Wang Kelian - it's as bad as you suspect

"The fight for justice against corruption is never easy. It never has been and never will be. It exacts a toll on our selves, our families, our friends and especially our children. In the end, I believe, as in my case, the price we pay is well worth holding on to our dignity." 

- Frank Serpico

Lost in the news cycle of the ongoing Najib Abdul Razak corruption trial is the heart of darkness which is the Wang Kelian Royal Commission of Inquiry (RCI). To be honest I have no idea how this RCI will turn out or if like previous RCIs, it causes only a minor stir and then it's back to business as usual.

Police corruption is not something that exists in a vacuum. It is an eco-system of political, criminal and commercial enterprises which sustains a black economy which contributes to the development of the country. That is the harsh reality - or maybe just the justification for people looking elsewhere to deposit their moral outrage.

So far, the RCI has concerned itself with the banalities of the case. How it began and the tradecraft, or lack thereof, of the state security apparatus. 

Police inspector Mohd Mossadique Azni did not have answers to fairly straightforward questions: (1) Do police have a standard operating procedure when they arrest undocumented migrants at the border, and (2) if he or his officers had been given training on how to process undocumented migrants.

The question to ask is not how could these people handle border security but rather, what kind of political apparatus is in place which creates these types of personnel? The underlying reality is that there is probably - somewhere out there - a standard operating procedure to handle undocumented or illegal immigrants but nobody pays any attention to it because it not part of the standard operating procedure of the state security apparatus working the borders.

Let us look at this logically. If there were indeed collusion between the state security apparatus and slavers operating at the border, would anyone have any use for protocol or operating procedures beyond the informal arrangements between thieves?

When a deputy police chief orders the destruction of a camp instead of searching for evidence or carrying out the usual tradecraft which could yield intelligence on a variety of issues, is this standard operating procedure?

Why was an order given to delete all the photographs of an operation when these photographs are vital intelligence when it comes to border security? These were apparently surveillance photographs and we do not know what was in them. And now we will never know, right?

I am just thinking out loud here but surely if you were part of a slavery ring and you knew they were mass graves in the camps you used, you would want to get rid of any evidence of such atrocities, right? You would probably want to burn the camp down and ensure that they were no photographs which could incriminate certain parties or personalities, yes?

When then assistant field commander of the General Operations Force battalion S Sivanganam was asked if there was a collusion between local authorities and this slaver syndicates, he replied: “Yes. This is based on the information given by the source, who told me what (middleman) 'Aziz' told him when the former was trying to get him to transport the illegal immigrants.”

For filing a report on the information from his source, Sivanagam was put in cold storage. He also added that “I dared not question who gave this instruction and why”. This was the order forbidding him from going on any operations.

Personally, I think this was a good move. Who knows what would have happened if he began digging any further. It's no use trying to spin this. Here was a member of the state security apparatus who filed a report which pointed to collusion between criminal elements and the security apparatus and what happens is not an investigation into these alleged criminal activities but rather, the career demise of this officer.

Some folks are wondering, why didn’t Sivanagam break the chain of command and pursue the matter further? There could be many reasons for that. He cites his “loyalty” to his superior but the reality is that when it came to procedure, he did his job. As far as the system is concerned, his role in it worked. If this sounds like a lame excuse, I can understand that. But what we are dealing with here is a system of corruption and collusion at the highest levels.

Reports from the New Straits Times which broke the story all those years ago highlighted the stonewalling, the arrogance and the malfeasance that was on full display when the state security apparatus was scrambling to cover their behinds. I have chronicled this in many columns, but when a senior police personnel - when questioned on why the state security apparatus did what they did - arrogantly claims that police tradecraft is not the purview of us mere mortals, we begin to understand the depths of criminality in the state security apparatus.

Look, I am not saying that all state security personnel are corrupt. I am not even saying that all senior state security personnel are corrupt. What I am saying is that even if they were not corrupt, the blue wall of police silence would ensure that the criminality of police officers working in concert with criminal syndicates and backed by local and federal politicians will remain hidden, especially in a country where race, religion and royal prerogative trumps normative values that most Malaysians share.

The RCI so far has made our border security look like a joke. This may be the unintended consequences of the blue wall of silence, the lack of training or just good old-fashioned incompetence. But when criminal syndicates can “hear” police operations and somehow manage to escape from camps which dot the border, you have to ask yourself, are we really safe?

I am pessimistic that anything will come out of this RCI. I have often argued that that there needs to be a full-scale revamp when it comes to our state security apparatus. If you think that the state security apparatus was always like this, then you are seriously mistaken.

What went down in Wang Kelian, if left unanswered, is the kind of evil that could destroy a country.

---

S THAYAPARAN is Commander (Rtd) of the Royal Malaysian Navy. A retired barrister-at-law, he is one of the founding members of the National Patriots Association. - Mkini