'Learning silat should not be limited to certain people'

Western people teaching silat may appear strange for certain people but not for the Germany-born professional martial arts instructor, Andre Mewis who has been a silat exponent since 1987.

The 43-year-old Berlin-native believes that the traditional martial arts self-defence from Nusantara should not only be learnt by a certain race or people but should be expanded across the world since it has its uniqueness in terms of techniques and also movements.

Mewis, when met by Bernama during the third World Junior Silat Championship which recently concluded here, however asserted that he had to work extra harder to promote silat in his motherland since it was still in the premature process to be well-received.

"In Germany, approximately 1,500 athletes and students are practising silat and out of these, 400 are my students. The number itself, however does not mean that all of them are pure silat practitioners because some are learning silat just for the purpose of competition," he said.

Mewis, who was also the 2007 World Kickboxing champion, conceded that the lack of support from the German government in terms of funding had largely hampered his efforts to send his students to international meets for exposure.

"For instance, I'm using my own pocket money to send one of my students, Tara Jasmin Talay for the junior meet, here and I have done it for the past 13 years though sometimes I faced financial constraints," he said.