Namewee’s sense of humour has landed him in hot water yet again, though this time it is not with SENIMAN (Association of Malaysian Artistes).
The Malaysian filmmaker found himself blocked on Weibo recently after he decided to ironically share eight tips with the Taliban on what to do to regain power in Afghanistan, in a post published on 20 August that Epoch Times recently claimed to sound eerily like how the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) works.
This include “advice” like “blocking social media such as Facebook, YouTube, and Google to prevent citizens from communicating with the outside world, establish your own official news website, make your own communication software and social apps, broadcast official news for a long time, and tell the people that foreign media that criticise them are evil foreign forces and do not watch fake news, as well as “Create a giant statue of the Taliban leader and place it at the gate of the Presidential Palace.”
After listing the eight items, Namewee – real name Wee Meng Chee – said: “There are still many ways. You are welcome to leave a message. I will organise it and translate it into a language that Afghans understand and send it to the Taliban for reference. As long as the Taliban follows the method, it will be able to catch up with the Premier League in three years.”
There is no way to know what China’s mainland netizens are saying about the post or the singer, seeing that the post was immediately blocked.
This is not the first time that Namewee has drawn the ire of the Chinese mainland netizens. Last year, the filmmaker questioned the need to change the name of Wuhan coronavirus to COVID-19 when people still used terms like German measles, Hong Kong foot, and Japanese encephalitis – stressing that it was not a matter of discrimination when a virus or a disease is named after the place of origin but a lesson to be learned.