Tomorrow, Feb 13, will be four years since pastor Raymond Koh, the founder of the NGO called Komuniti Harapan, was abducted in broad daylight, on a busy road in Petaling Jaya.
The kidnapping was shocking in itself, but equally maddening is that in the run-up to the fourth anniversary of his abduction, many Malaysians appear to be unaware that such an audacious abduction had taken place.
Some Malaysians told me that the abduction had nothing to do with them. This is where they are wrong. The abduction has everything to do with them.
Koh's disappearance is a reflection of what is happening in Malaysia. The nation has degenerated into a tangled web of controversy, denials, cover-ups, incompetence and the determination of the state to repress its own citizens.
The questions some Malaysians posed ranged from, "Who is he?", "He must have done something wrong", "I didn't read about him in the Malay papers" to "I don't keep up with the news because there are more interesting articles about food".
Susanna Liew, Koh's wife, has not received any updates on the investigation into her husband's disappearance. She is not alone.
Cast your mind back to February 2017 and try and recall that soon after Koh's disappearance, we read that three other people had been declared missing.
They were pastor Joshua Hilmy and his Indonesian wife, Ruth, and Amri Che Mat, a social activist from Perlis. They disappeared within four months of one another.
Delving into their backgrounds will reveal the common thread that links these four disappearances. It is religion.
Koh and Liew founded Komuniti Harapan, an NGO which helped the poor, many of whom had HIV or Aids. Others were the homeless and single mothers. Malays formed a significant proportion of the people he helped. The authorities had been trying to pin a charge, of proselytising Malays, on Koh.
Joshua was a Malay who converted to Christianity and together with his wife Ruth, had received threatening phone calls and emails, including one allegedly from a politician, warning them to leave the country. They went missing before they were scheduled to leave. Joshua had allegedly been accused of converting Malays to Christianity.
Amri founded an NGO called Perlis Hope, which gave food and shelter to single mothers and the poor. He was accused of using his NGO as a front for Shiite activities and a year before he disappeared in the dead of night, he was visited by Perlis mufti Mohd Asri Zainul Abidin, and other religious officials. They accused him of Shiite preachings.
Article 11 of the Federal Constitution protects the right of the individual to freedom of religion, and the Al-Baqarah verse 256 in the Quran states: "There is no compulsion in religion."
Faith is an intensely personal issue and each person should be allowed to find their own path in life. In Malaysia, the state failed to uphold the law, and the correct practice of the religion, despite what the Constitution and the Quran say.
The state has also failed to protect its own citizens. On the day Koh was abducted, Kim Jong Nam, the half brother of Korean supreme leader Kim Jong Un, was assassinated at KLIA2. Two days later, his murderers were caught. A detailed investigation showed other leads.
Contrast the run-around given to Liew by the police. She was questioned for five hours when she lodged a report about her husband's disappearance. The police were initially sceptical about the video footage from a private house, which showed his abduction. What happened to the witness, seen reversing at speed?
What happened to the closed-circuit television (CCTV) footage from two petrol stations up the road, or the CCTV from intersections along this busy highway? The convoy of vehicles cannot have vanished into thin air.
Despite our police and special branch allegedly being among the best in the world, the case appears to have stalled. The public is not at fault for thinking that the police are deliberately dragging their feet.
The disappearance of a tourist, 15-year-old French-Irish Nora Anne Quoirin, in August 2019, also showed the manpower and resources being poured into the search for the missing teenager. Tracker dogs, army units, helicopters, police roadblocks, and unofficially, bomoh (witch doctor), were used in the search. Did Koh receive any such attention?
Kindergarten teacher M Indira Gandhi from Ipoh has not seen her daughter for 12 years, since she was kidnapped as a baby by her convert father.
Former inspector-general of police (IGP) Khalid Abu Bakar said he was conflicted by the Syariah Court order and the Civil Court judgement for him to find Indira's daughter and return the child to her mother.
When both sets of laws contradict one another, it is individuals like Indira who suffer. Khalid and a succession of IGPs have forsaken their oath to serve and protect the public.
In the abduction of these four people, the muddy path will lead us to Putrajaya, where we will find that the two "Rs" (race and religion) are used to undermine our rights and create a culture of fear in Malaysia.
Many hypocritical Malay leaders hide behind the cloak of religion to serve themselves. They wield an invisible stick to control the population, both Muslim and non-Muslim.
Education and the creation of awareness will help. Teach our children that there is nothing to fear from people of another race or faith. Tell them that the state has no right to deny the rakyat the right to life, to freedom of expression, or freedom of religion, just because some politicians may disagree with it.
Maintain pressure on the authorities to resume the search. Keep this story alive until they are found. If we keep quiet, we may end up like Argentina, Sri Lanka or Iraq.
MARIAM MOKHTAR is a defender of the truth, the admiral-general of the Green Bean Army and president of the Perak Liberation Organisation (PLO). Blog, Twitter. - Mkini
The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of MMKtT.
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