A life less ordinary

Over the past few weeks, the lives of two Malaysians were thrust into the spotlight. They did not ask to be special but they were born in a country where sometimes you simply get to be special without having a choice.

When I was seven, I went to school, came home, played with my micro-machines, watched some Smurfs and went to bed.

Quite a stark contrast to that of the daughter of the first Malaysian in the spotlight – a father by the name of Tan Cheow Hong.

His daughter went to school in Penang on 8 November 2010 like it was any other ordinary day. But it was not.

She was removed from school early by her mother (assisted the police and religious officials) and was then brought to Selangor. On 9 November, she was taken to the Selangor Religious Department and converted into Islam by her mother (who had earlier already converted) without the consent or knowledge of her father.

Her mother, being a new Muslim, had managed to do all this by going to the syariah court and filing for divorce before obtaining an order for custody over the child.

We have seen this before. Time and time again, conversion into Islam is used by one parent against the other to gain custody and control over the children of the marriage.

Make no mistake. Every step taken by the mother in this case was calculated from the time she embraced Islam in August last year and executed three months later with cool precision.

The father is now challenging the syariah custody order at the High Court of Penang in an attempt to recover his children. He has already lost the first round when the High Court awarded temporary custody to the mother pending the determination of the matter.

The High Court may of course decide to order custody of the child to be given to him at the end of the case. But this is unlikely given that the judge, after interviewing the child for less than an hour for purposes of determining interim custody, had decided that the child loves the mother more.

What the High Court will not do is to strike down the unilateral conversion of the child despite the fact that it contravenes Article 12 (4) of the Federal Constitution and Article 18 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which has been ratified by Malaysia without reservation.

Article 12 (4) of the Federal Constitution states that “the religion of a person under the age of eighteen years shall be decided by his parent or guardian”. In the Federal Constitution, words in the singular include the plural and vice versa.

Article 18 of the Convention on the Rights of Children decrees that “States Parties shall use their best efforts to ensure recognition of the principle that both parents have common responsibilities for the upbringing and development of the child. Parents or, as the case may be, legal guardians, have the primary responsibility for the upbringing and development of the child. The best interests of the child will be their basic concern”.

In the Tan Cheow Hong case, the father’s right to decide the religion of his child had been snatched away, probably never to be recovered because no court or Muslim judge in this country would be willing to strike down a conversion into Islam for both political and personal reasons unless Parliament enacts a law that in no uncertain terms, makes such unilateral conversions unlawful.

Until that happens, Malaysians will have to brace themselves for more of the same – religion being used as a tool to trump the rights of another in the cruelest of fashions.

The other Malaysian in the spotlight is the late Teoh Beng Hock.

Watching from above, he would have heard the coroner declare a “neither a suicide nor a homicide” verdict and wonder if he even died in the first place.

He would have also heard the Prime Minister then announce the setting-up of a Royal Commission with the narrowest of scopes that is to look into investigation procedures of the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC).
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Teoh would of course remember the fact that two other royal commissions – one concerning the police and the other lawyer V.K Lingam – amounted to squat.

The main recommendation made by the Royal Commission to Enhance the Operation and Management of the Royal Malaysia Police was that there be established an Independent Police Complaints and Misconduct Commission (IPCMC) aimed at dealing with complaints regarding the police and seeking to improve the professionalism of the force and to ensure that doctrines, laws, rules and procedures are observed and implemented by the police.

Citizens are still dying in police custody and being shot in the streets by the police but there is no sign of an IPCMC.

The Royal Commission on the V.K. Lingam video clip found that the clip was authentic and that Lingam was actively involved in the appointment of Ahmad Fairuz as president of the Court of Appeal, with the possible aim of his further appointment as the Chief Justice.

Mr Lingam still practices law today.

The amazing thing about the Tan Cheow Hong and Teoh Beng Hock cases is that it is nothing new. It is just a repetition of similar incidents that have happened in the past.

Before Tan Cheow Hong, it was two mothers named Shamala and Indira Ghandi who went through a similar ordeal when their husbands converted into Islam and proceeded to convert the children.

Before Teoh Beng Hock, there was, for example, A. Kugan who was murdered in police custody.

All these people were ordinary citizens whose lives were made less ordinary by the fact that those that govern the country prefer to sweep things under the carpet and rule in a piece-meal, fire-fighting kind of way.

The law has to be amended to make unilateral conversions unlawful. An independent complaints commission has to be set up to oversee the conduct of all enforcement agencies.

Until then, we would just have to keep our fingers crossed and hope that the next time some kid gets snatched from one parent and converted in secret or the next time some person gets killed in the custody of enforcement agencies, we remain ordinary and merely read about it. - Malaysia Chronicle