FAC News - Tuesday, August 27, 2002 2:35 PM

All in the Game

PROLOGUE

When you oppose the government in most parts of Asia - or in many other countries around the world for that matter - you are always braced for arrest. In Malaysia, this is even more so considering the government has an extremely potent weapon at its disposal - the now world-famous Internal Security Act or ISA.

However, you can never fully prepare yourself for arrest, especially when arrested under the ISA. Under the ISA, you are neither formally charged nor brought before a judge. You are denied legal counsel as well as family visits. You are kept in solitary confinement and your only “companions” are your interrogators.

You are totally cut off from the world and the only “glimmer” in your life is your interrogation sessions, which help interrupt the boredom of living in a windowless concrete box. You soon lose track of time and, after awhile, it no longer matters what day it is. It eventually comes to a point that you look forward to your interrogation sessions just to be “in contact” with humans again – and, when they “take the day of”, you restlessly count the hours till your next session.

Under the ISA, you are arrested not because they have any evidence that you committed a crime, but because you are viewed as harbouring intentions to commit a crime. Your interrogators determine your “crimes” and denial is futile as this will be interpreted as “lack of cooperation” - and lack of cooperation only ensures you will never see freedom for a long time to come.

Eventually you are pronounced “guilty”, not by the court, but by your interrogators. You have no legal recourse or any opportunity to defend yourself. It is your word against that of your interrogators. Your interrogators are the prosecutor, judge and jury all rolled into one.

If you confess and repent, you are free to go. If you persist and resist, you are sent for “rehabilitation”. The choice is yours, but you will have to live with your decision for the rest of your life - and you will hate yourself till the end of time if you succumb and “take the easy way out”.

Very few stories spring forth from those eventually released from detention, as most would rather put the entire unpleasant episode behind them. It is a bitter experience best forgotten and, the more you think or talk about it, the harder it is to forget the trauma you have been subjected to.

Many years down the road and a few eventually find the courage to speak up. Some even go so far as to put pen to paper and write their memoirs about life under ISA detention. But, so far, never has any ISA detainee told all while still under detention.

Times have changed. People's perspective of the ISA too has changed. Now, Malaysians oppose the ISA with gusto like never before.

The ISA is no longer taken as a matter of fact, or regarded as a necessity for the peace and security of this nation. People no longer accept the argument that they sleep better in their beds at night because Malaysia practices laws such as the ISA. The people look at the ISA as a relic of the past - something that should be buried in the past. People, now, despise and oppose the ISA.

This resistance is not confined to those “on the outside” or to families and friends of those detained. Those under detention too, knowing that the world outside is with them, have put up a fight, giving a whole new meaning to the word “resistance”.

In the past, those detained under the ISA would accept their fate and bide their time for when they would eventually be free men or women again. They would try to reform and show they are worthy to be restored to society. They would attempt to turn over a new leaf just to be free from their captors.

But this is no longer so. Today, the ISA detainees continue their fight from behind the barbed wire fence of the detention camp. They know such “misbehavior” would ensure an extended stay at the camp. They know the risks, but they take the lumps with whatever little gains they may benefit from their resistance.

Today, six people still remain under detention from the ten who were arrested in April 2001. If not for judicial intervention, the number still under detention would probably total eight. But the court declared the detention of two as illegal and they were allowed to walk free.

Two, out of the ten initially arrested, is but a minor gain, and miniscule if weighed against the estimated 6,000 or 10,000  (a figure which, until today, can never be truly verified) so far arrested since the law came into being soon after independence. But they were freed by law and, in the process, the system declared their arrest illegal, the reason for their arrest suspect, and that the law itself should be reviewed by Parliament.

Two walking free may be a small step for justice, but a giant leap for the resistance movement popularly known as Reformasi. It has opened the eyes of Malaysians and awoken them to the realization that resistance is not futile but feasible. Knowing that justice is not blind has brought courage into the hearts of dissenters. They now know they are not outside the law by opposing the ISA when such a law is unjust - and the court has testified so.

From behind the barbed wire fence of the Kamunting detention camp, the six ISA detainees - alleged extremists who are a threat to the security of this nation - have fired their shots. Their four comrades already free - but who expect, anytime, to again become a “guest” of the state - have joined hands with them. Together - through signed Affidavits - the ten have told the story of what goes on behind those locked doors.

The ten were arrested, and six continue to be detained, because they are extremists, so the official line goes. They had conspired to bring in guns and bombs to do mischief were the testimony of the powers-that-be. They had planned to physically resist the police in street demonstrations screamed the newspaper headlines. But that was not what they were interrogated about says the Affidavits of the ten.

For the first time, Malaysians are being told what interrogation under the ISA is like. Are ISA detainees physically tortured? Not any more, but they are subjected to mental stress.

Were they asked about guns and bombs? No, but they did talk, at great length, about sex.

Were the questions related to national security? No, the interrogators wanted to know about the bedroom trysts of the opposition leaders.

The detainees say their interrogation had nothing to do with the crimes they were accused of, and they have all signed sworn testimonies attesting to this. If the declarations made in their Affidavits are false, the detainees can remain in jail for a long, long time. They signed their Affidavits because it is the truth and they have nothing to fear because of it.

This book will reveal all that went on those two months the detainees were subjected to daily interrogation for hours on end.