 is @ADLIZAKUAN who tweeted that he received a Whatsapp message pertaining to anti-ICERD. He added sarcastically stating that the same group of people who messaged him to go against ICERD are the same people who fight for the rights of minority Muslims elsewhere, such as Rohingya and Uyghur.
@Change is the official account for petition website change.org. Twitter users started to share the link of a petition opposing the ratification of ICERD through tweet and retweet.
The issue became viral on October 29 when Minister in Prime Minister’s Office (Religious Affairs) Mujahid Yusof Rawa said that the ICERD ratification will be done but with ‘reservation’ to protect the Malay rights.
On the same day, the users in Twitter did not stop on their rejection towards ICERD. At this point, the network of ICERD can be divide into three clusters. The pink cluster was formed by @AzizSauf who said that the ratification of ICERD is just a beginning to abolish Article 153, which then will allow non-Malay to be the nation Prime Minister.
Next, the green cluster spread the message that the ratification of ICERD will affect the rights of Bumiputera. Besides, some of them spread information on the anti-ICERD rally which will be held on December 8. However, not everyone in the group agreed with the rally. The top influencers in this group are @NorSyamimiMusa and @pengundi_sedar.
The blue cluster is divided, they argued on the ratification of ICERD. @adrianlimcheeen is support the motion, meanwhile @MatUMNO and @syahredzan said that the ratification of ICERD will affect Islam position in Malaysia.
Overall, the Twitter netizens are divided on the ratification of ICERD. However, Twitter is one of the social media platforms used by the people who opposed ICERD to gather crowd to sign petition to reject ICERD and to recruit people to participate in the anti-ICERD rally which will be held on December 8.