On Saturday a leading political cartoonist, Zulkiflee Anwar Ulhaque, better known as Zunar, was detained under Malaysia’s draconian Sedition Act. He had been participating at the George Town Literary Festival, arguably the country’s best-known lit-fest. Zunar was arrested for criticising Malaysia’s Prime Minister, Najib Razak. This is presumably to set an example: look what happens when you dare call a spade a spade! Zunar’s arrest has made international news, but what is less well-known is that he was also punched up beforehand by stooges of Malaysia’s dominant political party, UMNO, the United Malay National Organisation.
Zunar’s arrest is part of a string of troubling developments in Malaysia. The previous week, the chairwoman of a civil rights group, Bersih, was also arrested. Bersih (which means ‘Clean’ in Malay) has been campaigning for basic democratic rights for several years. Rights such as:
Free and fair elections. Clean government. The right to dissent.
Daring to demand an end to corruption is too much for the Malaysian government. After all, its raison d’être now is to cling on to power (and the nation’s coffers) by whatever means it can. Bersih’s chairwoman, Maria Chin Abdullah, was thus held in solitary detention – without charge, I might add – and not allowed to see her lawyer or family for a week. She has now been released, but not before the Malaysian police promised to crack down on people participating in vigils to have her freed.
Before Maria Chin Abdullah was detained, she had actually been threatened with ISIS-style decapitation. The rise of Islamic fundamentalism is a troubling trend in Malaysia – a trend on which the supposedly moderate government has remarkably little to say. Indeed, there was yet another attempt last week to table a bill in Parliament that could pave the way to hand-chopping in Malaysia. In principle, the bill was not the government’s and is supposed to apply only to one particular state in the country, but these are beside the point. The rubicon of hand-chopping, if crossed, will have consequences for the entire country and each and every Malaysian.
I left Malaysia many years ago. In the Malaysia I knew, a law proposing the chopping off of limbs as punishment would have been unthinkable. This is the country I want to remind Malaysians of in the books which will form The Malayan Series. I’m no fan of British colonialism – anyone who has read The Woman who Breathed Two Worlds will realise that – but there was undoubtedly a degree of tolerance in previous days which has been deliberately leached away.
Malaysia has turned into a country I barely recognise. It is now a place in which, as soon as you criticise the government, you’re either beaten up or threatened with death. It is a country where protest demanding good governance is viewed as a threat to government and if you have the courage to voice any discontent, you’re told, “If you don’t like it, leave.”
Is this the Malaysia we want?
It’s not the country I want, which is why I will do what I can to remind people about the Malaysia we’ve lost. It’s also why I will support those who are fighting for a secular, pluralistic, more inclusive Malaysia.
There are people who say that it’s already too late. I don’t believe this: it is never too late to change. There are other Malaysians like me, as this sane letter shows. The longer we leave it, though, the more entrenched attitudes will become and the harder change will be. It is up to us Malaysians: no one else can do the hard work for us. The Malaysia of tomorrow will reflect what we today are doing, or not, as the case may be.
Window into Other Worlds 