Thursday 10 February 2011

OPS LALANG WAS THE MAKING OF A POLICE STATE

OPS LALANG WAS THE MAKING OF A POLICE STATE
By Dr Kua Kia Soong, Director of SUARAM, 10 Feb 2011

No matter how hard Dr Mahathir tries to whitewash his dark record over Operation Lalang, he will surely fail because there will be many more truth-seeking historians on standby to put the record straight. At least one fact stands out: Dr Mahathir now seems ashamed of his role in Operation Lalang. And so he should be after more than two decades of trying to justify the dastardly act.

But can he wriggle out of the responsibility even though the former IGP Hanif Omar has so graciously come forward to claim credit for it?

First of all, what do you expect of a former IGP who was prepared to walk through the revolving door of a top police post upon retirement straight into the board of a corporation that makes its money from gambling, ie. Genting Highlands? There are two issues here: (i) the ethical problem of top government servants retiring into companies which have a bearing on their previous departments; (ii) the hypocrisy of prohibiting Muslim workers from serving in establishments which serve alcohol but allowing Muslim elite to be in the board of gambling outfits.

The former IGP now claims that the police force he led was responsible for Ops Lalang and not the Prime Minister who was then also Home Affairs Minister.

Is this the way our democracy operates? What has happened to the principle of ministerial responsibility? True, these are mere principles you might say, but it also makes our ministers and former prime minister look like idiots!


Overnight Malaysia Became a Police State

 
Of course, Dr Mahathir would not want to be remembered as an idiot or weak Prime Minister either. The truth is, as the Tunku said when Ops Lalang happened:

“Overnight Malaysia has become a police state.”

(SUARAM /K.Das,’The White Paper on the October Affair and the Why? Papers’, 1989:13)
 

In a police state, there is usually little or no distinction between the law and the exercise of political power by the executive. It does not mean that the police have taken over the political reins of power. Such a situation is facilitated by the existence of laws that allow detention without trial. People in a police state experience restrictions on their freedoms of expression, assembly and association, while a secret police force operates outside the boundaries normally imposed by a constitutional state which can tell the executive who the “enemies of the state” are.

In 1987 when Ops Lalang was unleashed, our elderly “Bapa Malaysia” could see that the country had become a police state even though the donkeys in the Barisan Nasional could not. He could also see the underlying reasons for Dr Mahathir’s actions and put it bluntly:

“UMNO was facing a break-up. The Prime Minister, Dr Mahathir Mohamad’s hold on the party appeared critical when election rigging was alleged to have given him a very narrow victory against Tunku Razaleigh. The case alleging irregularities brought by UMNO members was pending in court. If the judgement went against him he wou ld have no choice but to step down. So he had to find a way out of his predicament. A national crisis had to be created to bring UMNO together as a united force to fight a common enemy – and the imaginary enemy in this case was the Chinese community…

“If there was indeed a real security threat facing the country, why was action not taken much sooner when (the arrested and detained)…were alleged to have made dangerous racial speeches as far back as 1984?” (ibid, p.10)

The underlying factor, which determined the uncertainty in Malaysian politics ever since 1986, was the power struggle within UMNO. This relentless power struggle was inevitable considering the size of the spoils of the New Economic Policy at stake. The irreconcilable differences between Team A led by Dr.Mahathir and Team B led by Tengku Razaleigh was the destabilizing factor which dominated the ruling Barisan Nasional coalition. This in turn set in train other destructive forces within the coalition's member parties.


Orchestrated Communalism 


And as communalism is the stock-in-trade of the BN communal partners in any precarious situation, race politics becomes the order of the day. Not surprisingly, the factions in UMNO began to beat their breasts about Malay dominance which had been aired by Abdullah Ahmad in 1986 while the MCA played out its own orchestrated role as the champion of the Chinese. It was in this communalist climate that the usual “sensitive issues” were bandied around; raising such issues as non-qualified senior assistants being sent to Chinese-medium schools. If one studies the daily papers in the period before 27 October 1987, the characteristic racial exchanges between UMNO and MCA can be clearly discerned. The Amnesty International Report on Operation Lalang confirms this:

“However, informed observers argued that those arrested had done little or nothing to provoke racial or religious tension and that on a number of critical issues government ministers and members of the ruling National Front coalition had played up and aggravated the perennial political and communal tensions that underlie Malaysian society for purposes of their own”. (P.2)

What is characteristic of Malaysian politics is that when the dominant party UMNO has internal problems, these problems are quickly externalised. Needless controversies then seem to break out over various government directives.

In the period we are looking at these included one regarding the recitation of a pledge in Malacca schools in May 1987 which the non-Malays regarded as having Islamic connotations and unacceptable to their beliefs. In July, the “electives” issue erupted over the University of Malaya's decision to scrap elective courses taught in English, Chinese and Tamil in the respective language departments. Meanwhile, within the Islamic quarter, there emerged a hue and cry over the Christianisation of Malays by Christian evangelists.

Then in October, the Education ministry decided to appoint (linguistically) non-qualified senior officials in Chinese-medium primary schools. This met with outrage by the Chinese community who did not want the character and standards in these schools to be altered irreparably. Mass meetings were called in various parts of the country calling upon the parties to resolve the issue. It must be noted that these meetings were orderly and there have been no complaints from the police who actually sanctioned the meetings.

In mid-October, UMNO Youth staged a rally at an open-air stadium in Kuala Lumpur. At this rally, several leading UMNO politicians including a Cabinet minister (now Prime Minister) made racially provocative statements. Banners bearing flagrantly racist and seditious slogans such as “Bathe this (Kris) in Chinese blood” and the like (See the Government's White Paper) were blatantly displayed.

These leading UMNO politicians somehow escaped the ISA dragnet. Perhaps the gracious former IGP would care to explain why?


The Limits to the Freedom of Expression

 
Were the police powerless in that situation? As I told my Special Branch interrogation officers, the limits to the freedom of expression must surely lie not only where it trespasses upon racial sensitivities but also where the police feel confident of keeping law and order.

In this particular incident, the flaunting of racist and seditious banners and speeches clearly showed that the police had no control unless of course, they condoned it. And if they could not manage a few thousand people, how could they even contemplate allowing the proposed UMNO anniversary rally of some 500,000 to take place? By not disallowing the massive rally plans outright, the racial tension was left to build up and this provided the perfect justification for another ISA swoop on all Mahathir’s dissidents.

Dr Mahathir craftily counted on the ignorance of this foreign interviewer who did not follow through his probing with asking how he signed the two-year detention orders for detainees such as me after the sixty-day solitary confinement. He wouldn’t have been able to wriggle out of that one nor will the former IGP be able to play the gracious government servant…

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工委会议决:将徐袖珉除名

人民之友工委会2020年9月27日常月会议针对徐袖珉(英文名: See Siew Min)半年多以来胡闹的问题,议决如下:

鉴于徐袖珉长期以来顽固推行她的“颜色革命”理念和“舔美仇华”思想,蓄意扰乱人民之友一贯以来的“反对霸权主义,反对种族主义”政治立场,阴谋分化甚至瓦解人民之友推动真正民主改革的思想阵地,人民之友工委会经过长时间的考察和验证,在2020年9月27日会议议决;为了明确人民之友创立以来的政治立场以及贯彻人民之友现阶段以及今后的政治主张,必须将徐袖珉从工委会名单上除名,并在人民之友部落格发出通告,以绝后患。

2020年9月27日发布



[ 漫画新解 ]
新冠病毒疫情下的马来西亚
舔美精神患者的状态

年轻一辈人民之友有感而作


注:这“漫画新解”是反映一名自诩“智慧高人一等”而且“精于民主理论”的老姐又再突发奇想地运用她所学会的一丁点“颜色革命”理论和伎俩来征服人民之友队伍里的学弟学妹们的心理状态——她在10多年前曾在队伍里因时时表现自己是超群精英,事事都要别人服从她的意愿而人人“惊而远之”,她因此而被挤出队伍近10年之久。

她在三年前被一名年长工委推介,重新加入人民之友队伍。可是,就在今年年初她又再故态复萌,尤其是在3月以来,不断利用部落格的贴文,任意扭曲而胡说八道。起初,还以“不同意见者”的姿态出现,以博取一些不明就里的队友对她的同情和支持,后来,她发现了她的欺骗伎俩无法得逞之后,索性撤下了假面具,对人民之友一贯的“反对霸权主义、反对种族主义”的政治立场,发出歇斯底里的叫嚣,而暴露她设想人民之友“改旗易帜”的真面目!

尤其是在新冠病毒疫情(COVID-19)课题上,她公然猖狂跟人民之友的政治立场对着干,指责人民之友服务于中国文宣或大中华,是 “中国海外统治部”、“中华小红卫兵”等等等等。她甚至通过强硬粗暴手段擅自把我们的WhatsApp群组名称“Sahabat Rakyat Malaysia”改为“吐槽美国样衰俱乐部”这样的无耻行动也做得出来。她的这种种露骨的表现足以说明了她是一名赤裸裸的“反中仇华”份子。

其实,在我们年轻队友看来,这名嘲讽我们“浪费了20年青春”[人民之友成立至今近20年(2001-9-9迄今)]并想要“拯救我们年轻工委”的这位“徐大姐”,她的思想依然停留在20年前的上个世纪。她初始或许是不自觉接受了“西方民主”和“颜色革命”思想的培养,而如今却是自觉地为维护美国的全球霸权统治而与反对美国霸权支配全球的中国人民和全世界各国(包括马来西亚)人民为敌。她是那么狂妄自大,却是多么幼稚可笑啊!

她所说的“你们浪费了20年青春”正好送回给她和她的跟班,让他们把她的这句话吞到自己的肚子里去!


[ 漫画新解 ]
新冠病毒疫情下的马来西亚
"公知"及其跟班的精神面貌

注:这“漫画新解”是与<人民之友>4月24日转贴的美国政客叫嚣“围剿中国”煽动颠覆各国民间和组织 >(原标题为<当心!爱国队伍里混进了这些奸细……>)这篇文章有关联的。这篇文章作者沈逸所说的“已被欧美政治认同洗脑的‘精神欧美人’”正是马来西亚“公知”及其跟班的精神面貌的另一种写照!




[ 漫画新解 ]
新冠病毒疫情下的马来西亚
"舔美"狗狗的角色

编辑 / 来源:人民之友 / 网络图库

注:这“漫画新解”是与《察网》4月22日刊林爱玥专栏文章<公知与鲁迅之间 隔着整整一个中国 >这篇文章有关联的,这是由于这篇文章所述说的中国公知,很明显是跟这组漫画所描绘的马来西亚的“舔美”狗狗,有着孪生兄弟姐妹的亲密关系。

欲知其中详情,敬请点击、阅读上述文章内容,再理解、品味以下漫画的含义。这篇文章和漫画贴出后,引起激烈反响,有人竟然对号入座,暴跳如雷且发出恐吓,众多读者纷纷叫好且鼓励加油。编辑部特此接受一名网友建议:在显著的布告栏内贴出,方便网友搜索、浏览,以扩大宣传教育效果。谢谢关注!谢谢鼓励!












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