Portrait of a Malaysian Hero: Fan Yew Teng (1942-2010)

Fan Yew Teng in Cambridge, U.K., after a marathon land and sea journey through
India, Afghanistan, Iran and Yugoslavia to join his wife Noeleen (1975)

In December 2010 I was jolted by the news that Fan Yew Teng had succumbed to cancer in a Bangkok hospital. I hadn’t been in touch with the man since the mid-1980s, though I recall bumping into him a couple of times, either in theater foyers or at public forums, but the last real conversation I had with Fan was perhaps when he commissioned me to do a campaign poster in 1984 for his Social Democratic Party which never saw the light of day, apparently because he couldn’t find a printer willing to do the job.

In retrospect the cartoons I did for the poster weren’t all that hot, but it was my first attempt at political cartooning and laid the groundwork for the drawings I did four years later for ADOI!

Fan Yew Teng, the public
intellectual, in 1980

Malaysians were terrified of Mahathir’s secret police – and for good reason. A certain amount of dissent was tolerated but whenever it cut too close to the bone or threatened to make an impact in the public psyche, the full force of the regime’s monolithic power would come into play, making life utterly miserable for anyone who dared speak truth to power openly.

Fan Yew Teng and Mahathir Mohamad are what you might call diametric opposites – not unlike Arthur Koestler’s Yogi and Commissar archetypes, the ultraviolet and infrared ends of the psycho-emotional spectrum. The Yogi, representing inner evolution, envisions a world where every single soul is enlightened, liberated and in a natural state of bliss; while the Commissar, representing external revolution, has wet dreams about lording it over a perfect mechanical anthill colony where every atom knows its proper place and nothing irregular goes unpunished.

The Yogi and Commissar polarity is more or less the same as the Christ-Caesar dichotomy. Is it possible for these polar opposites to align and merge? I would say it’s not only possible but absolute necessary if we are to survive as a tool-using species – however, the only way such a magical fusion can arise from the general confusion is if the Yogi or The Christ is accorded supreme and ultimate power, to be equitably shared with all strata of life and consciousness. What characterizes a true Yogi or Christ is the conscious renunciation of wielding power over others - and loving compassion for each and every expression of life, even apparent enemies.

The Commissar or Caesar types are what we might call younger souls - brash, ego-driven and reckless, but charged with a pragmatic dynamism that can and must be harnessed to loftier goals than crass power-over-others world domination. In the Pentagonian Hawk or Umno Warlord we see a classic example of Little Boys with Dangerous Toys whose playground brawls will inevitably bring about massive carnage and ruin.

Fan at a socialist convention in Paris, 1976

The Commissar or Caesar personality is a jealous, vengeful, spiteful, insecure and malicious Old Testament god who becomes utterly anal and aggressive when confronted with the prospect of having to share power. You can observe this behavior pattern among the Greek gods who were known to devour their own children rather than accept the possibility that one day their offspring will grow strong and take over.

Indeed, you don’t have to go so far back in time – only 18 years ago, Mahathir Mohamad did exactly that to his hand-picked successor Anwar Ibrahim. As usually happens when demented old gods devour their own progeny, the outcome is a gigantic bellyache, followed by violent convulsions, a great deal of vomiting and angry rivers of diarrhea destroying all that we deem decent and honorable.

Well, as one who embodied everything we deem “decent and honorable,” Fan quickly became marked as an “enemy of the state” – and the state took pains to crush Fan’s political aspirations and thwart his dream of an enlightened and liberated Malaysia.

Fan & Noeleen in Salzburg, Austria, 1976

Fan experienced this faceless form of bureaucratic intimidation repeatedly but remained defiant and undaunted. In the 1960s he became active in the National Union of Teachers (NUT) and took over editorship of The Educator, the union’s bulletin. He was among the organizers of the 1967 nation-wide teachers’ strike demanding fairer wages and benefits for this very important profession. The Ministry of Education tried to break his spirit and browbeat him into silence by transferring him to increasingly remote towns and villages. This only served to nudge Fan into full-time politics.

He joined the Democratic Action Party (DAP) in 1968 and was soon appointed Acting Secretary-General and editor of the party organ, The Rocket. In 1969, Fan was elected MP for Kampar and in 1974, for Menglembu. The home ministry used the archaic Sedition Act against Fan for publishing a speech by the Penang DAP Chairman. Although he was never formally disqualified as a Member of Parliament, Fan was deprived of his MP’s allowance, salary and even his pension.

Dynamic young editor of The Educator, bulletin of the National Union of Teachers, in the mid-1960s

Finding himself out of work with time on his hands in 1975, Fan withdrew his meager savings and embarked on an epic land and sea journey from Port Klang to join his wife Noeleen Heyzer in Cambridge via India, Afghanistan, Iran and Yugoslavia. Three years later Fan and Noeleen’s beautiful twin daughters, Lilianne and Pauline, were born.

In Cameron Highlands with twin girls Lilianne & Pauline, 1985

I remember Fan Yew Teng as an affable, contemplative, pipe-smoking man forced into politics by his own passion for noble ideals, social justice and democratic principles; but more so by his extraordinary compassion for all living things.

Fan, Noeleen & their girls in Bangkok

With Pauline in early 2010

Every time Fan came to visit he would invariably have a recently published book in hand as an offering. In the mid-1980s I wasn’t really attuned to local politics and found his books and socialist ideology a mite strident in style – but what he wrote about were certainly cogent issues and he was indeed prolific, churning out four books between 1988 and 1990: If We Love This Country, Oppressors and Apologists, The UMNO Drama: Power Struggles in Malaysia, and The Rape of Law. I believe his last book was published in 1999 – Anwar Saga: Malaysia on Trial. I would really love to get hold of these books, especially the last two titles, and I’m sure they are well worth re-issuing.

Anil Netto wrote a simple but profoundly moving introduction to the December 2010 issue of Aliran, which featured Fan Yew Teng on its cover:

With Lilianne, early 2010

Alas, how often do we only recognize true greatness in people after they are gone forever. Maybe we are destined to do this over and over again because it is only in the vacuum of loss that we can step back and grasp the full impact of a life lived to the full. How true – and even more so – that is in the case of the late Fan Yew Teng. During his memorial in Brickfields on 5 January, speaker after speaker peeled away so many layers of Fan’s multi-faceted personality. Politicians tried to straitjacket him but Fan refused to conform and crossed many real and artificial boundaries. He didn’t need the usual trappings of wealth and status to become a towering Malaysian. Unionist, political activist, dissident writer with his trusty typewriter, global citizen – Fan was well ahead of his time. Long before the Internet shrunk the world into a global village, he was already a global citizen campaigning against war and oppression around the world. Long before our era of climate change, Fan had embraced simplicity so that his carbon footprint was probably minimal. In fact, the environmental component of Fan’s Social Democratic Party manifesto in the 1980s was much more substantive than those of other contemporary parties.

Dr Kua Kia Soong

In a way, Fan has much in common with another cherished friend, Kua Kia Soong. Both perfectly fit the role of clear-minded, articulate public intellectuals lured into politics because they believed real change was possible, but only through dedicated involvement in the public arena.

Fan and Kua both found themselves joining the DAP – and both had personal issues with the party leadership, perhaps because they were first and foremost scholars and humanists, rather than streetfighters and demagogues - and both can be described as fiercely independent-minded individuals who can only toe any party line so far and no further.

Well, Fan Yew Teng has left us to take his place in the pantheon of cult heroes where he can hobnob with the likes of Martin Luther King, Che Guevara, Bob Marley, Rabindranath Tagore, Kahlil Gibran, Bertrand Russell, Frantz Fanon, Leo Tolstoy, and Teilhard de Chardin.

However, former ISA detainee Kua Kia Soong is alive and well and still actively involved in public affairs through the human rights NGO, Suara Rakyat Malaysia (SUARAM) and through his books - May 13: Declassified Documents on the Malaysian Riots of 1969, Questioning Arms Spending in Malaysia: From Altantuya to Zikorsky, Patriots and Pretenders - to name but a few recent ones.

In years to come Malaysians will gain some appreciation of what Fan Yew Teng contributed
to a higher quality of political consciousness

Fan’s widow, Noeleen Heyzer, continues to work through the UN empowering women around the region, while their gorgeous daughters Lilianne and Pauline – now grown into full-fledged incarnations of noble intellect, compassion, ethics and aesthetics – are poised to influence and shape the new world of freedom and joy that’s being born even as the ugly and abusive old world order crumbles.

Lilianne & Pauline: Fan Yew Teng and Noeleen's brilliant and beautiful genetic legacy

[First posted 7 December 2011, reposted 7 December 2013, 13 May 2016 & 12 May 2017.

Fan Yew Teng family photos courtesy of Lilianne & Pauline]

Divide-and-Rule ~ It's All About the $$$ (another timely repost!)

Believe it or not, I sat through the entire 2-hour recording of this forum convened by Hindraf and the KL Chinese Assembly Hall Civil Rights Committee. It's taken us more than 42 years since 13 May 1969 to arrive at a point where the once-taboo topic of institutionalized racial inequality as embodied in Article 153 of the Malaysian Constitution can be publicly discussed. Most certainly an important step in the right direction!

Public Forum on Institutionalized Racism in Malaysia
by HINDRAF and KL Chinese Assembly Hall Civil Rights Committee

Forum venue: Selangor Chinese Assembly Hall, KL
Date: 17 January 2012 at 7.30 pm.

The speakers were:
1) Mr N. Ganesan - National Advisor to Hindraf

2) Dr Kua Kia Soong - Director of Suaram

3) Assoc. Prof. Dr Azmi Sharom - Law Lecturer and Activist

Chaired by: Dr Lim Teck Ghee - Director, Centre for Policy Initiatives

Malaysia is plagued by a subtle, pervasive and increasingly aggressive form of racism. What started as a defensive affirmative action program has now degeneratied into an aggressive form of institutionalized racism. This is sapping the potential of Malaysian society. The future on this trajectory is disastrous for all Malaysians. It will bring ruin to all of us.

The political, legal and administrative structures of our country - the anchors and sources of this institutionalization need to be fundamentally revamped. For this to happen, the public view of what is truly happening must become sharper. This is not an easy task - given the resources at hand for the beneficiaries of this racist system.

Public opinion must first be aligned with this developing reality, before any change can happen.

This video was presented by the Green Party of Malaysia.

[First posted 22 January 2012]

People of Sarawak, Free Yourself from the Clutches of The Beast!

Taib Mahmud, Chief Minister of Sarawak since 1981, owns rapacious corporations like Naim Cendera and Cahya Mata Sarawak. Taib refuses to answer questions thrown at him regarding his wealth. His long reign as "Robber Baron of Sarawak" has become synonymous with ecocide and ethnocide on a massive scale.

From the Malaysian History blog, 30 July 2007:

WINNING OVER SABAH AND SARAWAK

INITIALLY the leaders of Sabah (then British North Borneo) and Sarawak were opposed to Malaysia or at best gave it a lukewarm welcome after it was proposed by Tunku Abdul Rahman on May 27, 1961 at the Foreign Correspondents Association in Singapore.

“Let us become independent first and then we will decide whether to join Malaysia or not,” said Tan Sri Ong Kee Hui, the Kuching mayor and leader of the Sarawak United People’s Party (SUPP), formed in 1959.

Other prominent Sarawak leaders like Datu Abang Haji Openg – later the first local governor – and Abang Mustapha Abang Haji Abdul Gapor who are also members of the Council Negeri, considered the oldest legislature in the country, were unanimous in their opposition to the Tunku’s plan.

In Sabah, Tun Fuad Stephens (then Donald Stephens), a newspaper publisher, a member of the State Council and Huguan Siou (paramount leader) of the Kadazan/Dusun people, shared the same view as Ong. “We must not be seen as changing colonial masters,” was the response of the United National Kadazan Organisation (Unko), a party Fuad formed with Keningau

They contacted leaders from the other territories to see whether they should revive the idea of a federation of Borneo states of Sabah, Sarawak and Brunei instead.

Many of the leaders believed that Malaysia’s formation was not really meant to benefit the people of the two territories but more to provide a solution to solve the problems of Britain, Malaya and Singapore.

Britain needed to withdraw from the East but it could not just up and go without ensuring its former colonies’ survival. Malaya wanted to increase the number of bumiputras to ensure that their numbers were bigger than the others. Singapore, threatened by communists, wanted security.


The leaders opposed the plan because they feared their people would be at the mercy of the commercially superior Chinese whose numbers would increase with Malaysia, and they also feared that they would eventually be sidelined by the more politically sophisticated Malays.

They also worried that their culture and polity would be gradually eroded. Thus, discussions were held on such issues as religion, education and finance where early assurances on these matters were made. Most of the discussions centred on the Sabah All-party 20-point memorandum and the Sarawak 18-point memorandum containing matters the two territories wanted to safeguard. But mostly the focus was on religion, constitutional safeguards, immigration, special position of the indigenous people, language, education and fiscal arrangements.

But even while discussions were still at the early stages, more and more leaders and their people gradually began to voice support for the plan.

[Read the rest here.]



From Malaysiakini, 26 August 2008:

THE SARAWAK DAMS: Multiple follies
Kua Kia Soong | Aug 26, 08 12:53pm

The recent announcement that the Sarawak government intends to build 12 more dams in Sarawak apart from the ill-fated Bakun dam is cause for concern.

It is a cause for grave concern. Malaysian tax payers, Malaysian forests and Malaysian indigenous people will again be the main victims of this misconceived plan.

The stop starting since the damned project was first proposed in the seventies, the proposal and abandonment of the aluminium smelter, the upsizing and downsizing of the dam, the inclusion or exclusion of the undersea cable project are all symptomatic of a wanton disregard for planning. Let me remind Malaysians of the ludicrous inconsistencies of official policy on this damned project.


In 1980, the Bakun dam was proposed with a power generating capacity of 2400MW even though the projected energy needs for the whole of Sarawak was only 200MW in 1990.

The project was thus coupled with the proposal to build the world’s longest (650km) undersea cable to transmit electricity to the peninsula. An aluminium smelter at Bintulu was also proposed to take up the surplus energy.

In 1986, the project was abandoned because of the economic recession although then Prime Minister, Dr Mahathir Mohamad announced just before the UN Conference on Environment & Development in Rio that this was "proof of Malaysia’s commitment to the environment".

In 1993, with the upturn in the Malaysian economy, the government once again announced the revival of the Bakun hydro-electric plant project.


To cushion the expected protests, the then Energy Minister S. Samy Vellu gave Parliament a poetic description of a "series of cascading dams" and not one large dam as had been originally proposed.

Before long, it was announced that the Bakun dam would be a massive 205-metre high concrete face rockfill dam, one of the highest dams of its kind in the world and it would flood an area the size of Singapore Island.

The undersea cable was again part of the project. There was also a plan for an aluminium plant, a pulp and paper plant, the world’s biggest steel plant and a high-tension and high-voltage wire industry.

Then in 1997, with the onset of the Asian financial crisis, the Bakun project was put on hold for the second time. But the scandal was, while the anthropologists in all Malaysian universities were sound asleep, the government proceeded to remove 10,000 indigenous people made up of fifteen different ethnic groups from their ancestral lands.


All this happened while the project was on hold and Malaysians shouted "Malaysia Boleh!"

In 1999, after the economy had recovered, the government again announced that the project would be resumed, albeit on a smaller scale of 500MW capacity.

Before long in 2001, the 2400MW scale was once again proposed although the submarine cable had been shelved. Today, we read reports about the government and companies still contemplating this hare-brained scheme which is now estimated to cost a whopping RM21 billion!

Not only that, we now hear that 12 more hydroelectric dams will be generating a total capacity of 7000MW by 2020 – an increase of 600 percent from its current capacity!

Who pays?

Ultimately it will be the Malaysian consumers who pay for this expensive figment of the chief minister’s wild imagination. Enough tax payers’ money has been wasted - Sarawak Hidro has already spent some RM1.5 billion on the project.

The human cost has been immeasurable - 10,000 indigenous people have been removed from their ancestral lands in 1998 even while the project had been shelved.

If the prime minister really wants to know the state of the Malaysian energy industry, he should ask for independent audits on every power station in the country. These should preferably be done by reputable international audit authorities from outside Malaysia.

We are told that TNB is now selling off property, power stations are not working at full capacity and that the electricity industry is hugely indebted.

Right now, the country is being fed conflicting reports about energy demand. There is supposed to be a 43 percent oversupply of electricity capacity in peninsula Malaysia.

Experienced Bakun dam watchers will tell you such conflicting and mutually contradictory assertions have been used by dam proponents to justify every flip flop of this misconceived project.

Apart from the economic cost and the wastage, how are investors supposed to plan for the long-term and medium term? What is the long-term plan for Bakun? Can Bakun compete with the rest of the world or for that matter, Indonesia?


Aluminium smelters to take up the bulk of Bakun electricity have been mentioned ever since the conception of the Bakun dam project because they are such voracious consumers of energy.

Even so, has there ever been any proper assessment of the market viability of such a project with the cheaper operating costs in China?

Does it matter that the co-owner of one of the smelters is none other than Cahya Mata Sarawak (CMS) Bhd Group that is controlled by Chief Minister Taib Mahmud’s family business interest?

Scandalous flaws in planning

Clearly, Bakun energy and Sarawak’s tinpot governance do not inspire confidence in investors. First it was Alcoa, and then Rio Tinto also had second thoughts about investing in Sarawak.

Concerned NGOs have all along called for the abandonment of this monstrous Bakun dam project because it is economically ill-conceived, socially disruptive and environmentally disastrous.

The environmental destruction is evident many miles downstream since the whole Bakun area has been logged by those who have already been paid by Sarawak Hidro.

The social atrophy among the 10,000 displaced indigenous people at the Sungei Asap resettlement scheme remains the wicked testimony of the Mahathir-Taib era. The empty promises and damned lives of the displaced people as forewarned by the concerned NGOs in 1999 have now been played out.

The economic viability of the Bakun dam project has been in doubt from the beginning and the new scheme to build 12 more dams merely represents multiple follies and a scandalous flaw in planning.

DR KUA KIA SOONG is director of Suaram.

[First posted 6 September 2008]

The Patriot Game ~ by Kua Kia Soong

Come all you young rebels
And list while I sing
For love of one's country is a terrible thing
It banishes fear with the speed of a flame
And makes us all part of the patriot game.

These plaintive yet stirring lines from an old Irish republican song also inspired Bob Dylan's "With God on our side." As we hear of more Malaysians emigrating (300,000 in the last eighteen months?) and their reasons for doing so, allow me to write about my own part in the patriot game.

When I was a young rebel in the Seventies, I received the news that my brother-in-law and eldest sister were emigrating to Australia with pious indignation. I felt that despite the injustices, Malaysians should stay and fight for our rights while helping to build the country.

It was easy for me to say as a propertyless and angry young man. But could I honestly feel how my brother-in-law felt as a Professor of Medicine in the University of Malaya , watching the compromises to academic excellence in the name of bumiputeraism and suffering the indignity of being systematically bypassed in his career advancement? His warning of the possible de-recognition of MU's MBBS degree by the British Medical Council was not heeded and this became a reality in the Eighties. The rest is history...

Today, I am not as sanguine as I was in my youth except to feel a sadness that talented Malaysians are forced to leave the land where they were born in order to pursue their careers in other countries.

Has the government cared to record how many Malaysian talents have been lost to other countries since 1969 and how much this translates into economic terms?


In my family alone, our country has lost not only a Professor of Radiology (my brother-in-law), but also a Professor of Psychological Medicine (my brother at NUS). His daughter is an A&E specialist in Singapore and we have three other psychiatrists abroad (a cousin in Ottawa, my nephew in Newcastle and another cousin in Singapore).

Two other young cousins are doctors in Singapore, while two more nieces have just graduated as doctors from Imperial College. I doubt they will be coming to practice in Malaysia . Our own daughter will be graduating as a doctor next year and we have to keep our fingers crossed whether she will return to practice here.

A colleague of mine in the Eighties had four children who were all accomplished academics at MIT, UCLA, Oxford and Cambridge. In the housing estate we live in, practically every household has children studying or working abroad and some of them have truly illustrious careers, all lost to other countries. Apart from our medical professionals, many talented professionals in LLN, JKR, KTM, RRI have been forced to seek employment overseas ever since the "bumiputera policy" came into being.

Barry Wain has counted the glaring costs of Mahathir's rule. He puts it at RM100 billion! Maybe someone should count the collateral damage of the bumiputera policy since 1969.

Has any UMNO leader expressed regret or remorse over this brain drain? No! These "drained brains" have been greeted with "good riddance" at UMNO general assemblies through the years since all the Umnoputras are more concerned about the dubious figures proclaiming a higher proportion of bumiputera representation in the professions.

No doubt the recent torching of churches has sickened many Malaysians and will prompt more to emigrate.

Our so-called "nation builders" and "outside-the-box" thinkers seem incapable of producing a "win-win" situation that can prevent this brain drain while building national unity. Wasn't it Robert Frost who said "Originality and initiative are what I ask for my country"?


My First Stirrings of Patriotism

Patriotism is indeed a "terrible" thing - when the Irish use the adjective "terrible" they mean something equivalent to "awesome" rather than "contemptible."

The pogrom of May 13, 1969 had left me and many other Malaysians with a nasty taste. I had just completed my Higher School Certificate (A levels). Soon after, I saved up enough to buy a ticket to London and borrowed a month's living expences from my sister.

During those early years of sojourn in London, my first instinctive "patriotic" feelings were kindled whenever I met British people who would ask me where I was from. After I had told them I was from Malaysia, they would invariably add: "I suppose you won't be going back there no more then?"

Without a moment's hesitation and recognizing the pre-supposition behind that statement, I always replied: "Yes, I am. I'm certainly going back to my country when I've finished my studies!"

I've kept true to that undertaking I made to myself even though these British people I met were just strangers in the pub or in the street. That's not just patriotism, that's integrity to myself.

A Choice in the Seventies

Then when I was at university in 1975, I suddenly got a letter from the British Home Office asking me to send them my passport since they suspected that my leave of stay in the UK had expired. Weeks later, I got my passport back with a letter saying:

I am writing to say that the time limit and conditions attached to your leave to enter the United Kingdom have been removed. You are now free to remain permanently in the United Kingdom. You do not require permission from a Government Department to take or change employment in England , Wales or Scotland and you may engage in business or a profession (The Under Secretary of State, 6 March 1975).

Until today, some people I meet still ask if I'll be emigrating to the UK since my kids are studying in the UK and I have a British wife. My answer is always: "If I had wanted to emigrate, I would have done so in the Seventies!"

When I finally finished my PhD, I returned to "build my homeland" in the early Eighties. I could have stayed and enjoyed a good bourgeois existence in Britain enjoying the English countryside, good ale and the arts but my social conscience would have got the better of me ere too long...


Back in Malaysia at the end of 1982, apart from working I wrote profusely in response to many issues confronting our society during that time. It was a period when the press was relatively freer and while it was "owned by the MCA," it was "edited by the MIC for the DAP", as we used to say. It turned out to be a false spring. The Eighties were the heyday of activism in the country which culminated in the "Operation Lalang" crackdown. The BN government showed its appreciation of my nation building efforts by arresting and detaining me without trial during 'Operation Lalang' in October 1987.

ISA "Rehabilitation"

Detention without trial under the ISA is a good test of one's patriotism. During the first sixty days of solitary confinement when the Special Branch was trying to "rehabilitate" me, I remember they had a three-pronged approach to my rehabilitation programme (sic), viz.:

(i) Why don't you emigrate since you have a British wife rather than "cause trouble" here?

(ii) Why don't you join the Barisan Nasional instead of always siding with the Opposition?

(iii) Why can't you be like Khoo Khay Kim instead of speaking for those Chinese educationists?

To the first question, I told them I was a Malaysian who had come home to serve the country. To the second, I said it was against my principles to join racist political parties. To the third, I said, "You've already got one Khoo Khay Kim, why do you want another one?"

During those weeks of harrowing interrogation, they also wanted to know about my activities when I was in the UK . At one stage, they asked me if I had ever written to the British press. When I couldn't recall what they were getting at, they produced a news cutting of an article I had written to The Guardian in the Seventies. It was a critique of an article in the paper by the famous writer Anthony Burgess in which he had written patronisingly about the old colonial stereotypes of Malaysian society.

"There," I pointed out, "there you have perfect evidence of my multi-ethnic perspective and my defence of our country, the opposite of what you are making me out to be!"

Of course they knew what I was made of but still, they sent me to Kamunting Rehabilitation Camp on a two-year detention order for being "a threat to national security."

At Kamunting, the so-called "rehabilitation" programme included a weekly "assembly" during which we were supposed to sing the national anthem as if we were back at school and to make a pledge (Ikrar) of allegiance to the king, country and the Rukunegara. Many of us "hardcore" did not participate in this vacuous token of "patriotism." It brought home the scathing quote by Samuel Johnson that, "Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel."

The American humorist Kin Hubbard adds: "The less a politician amounts to, the more he loves the flag."

While in detention, my wife and I made the decision to change our six-year-old son's British passport to a Malaysian one since otherwise, he would have to leave the country with his mother every two months to have it stamped. When some of my Camp inmates heard about this they exclaimed:

"What! You mad ah? As soon as we're released, we'll be leaving this country! You crazy lah, giving up his British passport for a Malaysian one!"

Several of these Operation Lalang jail birds have flown and good luck to them. Patriotism is not something that you can foist on people. People make choices according to what they have experienced, especially in today's globalised world. They certainly love the country where they were born and grew up but alas, the country does not seem to love them in return but instead robbed them of their precious freedom.

Would you defend your country with your life?

In recent years, there has been plenty of breast beating among the Umnoputras, with flag waving, keris kissing and singing of patriotic songs. But how many of these Umnoputras can proudly stand up and say that they patriotically took part in the liberation war against the British colonialists and the Japanese fascists?

Hardly any!

Yet, how many Malayan patriots have given their lives in these two campaigns? Have they ever been honoured by the country they defended? They were honoured by the Allies for their valour during the anti-Japanese resistance after the Second World War in London . Have our historians exposed those who collaborated with the Japanese fascists during the Second World War - the "quislings who sold out the patriot game?"

At least one man, Chin Peng can claim that he achieved this and today he merely wants the opportunity to visit his homeland that he defended against British colonialism and Japanese fascism but he is unable to do this! If he were an Irish republican, Chin Peng might be inspired to sing this other republican song I have adapted:

Show me the man

Where is the man who does not love
The land where he was born
Who does not speak of it with pride
No matter how forlorn I only know that I love mine
And long again to see Oppression banished from our land
And ( Malaysia ) truly free!
Let friends all turn against me
Let foes say what they will
For my heart is in my country
And I love our people still
There is not a (Malaysian) today
Who'd ever wish to roam
Into a foreign land to toil
If he could stay at home
So give to us our liberty
Let our banners be unfurled
Then (Malaysians) will prove to be
A credit to the world!

11 January 2011

[Kua Kia Soong and I come from the same small town, Batu Pahat. In fact, we sat next to each other right from primary through secondary school. I saw Kua shortly after his release from Kamunting and was greatly heartened to see the saintly glow around him. He had become more introspective - less cocky, more of a Gandhi-like figure. Since then Kua has worked tirelessly and consistently for environmental and human rights causes and for his community. He has written several books on issues of massive importance, the latest being a study of gross abuses of the defence budget, especially under Najib Razak's tenure. I am indeed proud to call Kua Kia Soong my friend.]