Zaman Khan defends the need for security laws to preserve racial harmony. He also shares his views on the Bersih 2.0 rally.
KUALA LUMPUR: Critics dismiss them as draconian legislation and want them repealed. The laws, which provide for detention without trial, earned notoriety when invoked against political opponents and dissidents. But Zaman Khan warns that blood will flow in their absence.
More than the Emergency Ordinance (EO), the former criminal investigations director believes that the Internal Security Act (ISA) was still needed to preserve racial harmony.
“Must you see killing on the streets before you recognise their purpose? I lived through racial riots hence why I say we need them,” he said, while acknowleding the “occasional abuse” of these laws.
In defending the police’s action to detain six Parti Sosialis Malaysia (PSM) members under the EO prior to the July 9 Bersih 2.0 rally, Zaman told FMT in an exclusive interview that it was necessary because the “climate was not so nice at the time”.
Asked if he would have done the same, the former CID boss said it would be unfair to answer that question as he was not privy to the details.
Nevertheless, he added: “In all honesty, you and I would not exist today if not for the EO and ISA. The country would have been torn apart.”
Zaman had served under former premier Dr Mahathir Mohamad, known for the biggest ISA dragnet which saw more than 100 people, including opposition leaders and activists, being detained in 1987.
Handling of Bersih 2.0 rally
Meanwhile, the 69-year-old former police officer also believes that the men in blue acted according to procedure in dealing with the Bersih 2.0 rally despite the accusation of excessive force used.
“I dealt with many demonstrations back in my days and my method of crowd dispersal was no different from that used during Bersih,” he said.
“When dealing with illegal demonstrations, we are trained to use the principle of minimum force which consitutes the presence of police in full gear. If the protesters dispersed at this point, the tear gas would be unnecessary. And from the footage I saw, the tear gas was shot upwards and not at the crowd. We were never trained to shoot directly at protesters.
“We were also trained to maintain a distance of at least 100 metres from the crowd and from what I saw, the police clearly abided by this rule,” he added.
Aware that his opinion was sharply incongruent with that of the public’s, Zaman clarified that it was solely based on the footage that he had viewed.
“There could be other footage, I don’t know, but this is what I have seen. I am not trying to defend the police. I am just trying to explain what we were trained to do. If this rally took place during my time, there wouldn’t be a thing that I would have done differently,” he said.
When queried on the widely broadcasted footage of police brutality, he replied, without missing a beat, “It is sensationalism by the foreign and online media.”
“For instance, every arrest involves a struggle between police and a protester. Is that brutality?
“I have witnessed demonstrations abroad where the police use horses and dogs to disperse protesters. Do the foreign and local media report the full picture? Not always,” he said.
‘Police belong to the people’
Zaman then attempted to crush the popular moniker of “Polis Raja Di Malaysia” by empahsising that the force belonged to the people and not the other way around.
“The police don’t belong to the government either. When it comes to national security, the police issue orders to the government, and not take orders from it.
“The force has better, more educated personnel now but at the same time the people are also more aware of their rights and are holding the police up to higher expectations.
“But I want to stress that the police belong to the community and if you don’t support them, then who can you trust?” he asked.
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