A Romance With ISA (Part 1)

This is the award winning documentary on Malaysia's repressive law, the Internal Security Act or more popularly known as the ISA. It documents the untold stories of ISA detainees. The full length documentary of 43 minutes won the Professional category at the Freedom Film Fest 2005.

Produced by http://www.komas.org/ and titled Romantik ISA, part 1 is attached below. And watch out for a very young Tian Chua being interviewed in 1999.

Chow Kit - Slum Among Skyscrappers

Chow Kit
razaleigh.com

I have fallen a little behind with my blog. People have been asking me what I think of the so-called Second Stimulus Package. What I have to say about it can wait a little while longer. My comments would do little to lift the dismay of our citizens and business people with a package as puzzlingly weak, and directionless, as it is large.

Last Thursday I visited Rumah Nur Salam, a centre for homeless children in KL’s Jalan Chow Kit area. Rumah Nur Salam is founded and led by the indefatigable Dr Hartini Zainuddin, the daughter of dear departed friend of mine. I spent some time with the children and toured the centre, which is, as its name implies, a haven of peace in a very troubled area.

Here, in Chow Kit, in the heart of Kuala Lumpur, less than a kilometre from the Twin Towers and a stone’s thrown from PWTC, life is cheap, drug users shoot up in the back alleys and children wander the streets hungry. Infants are bought and sold by syndicates, young children are supplied for prostitution and child-pornography. Hundreds of children are on the streets or homeless. They beg and hustle and sell themselves for sex. They are runaways or abandoned or neglected children, vulnerable to STD and HIV, to drug addiction and to rape and murder. Many among them have no registration papers.

Although they may have been born to Malaysian parents they are “stateless” and therefore ineligible for free inoculation, medical education or education. They are abused and traded with impunity by criminals and corrupt officials because when they disappear it is without trace. They are nobody’s constituency.

Homeless children and street children in Malaysia number in the tens of thousands. They are in Chow Kit, but also in Dengkil, Jinjang, Pantai Dalam, Kepong, Selayang, Subang Jaya, Petaling Street and Pudu and in the bigger towns across the country. In Sabah and Sarawak, the problem of stateless children is acute.

I sat down to listen to a small circle of community leaders, social workers and volunteers.

Some worked with these children. Others worked with other “at risk” groups such as prostitutes, drug users and transsexuals. What these groups have in common is that they are rejected by society. Many of the leaders come from the very groups they now serve.

Having picked themselves up, they immediately felt called to give back to others. The work they do is more than a job. It is a full-time commitment around which they have shaped their lives. Some have served here for decades, walking daily up and down streets that the police recently considered “too unsafe” to keep a beat base open in.

They told me of a set of linked issues: poverty, bigotry, crime, social breakdown and bureaucratic indifference. They spoke about government that could not join the dots between ministries to help people, and of announcements of assistance that amounted to nothing.

Having served a constituency in the depths of Kelantan for forty years, I have seen my share of poverty, but urban poverty is brutal. The family unit is broken. Women and children are left to fend for themselves. The weak are prey to the strong. People are bought and sold like things.

Chow Kit holds up a mirror to our society. It is an image we would rather not see. The way we treat the weakest among us places the worth of our entire society in the balance. In God’s sight this weighs more than all the wealth we could accumulate.

There is another sense in which urban poverty test us. It is the weathervane of our social and economic ills. Since December, the number of abandoned children has risen dramatically. For the children freshly abandoned to the street, and for their parents, the recession occurred more quickly, and undeniably, than for our leaders.

Behind the evasive and woolly talk we have had about growth figures and fiscal stimuli are the absolutely tangible consequences of our policy decisions in the lives of ordinary people. Economic management, or the lack of it, has disproportionate consequences on the life-prospects of the most vulnerable members of our society.

I came away humbled by the visit. The quiet, day by day heroism of the community leaders and volunteers working to make a difference in Chow Kit was a lesson in leadership as service. I am grateful for all that they and the children shared with me with such open hearts.

Throw every law from the book

Assault On Legislature, Constitution Dead
Malik Imtiaz Sarwar

Discussing the Perak situation with specificity is, by this stage, a difficult thing to do. So much has happened so quickly. Nuanced actions and counter-actions, some of it in uncertain legal terrain, and relatively scarce details have made it precarious to consider certain key events – the legal action against the Speaker and its incidents, for instance – with the depth that only certainty would allow for.

Having said that, whatever the specifics may be and whoever may be right as to the validity or legality of certain aspects of the unfolding saga, when considered from a broader perspective and with reference to the fundamentals of democracy, I do not think that the situation in Perak is very complicated at all. As Tengku Razaleigh recently observed, a chain-reaction of illegality has left Perak possibly without a legitimate government and the Constitution a dead piece of paper.

I was too young to fully appreciate the terrible impact on democracy that the events of 1987 and 1988 had. Understanding came later, as I learnt to see what needed to be seen: the supremacy of the Constitution, the separation of powers and the check and balance it is aimed at, the independence of the judiciary and, correspondingly, the legislature. But even as my awareness of what had happened and how it had happened increased, I rather naively found myself thinking that it was unlikely that we would ever see anything of the likes again. Those events had simply been too heinous and the injuries inflicted on this nation too serious to ignore, even by those who had been responsible and those who would possibly follow in their footsteps.

Or so I thought.

The savagery of what has happened in Perak and the utter disregard of consequence on the part of those orchestrating the campaign go far to show how foolish I was to have believed that all of us, without exception, recognize that some costs are too great and for that, even blind ambition has its limits. It is clear now that this is not necessarily the case; for some, even the nation itself is expendable.

In saying savagery, I recognize that there has been neither bloodshed nor preventive detentions, though it is still too early to say for sure that things will stay that way. The incitement carries on, and mobs are being driven to frenzy to the throb of the war drums. Amidst the calls for blood, bullets have been sent, a disabled parliamentarian assaulted and some of his colleagues battered. The police have apparently too much on their hands to move with the speed that they are capable of and, as such, as things stand serve no useful role as the deterrent that the situation sorely requires.

Violence has however been done; to the Federal and State constitutions, to the Rule of Law and to all that these fundamentals represent. War has been waged on democracy itself.

I can think of no other way to characterize events.

As thing stands, the Speaker is still the Speaker. He has been at all times vested with the full powers of his office and the discretion to exercise those powers. He may have committed mistakes in arriving at certain decisions, but those are matters for the Legislative Assembly itself or, where legal limits have been transgressed, for the courts whose powers in this regard are limited by reason of the separation of powers. Until corrected, the Speaker’s decisions stand, be they the acceptance of the resignation of the three members who crossed the floor, the issuing of the show cause notices to the alleged usurpers of power and the effecting of their suspension, or the calling of the emergency sessions of the Assembly.

And yet under the hand of the Executive, in a manner reminiscent of the locking up of the Supreme Court in 1988 the Legislative Assembly itself was put out of bounds to members of the Assembly, This was done at the instigation of the State Secretary, an officer of the executive and as such its representative, with the assistance of a police force duty bound to protect the system of governance and associated freedoms put in place by the constitutions of this nation.

In doing so, the Executive laid siege on the Legislature. The sight of the Federal Reserve Unit barring the way into the Legislative Assembly, fangs bared and water cannon poised, was as close a physical depiction of democracy being taken hostage as we will ever see. The underlying intention of the exercise brings this further into relief. It was apparent that the Assembly had to be prevented from meeting for as long as it took for the lawyers to do what they could in court. Injunctions against the Speaker had been applied for. Once these were granted, the process that the Speaker had started would be brought to a halt.

The fact that the injunctions had been applied for shows clearly how far democracy was subverted. The making of the applications underscores awareness on the part of those orchestrating the campaign that self-help was not permissible. The validity of the Speaker’s actions had to be tested before a court of law. If they were not needed, the injunctions would not have been sought.

Despite this appreciation of the obvious, the might of the state was brought to bear. A federal agency was brought in and tasked to do what it was not mandated by law to do: keep the Assembly at bay to protect the interest of a coalition of political parties.

There is no law that allows police officers to deny members of a legislative chamber access to that chamber for the business of Legislature. It is not for any police officer to unilaterally determine that the business being conducted is not within the ambit of the legislature, no matter who might say it is. What the police force did was not justified in law. No crime had been committed. Though the gathering masses was reason enough for a police presence, breaches of the peace did not occur nor were orders to disperse issued, unsurprising given that the focal point was the denial of access to the Legislative Assembly.

It is glaringly obvious that confronted with a scenario that left it vulnerable to a tactical maneuvering of legislative procedure, and an inability to resolve the imbroglio to advantage, the Barisan Nasional at the state and federal level collectively took the law into its own hands. The plan to capture Perak had run into a brick wall and rather than go around it, they decided to blow it up and everything else with it.

The situation is comparable to a hypothetical scenario in which Pakatan Rakyat Members of Parliament barricaded Parliament House to deny Barisan Nasional Members and the Speaker access so as to prevent them from legitimately making a law that they would otherwise have. The only difference is if that had occurred, the Barisan Nasional would have denounced the exercise as an attempted coup d’etat and punished those involved to the full extent of the law at its disposal.

It does not make any difference that that the Barisan Nasional forms the Federal government of the day and is in a position to direct the police force; like all other institutions, these institutions are bound to act constitutionally and in accordance with the law. Malaysia is still a democracy predicated on constitutional supremacy. The expectation that all affairs will be conducted to the exclusive convenience and the advantage of the Barisan Nasional and its leaders is more suited to a dictatorship in which the Rule of Law means nothing.

Through the last week Malaysians have borne witness to a shameless display of belligerence and arrogance. We have heard a senior minister describe the emergency session, held by necessity under that now immortalized rain-tree, as “uncivilized”. Another senior minister described the Speaker as a ‘boy’. Though in line with the other ridiculous observations of ambitious UMNO leaders that Malaysians have had to endure since the beginning of the Perak affair, they do little to mask the obvious; that the Barisan Nasional appears to see no limits to what it is permitted to do to achieve its objectives.

And if it could do this in one state, what is to stop it from acting in the same way in other states or at the federal level. Judging by the way in which it has responded to criticism over its actions these past few weeks, it would seem nothing much. It is manifest that the Barisan Nasional considers itself a law unto itself.

That is the painful truth that lies at the heart of Tengku Razaleigh’s declaration that the Constitution is dead.

The all in one Keris - Cane, weapon, crutch....

The Keris is in reference to the Malay noble sword. How we view it's status depends on oneself including politicians who uphold their supremacies of rightful land. Many times we see it as an icon of our national heritage but for the last few years, it had been exploited to good use, in symbolic nature, from ministers to maintain a griphold of their social standings, including over ours. Why the difference?

Malaysia: The Bumiputera tongkat that my son does not need
Written by Kazi Mahmood

My son did feel sad that he is not ‘classified’ among the other Muslims. Yes the ‘other’ Muslims who are Malays. To comfort him, I told him the story of the ‘tongkat’ and the old man.

Malaysia is probably living one its most exciting yet volatile days with a high profile murder case resounding loudly in almost all blogs and portals in the country while its political scene is dipping in an unending game of cat and mouse.

In the limelight of the current situation, the Malay-Muslims are taking a severe bashing on Internet blogs and at times in local dailies. Muslims in the country, forming a majority of 60 percent of the 25 million populations, are getting more confused and fearful of the outcome of this bashing.

However, the 60 percent Muslims are segregated into a confusing and totally un-Islamic racist grading that not only divides the Muslims in Malaysia but put many Muslims in direct opposition to the Malay majority race. Race is a very persistent factor in Malaysia and it is getting uglier altogether.

My son, a young and prolific writer has fallen victim of the system last month. He is the third son in a family of 3 kids. My wife, a Malaysian considered a Bumiputera. She has two kids (Bumiputera's) from a first marriage with one local Malay who, classically, ran away with a younger wife to lead a new life. I came in the picture a year after her divorce was settled and married her in Mauritius, the Paradise Island in the Indian Ocean.

After much struggle with the Malaysian immigration, I am now like a ‘suami import’ or imported husband. I do not have a red IC after 18 years here and I find it fine too since I could not be bothered with a red IC or a blue IC. These are insignificant items of ‘collection’ for someone like me. Yet what is very significant to me and to my son – he just penned down a lengthy article in which he wrote about the Bumiputera thing – is the race issue.

In my country, racism was pretty much under control though existent, and we journalists and writers fought dearly to prevent it from raising its ugly head in Mauritius. Then came the darkest days of Mauritius political history in the 1983-1986 years in which racism and a form of religious fascism reared its ugly head and threatened to annihilate the great civilian values we enjoyed.

The press, the writer’s guild, the independent journalists and the freelance writers-reporters fought bravely and won. The leader of the movement to instigate racism in Mauritius was forced out of the government and I am glad I was the only journalist in Mauritius to have predicted the very week and almost the day he was kicked out of the government by the then Prime Minister Aneerood Jugnauth.

I wrote extensively against the character, without creating a character assassination type of campaign, but targeting instead the idea of chaos and dangers impending if racism was allowed to win and a mafia group given the powers to literally administer the country. The human interest stories I delivered were of help to the government in place as it opened the eyes. I was also the only journalist involved in the creating of a 100 pages report on the status of Journalism and freedom of the press in Mauritius for the United Nation. I was queried by the ‘thugs’ of the deputy Prime Minister, the very person who promoted Hindu extremism in Mauritius.

I was followed, targeted and in at least one incident, I was almost attacked by a group but I was salvaged by an army friend of mine who grabbed me with the help of two other soldiers to throw me in their jeep and drove me home safely. I was lucky but that was because I did give a severe blow to the mafia and the racist head. Subsequently he was thrown out of the regime and has since then been denied a seat in our August Parliament for good.

That is to say that I am not afraid of racism and like my son, we both are not at all taken aback by the fact that he is a non-Malay according to the schools classification. But it is the classification itself that resounds like a Hitlerian project to divide the Muslims, setting them apart and calling the Malays Bumiputera while the rest are called anak lelaki or anak perempuan or are classified under lain-lain. Why is my son not classified a bumi? Simply to feed a Malay Bumiputera the golden spoon in the future and give him or her, however dumb that person may end up to be, a safe haven in a local university. To trade Islamic principles for a university post is a shameful act by itself. It is needless to guess the type of 'education' these people will be 'fed' in the Area 51.

The very fact that Islam condemns such segregation and insists on the unity of the people under one banner is what we may call the very reason why Malaysia should at all cost, stop practicing such segregationist, apartheid and racist policies. My son did feel sad that he is not ‘classified’ among the other Muslims. Yes the ‘other’ Muslims who are Malays. To comfort him, I told him the story of the ‘tongkat’ and the old man.

In Malaysia I told him, referring to the Bumiputera status, the Malays from very young are given the ‘tongkat’ to survive in a world where they may automatically fail. The fear of failure, of being defeated at a young age by non-Malays have grown so much after my 18 years in Malaysia that it is funny to see how the regime will go the extra lengths to ‘classify’ Muslims as Bumiputeras and non-Bumiputeras. My son’s mother is a Malay by all rights and her right as a Malay is trampled by the Malays themselves to tell, indirectly, to a foreign father of a Malaysian born boy that you and your son will not get a piece of the ‘tongkat’.

In my country and in 99 percent of the world, we see old folks walking without a ‘tongkat’ and they are healthy and they are wealthy too in most cases. They never needed the ‘tongkat’ to be protected from more intelligent races. They may die without a ‘tongkat’ after all and it will be bravo to them as it will be bravo to my son for since his young age he has learned a great lesson: That he does not need a ‘tongkat’ to be somebody, to succeed and he is already a growing success as a young Malaysian non-Malay but a 101 percent Muslim writer. This is the kind of shame that will overshadow the Malays in general if they continue to support, and in particular the teachers, the head masters and head mistresses and the activists who supposedly are trying to ‘protect’ their Malay rights, the racist policies of this country.

To my knowledge, the rightful Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi is not a racist and he does not at all promote the racist policies that segregate my son from the ‘other’ weaker Muslims and tramples on the very Malay rights of my wife in this country. This policy became prominent during the time of Tun Mahathir Mohamad and he is the only one to blame today for the perpetuation of the very apartheid and Hitler policy of Islamic segregation by dividing Muslims into Bumiputera and non-Bumiputera.

If the Malays can eat the rights of their own Malay women who dare marry a foreigner, then imagine what they are capable of doing to keep their piece of cake that is fast dwindling. I was told by a subdued non-Bumi that I have to write to the ‘Penghulu’ of the place where I live in Ampang and to ‘rayu’ that my family follows the ‘Malay’ customs and ‘adat’ hence my son must be given the right to be a Bumiputera. I replied to him that cowards would do that but since I do not follow anything Malay and I follow the pure, true Islamic ‘adat’ I found it implausible for me to ‘rayu’ to a bloke who calls himself ‘penghulu’ and who promotes, perpetuates and even imposes racism in his midst!

This is the very reason, the racist and inter-Islamic racist segregationist policies in Malaysia that has undermined the Muslims and allowed the non-Muslims to bash the Malays and claim that Allah is the name of their God and that they have absolute right to use it. The Malay bashing will continue until the Malays are diminished in return since they will keep ‘segregating’ the Muslims into non-Bumiputera citizens and trust me sooner or later this will make the Malays yet an infinite minority in their own country.

After this, the process will be for the ‘true’ Muslims, known as non-Bumiputera’s to impose their will on the nation in alliance with non-Muslims. The next general elections will give a definitive reply to the ‘racist’ policies in Malaysia. By then, I will not be in this country but I will be too glad to see that the ‘protected’ but ‘weak’ Bumiputera segment of the Malaysian population will be given a beating and will lose seats in way they have never even dreamt possible!

Are you a Bumiputera I asked my son? “I am a Angkasaputra’ he replied because we both are from Nabi Adam AlayhisSalaam and we come from space, a dimension where Bumiputera’s will fear to thread.”