Spring is here. Again. I look at the
cherry blossoms at the lakeside, and I feel so happy, and yet so sad. After months of cold
winds, snow, dark days and dead trees, suddenly little flowers peeked from
those lifeless branches. As the dark days
of winter turns warm, I say this to God,” What more do I ask from you?”
 |
| and he waddles away~ |
But
another spring means that another year had passed, which means that I am closer
to death. I walk among the daffodils and the bluebells, and as the ducks waddle
alongside me, I ask this; what have I done for the past year? Did I do good?
As a
student, have I done all I could to learn? If I am a cherry tree, did my
flowers bloom as well as last year? If I am a janitor, have I scrubbed all the
necessary stains? And if I am a member of the parliament, did I attend all
parliamentary voting sessions?
It is
because we know that we are going to die that we look back into our memories
and calculate, whether the years of our life have made us into a better person,
or whether they only add to our sins. Human beings are created with memories,
an ability to remember things of the past. I am not sure whether ducks and
cherry blossoms are able to reminisce about awkward things they did in the
past, and flap their wings(or sway under the wind) in shame.
But memories also make people remember horrible
things. To me ,the winter was a nightmare of cold and dead trees, and the
university fields were full of dead trees and duck shit. The wives and kids of
the innocent men who were jailed for
years without trial under the ISA( Internal Security Act ) would always
remember the sins of the ministers and the cops who took away their beloved
without justification. Hishamuddin Rais, or Tukar Tiub, when he came to
Nottingham last year for the last round of his theatre told my friend that he
still remembers the cockcroach that became his girlfriend in jail.
Was the
name Jessica? I don’t know. He said that he remembered the cop who did
unspeakable things to him in jail, and as God decided it, Hishamuddin met the
guy years later, who was then a taxi driver, in that man’s cab . Such a
horrible man, who could stand torturing another, or putting people in jail
without reason, turned out to be a plain
and ‘innocent’ man on the outside. I do not how did he felt back then; whether
he had the urge to rip the driver’s throat, or whether he made peace with the
past.
Horrible
was the ISA, but it is now a thing of the past. Yes, the families of the
oppressed are still recovering from the injustice; the pain of separation, and
the stigma that society smears upon ‘convicts’, but the ISA was erased from the
constitution. When Mahathir said that he did nothing wrong during his rule,
victims of his ISA questions the
integrity of his brain, and wonder if Mahathir has finally gone senile.
After the
demise of the ISA, the government’s power to put anyone who said too much
became limited. The sedition act was limited , up to three years of jail, and
5000 in fine, and the persecutors must bring the case to court, before they can
put you in jail. There was no trials under ISA; the government can practically
put you in jail forever, merely under suspicion, because a police ‘believes’
that you are inciting violence or an insurrection.
Memories are horrible things, when the young wives of detainees under
the new Prevention of Terrorism Act remembers the MPs who were absent yesterday
during
the voting in Parliament. These vain little men, who swore in the name of God
to protect the people, to bring them to heaven , couldn’t do so because they were ‘busy’. When
the police round up innocent men and haul them off to jail, you tell their crying
kids the names of the ones who let this
injustice happen. You tell their grief-stricken mothers , that the ones who
represent Islam, good manners and character could not vote in the parliament
for their sons, because they have other ‘pressing matters’. When their parties
hold rallies in front of SOGO in their future against the POTA, you go grab the
speakers from the politicians, and yell in their faces that they are
responsible for this as well.
The POTA
is ISA incarnate; a board of terrorism prevention appointed by the government ‘decides’ whether
an accused is a terrorist, then he’s put in jail, under the name of national
security. They can put anyone in jail forever, because the court cannot
question the decision of the board. No court in Malaysia (not one, even the
federal court) can review their decisions, or overturn the judgement.
Just
picture this; the government can take your wife, your husband, your father, and
even Dr Mahathir to this board, and put them in jail forever, and you cannot do
anything. You cannot appeal in court, and no lawyer will be heard. If you are
going to be active in Pas in the motherland, then by all means, remember this.
Or don’t; it doesn’t make any difference.
The civil society has no right
to put someone in jail, or confiscate his property, merely for speaking out his
mind.
First of all, the man and his opinion might be right. And if we put
someone in jail because he said something true, then we are the ones losing.
Imagine if the sultans of the past before Islam imposed laws against the
propagation of religion, and the Muslims from Gujerat, or from China and the
Middle East were killed because they spoke about Islam, how horrible would it
be? Would we even be Muslims now?
Secondly,
if his opinion is wrong , and we put him in jail , then the civil society will
still be at lost. Because a man who is incarcerated , or killed just for
talking would attract followers and sympathizers. He is now a martyr, a symbol
of the fight against oppression, and people would support his cause, even if he
is wrong.
If his
opinion is wrong, there is no way to discover the truth , if he is killed, or
put in jail. The only way to decide whether an opinion is right is to let other opinions refute it and
criticize it, the discussion must be let on its own, free and undistracted.
This applies to everything; religion, race and ideologies. In the same way that
we question our own faiths , to know whether it is true, opinions question each
other, and the best argument would win, and only then would we discover the
truth.
The judgement of the Sedition Act
is too arbitrary. The clauses are vague, and what is considered ‘seditious’ isn’t
clear. Intentions does not matter (how do you
decide one’s intentions in the first place?) If the judge feels that you
said something seditious , then you are put in jail. What kind of law puts people in jail because someone ‘feels’
that you are guilty?
Some
people would say that some man’s speech, or drawing, or poetry might incite
violence. I say this; an artist, a writer or a poet only express their
feelings, their conceptions of society, and the ones who are responsible for
the violence are the ones who interpret the writings , who somehow understand
that “I must kill because this poem says so”. What responsibility does one
hold, when someone else , with a healthy and functioning brain, chooses to be
violent – when it is ultimately someone else’s choice?
Some
other might say that it is the Sunnah of the reformers, of the prophets, to be
persecuted for saying the truth. They say that truth will still win out at the
end, so the sedition act , and the POTA, or SOSMA, or the ISA is only a process
in reaching the truth. The ones murdered, the ones jailed are necessary sacrifices on this road towards
the truth. Like duck shits under the cherry trees; without those nasty things,
the daffodils and the cherry blossom wouldn’t have bloomed so brilliantly. Have
we forgotten how the Jews were condemned
to hell forever, because they murdered their prophets?
Yes, God said that the ones bearing the truth would be persecuted,
jailed, roasted to death, tortured and exiled, but that doesn’t mean we should
stay put and silent. What right do we have to let this people and their
families suffer while we watch, while we defend our beloved politicians? What
verse said that we should let this huge injustice happen again?
