Keruah Usit
Fear is a natural, often healthy, emotion. Students of the mind, since the time of Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud, have postulated that the wild driving force of fear can be tamed and channelled, if ruled by a healthy self-esteem and the power of intellect.
Fear can prevent us from being foolhardy, and can also strengthen our resolve.
“With regard to the feelings of fear and confidence, courage is the mean,” Greek philosopher Aristotle said some 2,300 years ago.
Aristotle implied that fear resides in all of us, but argued we must seek courage as a middle ground between terror and recklessness.
Fear has played a starring role in our political theatre in Malaysia.
We are afraid of the ‘other’ ethnic groups or religions. We recoil before the spectre of the racial killings of May 13, 1969, although the Bersih 2.0 rally has helped exorcise most of those demons.
We fear losing our identities or political voice, as Malays, Chinese or others. We are intimidated by the Internal Security Act (ISA), and now, the Emergency Ordinance (EO). We are wary of a change of government. We fear everything, except fear itself.
I pay tribute to some Malaysians around me, perhaps unable to fully conquer fear, but willing to stand up rather than kneel. They seek courage in quite ordinary situations.
Among such ordinary Malaysians are the six Parti Sosialis Malaysia (PSM) members arrested on June 30, then detained without trial under the EO since July 2.
They are modest people, several of them born to families of rubber tappers or estate labourers.
“Sugu (M Sukumaran) taps rubber part of the week on a small family plot, and earns extra money doing wiring,” wrote Rani Rasiah, a PSM central committee member. Rani is married to Dr Jeyakumar Devaraj, the MP for Sungai Siput and one of the six prisoners of conscience.
“The (PSM 6) have been deprived of all creature comforts… the lights are on in the cells day and night and one-way mirrors ensure there is no privacy. Yet the six – Saras, Letchu, Chon Kai, Babu,
Sugu and Kumar – are not complaining bitterly about their physical circumstances. This is not surprising as in their day-to-day lives, they have chosen to lead simple lives,” she pointed out on July 20.
Rani said the PSM 6 had dropped out of the rat race to dedicate themselves to providing support, and a voice, to the least privileged in our society.
As Mahatma Gandhi said, it takes more courage to take a blow than to give one.
An ordinary show of courage
Courage can be a guiding light in the most mundane trades or professions.
Sarawakian and Sabahan judges appear to be more independent of the executive than their peers in the peninsula. Richard Malanjum, David Wong, Linton Albert and Ian Chin have all made pivotal judgments in the High Court of Sabah and Sarawak, in favour of native land rights and against the state governments.
These judgments have defied the will of entrenched logging and plantation lobbies, with powerful patrons in government.
Yet these judges do not necessarily see their decisions as courageous. They may simply consider them as sound, according to the established law, our constitution, the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and the law of natural justice.
They seem to have adjudicated on straightforward legal principles, and pride in the judiciary.
Prominent human rights lawyers Ambiga Sreenevasan (left), Latheefa Koya, N Surendran, Edmund Bon and others, and present Bar Council president Lim Chee Wee, may well see themselves less as courageous crime-busters, than as lawyers acting out of professional duty.
In other words, some judges and lawyers are seen as courageous in Malaysia, for simply doing what they ought to do – uphold the letter of the law.
Somewhat unusually, doctors too spoke out against tear gas sprayed into the Tung Shin Hospital during the July 9 Bersih 2.0 rally.
These doctors include newly-installed Malaysian Medical Association (MMA) president Dr Mary Cardosa.
Doctors in Perak, and from the MMA, have also called for Jeyakumar and the other five PSM prisoners of conscience to befreed from detention without trial.
The doctors may have felt they were only doing what was expected of them. Doctors have, after all, a professional responsibility to condemn torture or abuse by the police, by the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) or by other national institutions.
News teams at Malaysiakini, Merdeka Review and other independent news portals, as well as Utusan Malaysia dissidentslike Hata Wahari, have also tried to perform their professional duties.
They report and comment on newsworthy events, without interference by those in political power. This basic journalistic responsibility requires real courage in Malaysia.
Overcoming fear during Bersih
The tens of thousands of demonstrators marching on the streets during Bersih 2.0 displayed courage too, as has been well documented in Internet news portals and the social media.
But the marchers were doing nothing more radical than reclaiming an internationally recognised democratic norm. They were exercising their liberty to protest publicly, to express their political will and to attempt to improve the crippled electoral system.
In any mature democracy, such a protests would be routine, and unremarkable. But thanks to the near-hysterical reaction of the government and the police, walking on the streets on July 9 became an act of moral courage.
Baharuddin Ahmad (right) lost his lifeduring the rally that day.
He was an ordinary urban Malay, a retired Armed Forces serviceman, working as a taxi driver to make ends meet, trying to shelter his family from rising prices.
He showed quiet courage in supporting his daughter through medical school.
He participated in the Bersih 2.0 rally because he wanted, like many ordinary Malaysians, a level playing field for elections. His death remains shrouded in doubt.
Another ordinary Malaysian, Teoh Beng Hock died at the age of 30, some four years above the average age of our population. He had an average, middle-income job.
Teoh (left) showed great courage. He was interrogated through the night by the MACC, a sign that he had resisted the MACC officers’ desperate attempts to extract a confession from him.
His death was a tribute to his refusal to provide false testimony against his party colleagues.
Following his shocking death, Teoh’s family, also ordinary people, displayed tremendous resolve, bravely fighting threats, lies and empty promises, in their attempt to find the truth.
They feel betrayed by the implausible, and unsupported, conclusions of suicide under stress, ruled by the royal commission of inquiry as the cause of Teoh’s death under MACC custody.
Courageous, ordinary Malaysians are all around us. If Malaysians do merely what is expected of us, the results may be startling.
KERUAH USIT is a human rights activist – ‘anak Sarawak, bangsa Malaysia‘. This weekly column is an effort to provide a voice for marginalised Malaysians. Keruah Usit can be contacted atkeruah_usit@yahoo.com
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