A VULTURE NAMED MAHATHIR (revisited)

Statement from Dr Munawar Anees posted on The Might Of The Pen, October 19, 2008...

As a student I knew of the horrors of the Holocaust and other human tragedies, but merely as a distant thunder: the violation of human rights and crimes against humanity were only an abstract notion.

That was all fated to change with my arrest under the draconian Internal Security Act (ISA) of Malaysia, which allows for indefinite detention without trial. My crime? I had known Anwar Ibrahim, the deputy prime minister and finance minister of Malaysia, as a close personal friend for many years. We shared and strove for a vision of life firmly rooted in human dignity. We struggled for building an intellectual and political milieu for free expression. Together, we subscribed to the idea of economic prosperity, gender and racial equality and a civil society.

Alas, the Malaysian dictator, Mahathir, under the growing burden of corruption and cronyism, conspired to halt the march of freedom. In order to build his fraudulent case against Anwar, Mahathir himself ordered my arrest.

My kidnapping and detention by the infamous Malaysian Special Branch taught me how it feels to be forcibly separated from one’s wife and children. How it feels to be searched and seized, disallowed to make phone calls, handcuffed, blindfolded, stripped naked, driven in an animal cage, shaven bald, endlessly interrogated, humiliated, drugged, deprived of sleep, physically abused. What it’s like to be threatened, blackmailed, tormented by police lawyers, brutalized to make a totally false confession, hospitalized for a consequent heart ailment, and treated as a psychiatric patient with symptoms of Stockholm syndrome.

Barely surviving on a meager diet of rancid rice and chicken along with 12 medicines a day, I spent nearly four months handcuffed around the clock to my hospital bed, under the watchful eyes of the prison guards.

Thereafter, my ability to speak, read and write took a considerable time to show signs of recovery. Short-term memory lapses were frequent. I existed in a fluid state in which suicidal tendencies, depression and despair were punctuated by fits of rage and indignation.

Weekly visits of less than an hour by my wife, Nadia, with our young children — Aisha and Omran — were my only contact with the outside world and the only inspiration to live on.

In collusion with the lawyer appointed on my behalf by the police, the Malaysian authorities refused the legal assistance of my choice, coercing me not to mount an appeal against the court verdict and threatening me with greater punishment under new charges if I didn’t co-operate.

Simultaneously, Nadia constantly endured police harassment, wiretapping and disruption of our e-mail and bank accounts. Some of our friends were met with the same fate and were compelled to abandon us when we needed them most.

But, in attempting to scare off and alienate my friends, how terribly mistaken were Malaysian autocrats in aping gross Gestapo tactics. How they underestimated the temper of freedom in so many places around the world, above all among friends in the West.

Floodgates of human compassion were opened when the futurist author Alvin Toffler, who Mahathir asked to advise him on a pet high-technology project, sent a message of protest to the Malaysian leader within 72 hours of my capture. In a major interview with the Western press, Mahathir even felt it necessary to make assurances — unfulfilled, of course — about my well being.

With every passing day, the rising tide of concern for my plight seemed to personify the words of Elie Wiesel:

“Take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor. Never the victim. Never the tormented.”

Friends and strangers alike took a stand and support began to mushroom everywhere. Nadia related to me in the hospital how Amnesty International had declared me a “prisoner of conscience,” and how Pen International adopted me as a “writer in prison.” Against all odds, two prominent Malaysian lawyers, Manjeet Singh Dhillon and Balwant Singh Siddhu, offered their services unconditionally. To top it all, an international coalition — Friends of Dr. Anees — came into existence in defence of my rights. The core group of Naseer Ahmad, Baseer Hai, Safir Rammah, Jamal Mubarak, Anees Ahmad and Naeem Siddiqui mounted a media campaign with phenomenal success.

What touched my heart was that the person, Kamal Mubarak, who set up the Web site had never met me in person. From the depths of my confinement, I could see the magic of human compassion had begun to defeat oppression.

The pinnacle was reached after my release in the warm hug laced with watery eyes of an Amnesty friend in Toronto, Margaret John, who witnessed a pledge of solidarity between me and Devan Nair, the former president of Singapore, for we had come to share a similar fate.

My victimization at the hands of Mahathir’s “Asian values” has transformed me in another way. All my adult life, like so many in the Muslim world, I have suspected under every nook and cranny some conspiracy by the West to keep us down. Yet, in this seminal experience of my life, my friends in the West succeeded in saving me, while Mahathir, a Muslim, did everything to destroy me. And he is trying to do the same to Anwar again through his obliging courts on totally fabricated charges.

Mahathir has demonstrated that, though a proclaimed Muslim, his heart is blind to compassion. Tyranny is the hallmark of his bankrupt concept of “Asian values.”

My tragedy, and that of my friend Anwar, ought to make our fellow Muslims think very hard when they ponder the West and its role in the world. As we set out to shape our collective destiny in the 21st century, will the values of Mahathir or Jefferson serve us best? Mahathir himself made that choice for me. Sic semper tyrannis.*

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* Sic semper tyrannis is a Latin phrase meaning "thus, ever (or always), to tyrants." It is sometimes mistranslated as "Death to tyrants." The phrase is a shortened version of Sic semper evello mortem Tyrannis, which translated means "Thus always death comes to tyrants." (Wikipedia)

[First published 20 October 2008, reposted 5 April 2013]

In Memory of an Umno Warlord (reposting as a public service message)

I WONDER WHO LIVES HERE...


















Zakaria Mat Deros, a Klang state assemblyman (UMNO) in Selangor, began building his RM8-million 16-room mansion in 2006 without any construction permit from the local government. He built the illegal mansion on a large tract of state land purportedly worth more than a million ringgit (but purchased in his wife's name for around RM180,000). The area had earlier been allocated for low-cost housing. Under Selangor state law, his illegal mansion should have been seized and Zakaria prosecuted. In a gesture designed to appease public opinion, Zakaria invited 400 orphans to celebrate Hari Raya at his newly completed palace.

Former Selangor Chief Minister Mohd Khir Toyo has been criticized for overlooking Zakaria's "mistake" and not taking any action against the errant assemblyman who was a close personal friend. Zakaria subsequently resigned from public office after he was taken to task by the Sultan of Selangor. The former assemblyman reportedly died of a heart attack in his home on 11 March 2008 at about 1:30 a.m., soon after Malaysia's historic 12th General Elections on 8 March 2008 which saw Selangor wrested from UMNO control, along with Penang, Kedah, Kelantan, Perak, and the Federal Territory. Some say Zakaria Mat Deros actually hanged himself. Rumors persist, however, that Zakaria Mat Deros actually died in a conference room in the PWTC shortly after the election results were tabulated and it was learnt that Selangor had fallen into Opposition hands. According to well-informed sources, Zakaria was summoned to an emergency meeting by then deputy prime minister Najib Razak who instructed him to get his henchmen to start a racial fracas in Klang. Zakaria, already under extreme pressure because he was blamed for the loss of Selangor, got into a violent argument with Najib and collapsed. [Adapted from the Wikipedia entry on Mohd Khir bin Toyo]

SEEMS LIKE I WAS TAKEN IN BY ANOTHER EMAIL HOAX! APPARENTLY THESE IMAGES ARE NOT FROM 'ISTANA ZAKARIA' AFTER ALL BUT RATHER THAN DELETE THIS POST, I SHALL RETAIN IT WITH THIS DISCLAIMER: THE LATE UMNO WARLORD DID BUILD HIMSELF AN RM8-MILLION 16-ROOM PALACE... NOT QUITE AS "TASTEFUL" AS THE ONE SHOWN HERE BUT JUST AS OSTENTATIOUS. MY SINCERE THANKS TO ALL THOSE WHO SET ME RIGHT WITH THEIR COMMENTS.

[First posted 27 March 2008]

BN DECLARED ILLEGAL

BN 'detrimental to peace and security'

ULU KANOWIT (Thursday, October 16, 2008): Sarawak Headhunter today declared the Barisan Nasional (BN) an illegal organisation. In a statement to Cyber Jungle News today, Sarawak Headhunter said that the facts and evidence showed that the government was, and is, being used by the BN in a manner detrimental to public order and national security.

Labelled a threat to national security, the BN has been banned by Sarawak Headhunter, Home Minister of the pro-tem government of the Republic of Sarawak (ROS).

Sarawak Headhunter yesterday issued a statement declaring BN, which has been advocating racial and racist agendas since its inception, an illegal organisation. The declaration, he said, was a result of monitoring and investigations by the ROS going back to the formation of BN.

"As a result of the investigations, the Home Ministry, as per its authority under sections 35 and 55 of the People's Government Reform Act 2008, has declared BN unlawful and detrimental to peace, public order, political, economic and social security and the moral values of Malaysia," he said in the statement.

"I feel that if we don't rein in their activities, they will continue to jeopardise security and public order, and our country's sovereignty, as well as upset the harmony among races."

Sarawak Headhunter said the decision to ban the movement was not made based on only one or two misdemeanours committed by BN, but covered the entire gamut of activities the group had been involved since its organisation.

"These included subversion of the economic policies of the government, thereby causing losses of hundreds of billions of ringgit, economic injustice and instability, subversion of the judiciary, large-scale electoral fraud, including but not limited to vote-buying and ballot-box tampering, gerrymandering and general abuse and manipulation of electoral, legislative and administrative process, corruption, favouritism, nepotism, cronyism, abuse of power and position, misuse of government machinery, abuse of the law, waste, mismanagement, misallocation or wrongful allocation of resources, racial and racist agendas and policies, exclusion and marginalization of entire communities, discrimination, improper control and manipulation of the mass media, registration of illegal immigrants as citizens, coercion, pressure, force, threat and intimidation of the public through illegal police action, terrorism and gangsterism, conflicts of interest, breaches of trust and much more."

"They exploited all manner of racial issues to remain in power and which caused an uprising by the people and created hatred between them and all races."

He added that BN had tried all ways and means, illegal, dirty and underhanded, to support their attempts to get the people to bow to their demands, actions which have tarnished the country's image.

"Considering all the facts and evidence we have, I am satisfied that BN was and is being used in a manner detrimental to public order and national security and the well-being of the nation."

"We advise the public not to involve themselves in any way with the activities of this unlawful organization."

Cyber Jungle News, Thursday, 16.10.2008

[Images from Sarawak Headhunter]

BACK ONLINE AT LAST!

Since the afternoon of January 15th I've had no Streamyx access. Service was restored around 1 p.m. on January 21st. That's one whole week and probably a dozen phonecalls to TMNet Customer Care. Impressive.... NOT!

All systems can and occasionally do break down. However, when it comes to essential services like telecommunications, electricity and water, prolonged downtime causes unquantifiable losses and that's why a turnaround time of 24 hours must be the maximum acceptable limit. Beyond that the companies responsible need to be made financially accountable. That should speed up the maintenance and repair department a little - when their annual bonuses are on the line.

To make matters worse, whenever you call TMNet Customer Care, they invariably put you on hold for several minutes during which you're blasted with idiotic ads for TMNet ("Dedicated to bringing you the best in internet and multimedia services" - my foot!). Talk about rubbing salt into the wound...

So who's responsible for making something as vital to modern life as telecommunications a privatized monopoly business? And not just a privatized monopoly - but an almost entirely monoethnic one to boot?

Saw a great T-shirt on sale at Central Market recently. It features a bold TM logo underscored by the tagline: TAK MALU ("No Shame" in Malay). Come to think of it, TM could also stand for Tun Mahathir - the Supermamak who gave Malaysia privatized electricity, water, telephone, and medical services!

BAH! (I wanted to say NIAMAH! but Patrick Teoh has taken out a patent on that one).

Graft in Malaysia’s Defense Ministry

Najib Tun Razak, Malaysia’s defense minister, finds a fountain of cash in military purchases

"Mat Salleh"
24 September 2007
Asia Sentinel

Despite the fact that the country’s borders have been largely secure for 40 years, Malaysia’s Defence Ministry has for decades been available to provide a river of money to defense ministers, the ruling United Malays National Organisation and any of the Sandhurst-educated generals who could get their hands into the till.

But if three separate contracts over the past several years are any yardstick, Najib Tun Razak, who became defense minister in 1999 and kept the portfolio when he became deputy prime minister, appears to have mastered the game far beyond the expectations of any previous defense leaders. Opposition figures say the three contracts, one for Russian Sukhoi jet fighters, a second for French submarines and a third for navy patrol boats, appear to have produced at least US$300 million for UMNO cronies, Najib’s friends and others.

Describing “the mundane but important element of patronage,” Foreign Policy in Focus, a think tank supported by the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, wrote in a 2005 article that “many foreign arms manufacturers generally used well-connected Malaysians as their lobbyists for contracts. The commission paid to such representatives is estimated to range from 10 to 20 percent.” Even prior to the 1997 Asian financial crisis, Southeast Asia, which hasn’t had an external war in decades but is rich enough to spend plenty on guns, was the world’s second-largest arms market after the Middle East, representing about 20 percent of the world’s purchases.

By the end of next year, Malaysia is expected to have 18 Sukhoi-20MKM jets intended to replace 14 US-made F-5Es, which have been in service for two decades. Two Sukhois were delivered this year, and the Malaysian Air Force also has 18 MiG-29N Fulcrums.

All three of the contracts, which were approved under Najib (left) and have been widely cited by the opposition, fit well into Foreign Policy in Focus’s patronage scale. Bringing the three together, and taking a new look at their associations, is instructive. They have been forced back into public attention by the continuing trial of Abdul Razak Baginda, one of Najib’s closest friends, who is on trial for his life in a suburban high court along with two of Najib’s bodyguards for the murder of Altantuya Shaariibuu, a Mongolian translator who was shot in the head on October 19, 2006, and then blown up with C4 explosives available only from Malaysia’s military.

According to testimony in the trial, Altantuya accompanied her then-lover Abdul Razak to Paris at a time when Malaysia’s defense ministry was negotiating through a Kuala Lumpur-based company, Perimekar Sdn Bhd, to buy two Scorpene submarines and a used Agosta submarine produced by the French government under a French-Spanish joint venture, Armaris. Perimekar at the time was owned by a company called Ombak Laut, which was wholly owned by Abdul Razak.

The contract was not competitive. The Malaysian ministry of defense paid 1 billion euros (RM 4.5 billion) to Amaris for the three submarines, for which Perimekar received a commission of 114 million euros (RM510 million). Deputy Defense Minister Zainal Abdidin Zin told the Dewan Rakyat, Malaysia’s parliament, that the money was paid for “coordination and support services” although the fee amounted to a whopping 11 percent of the sales price for the submarines. Altantuya, by her own admission in the last letter she wrote before her murder, said she had been blackmailing Abdul Razak, pressuring him for US$500,000. She did not say how she was blackmailing him, leaving open lots of questions.

Spending for defense accelerated across the board after Najib, called “the driving force” behind Malaysia’s military modernization program by Foreign Policy in Focus, became defense chief. The shopping list, the think tank reported, “includes battle tanks from Poland, Russian and British surface-to-air missiles and mobile military bridges, Austrian Steyr assault rifles and Pakistani anti-tank missiles. Kuala Lumpur is also negotiating to buy several F/A 18s, three submarines from France and an unspecified number of Russian Suhkoi Su-30 fighter aircraft.

It was the Sukhois that have become the second controversial purchase brokered by Najib. The deal, worth US$900 million (RM3.2 billion), was through a Russian state company, Federal State Unitary Enterprise 'Rosoboronexport' on May 19, 2003. IMT Defence Sdn. Bhd. was appointed the local agent for the Russian company and received 12 percent of the purchase price, US$108 million (RM380 million). The principal figure and chairman of IMT Defence is Mohamad Adib Adam, the former chief minister of Malacca, previous Land and Development Minister and a longtime UMNO stalwart.

The involvement of IMT Defence only became known because in March 2005, a former director of IMT, Mohamad Zainuri Mohamad Idrus, filed suit against several Adib-related companies, alleging that Adib and his sister, Askiah Adam, “wanted to prevent him from exposing the reality of the Sukhoi deal.” In 2006, Mohamad Zainuri lodged a police report alleging that Adib had stolen the US$108 million (RM 380 million) commission that was supposed to be channeled to the company.

According to Mohamad Zainuri’s report, Adib had secretly registered a new company in the federal island of Labuan, Malaysia’s offshore banking center, bearing a name similar to IMT Defence Sdn. Bhd., allegedly in order to channel the commission illegally to the new company. The report was then sent to the Commercial Crime Investigations Department Headquarters. No report, however, has ever been released to the public.

Then, over the last few weeks, a third military scandal surfaced. Malaysia’s Auditor General, in a report tabled in Parliament on September 7, alleged that a contract to build naval vessels given to PSC-Naval Dockyard, a subsidiary of Penang Shipbuilding & Construction Sdn Bhd, which is owned by another UMNO crony, Amin Shah Omar Shah, is near failure.

[Read the entire killer article here...]