The Human Condition

The Human Condition

I was seventeen when Operasi Lalang took place.

In Singapore for my A Levels, I was far removed from the drama that preceded and followed the massive Internal Security Act crackdown of 1987. Loathe as I am to admit it now, I have to confess to having been largely ignorant of the political tensions that had led to the mass detentions and even less so about the kind of things that could happen to a Malaysian if he or she happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. The ISA was simply something that never really came up in conversation.

Until that year.

Karpal Singh and wife, Gurmeet, have been family friends for as long as I can remember. They still are. I was in school with four of their five children, being particularly close to the two eldest, Jagdeep (Penang State Assembly member) and Gobind (Member of Parliament). As they were closer to my age, we had more in common, having the kind of fun and getting into the kind of trouble that teenagers would. It was a time of hilarity, not an unhealthy dose of stupidity and, above all, great friendship. Something that Mr Karpal figured in as much as he could despite his insanely busy schedule.

I was told that Mr Karpal had been detained by my mother in a terse telephone conversation. Everyone was fearing the worst, the unfolding events were reminiscent of May 13, far fresher in the mind then than it is now.

It took me a while to come to grips with the notion that Mr Karpal had been detained. Ignorant, I asked my mother what crime he had committed; he was a lawyer after all and a man who stood by the law. She had a difficult time trying to make me understand how it is that the Government could detain someone at will, for no crime other than standing up for his principles. I laughed when she told me that the Government had declared that Mr Karpal was a threat to national security. I stopped laughing when I realized that she was being serious.

I thought of the boys, my friends, wondering how they were taking it. Their father had disappeared into an unknown that was terrifying for its lack of shape and form. Stories of abuse and mistreatment were leaking through, stories that have more recently been given form by the award of RM2.5 million in damages to Malik Hussein for his being tortured during his detention in 1998.

I could not return to Kuala Lumpur then so I saw Jagdeep a few months later when he visited. He was no longer the playful and mischievous boy I had last seen about six months earlier. There was a stillness and resolve I had not seen before. He was quiet, withdrawn and spent most of the visit talking about how sad and angry he was; for not being able to do anything for his father, or his mother, and at the unfairness and utter injustice of it all. Dr Mahathir had taken away his father with the flick of a pen with no real thought of what it is that was being done to the family. Or perhaps that was part of the strategy, a conclusion that the continued detention of the HINDRAF 5 points to.

I saw Gobind a short while later. His emotions were a reflection of those of his brother. The anger was palpable.

Those impressions have lived on in my mind and heart. I have seen the same emotions play over the faces of those I have tried to help in the years since; anger, pain and a deep resentment at the arbitrariness and arrogance of power.

In 2001 a team of lawyers – Haji Sulaiman Abdullah, R Sivarasa, Christopher Leong and I - argued an ISA habeas corpus appeal in the Federal Court. In the course of submissions, we pointed to the fact that even during the height of apartheid in South Africa, the liberties of individuals detained under a similar preventive detention law had been better protected, as marginally as that may have been, by the courts there. It was a point that struck home both in court and outside it. I had thought that I could think of no better way to illustrate how oppressive the ISA and the system that supports it are

That impression changed recently. ISA detainee, Shahrial Sirin, has been in detention without trial for seven years. On July 2nd this year, his seventeen-year-old daughter, Aina, was admitted to Kajang Hospital, her death imminent. Shahrial only came to know of Aina’s condition the next morning and, after struggling with red tape, left Kamunting under escort at 5 pm. Aina died before he could reach her. He was prevented from being with his daughter by nothing more than the administrative whimsy of a Minister who for his own, wholly subjective, reasons believes that Shahrial is a threat.

Just as any one of us could be.

The ISA is a cruel law. There is no justification for its continued existence or any system that supports it. I am beginning to think that if the Pakatan Rakyat can promise us nothing more than the repeal of the ISA, it deserves to form the government. We can build everything else from there.

If a person has committed a crime, then let him or her be charged and tried in court. No wrong is so evil that it deserves to be exempted from this process. The presumption of innocence and freedom are not fictitious notions, they are the essence of the human condition.

(Malay Mail; 15th July 2008)

MIS