Sonia's Adventures in Wonderland

Cold and wet

2009-04-26T01:12:00.000-07:00

It's a grey and miserable day in Melbourne. Dorian's trying to light the fire, but generally we really need to do something about the heating in this house - but that's just part of the huge renovation plans that we have. Walls need to be knocked down, chicken coops built, doors punched through and benches put in. But not just yet... la la.

Spent part of the day editing tomorrow's Accent of Women show, which will be on Burmese refugees in Malaysia. SOund quality is quite poor (need to get CIJ to invest in some new cables!), but the subject matter is important, so I hope listeners will bear with it. Sigh. The following week will be on 'dual loyalty' and the medical profession - of interest to those who might be interested in the ethical responsibilities of doctors in the light of the Kugan case. But you'll have to wait till next week :).

Getting personal

2009-04-19T15:35:00.000-07:00

As this blog was originally meant to talk about me, not about politics...

Have just got back to Melbourne, and think that (like the last one) this long-haul flight has left me ill. My nose is blocked and I've slept about 15 hours in the last 24. And we have mice in the kitchen. I'm not entirely sure what to do about this - the stupid cats are not remotely earning their keep. Must get rid of them. Soon. Before little Ibra gets here - hope to visit her this afternoon, but see how I'm feeling.

Of course, not talking about politics means that the post is really short....

More on Kugan...

2009-03-03T06:31:00.000-08:00

The last post was written before I read the reports on the second post-mortem. Having attended the inquests of previous youths who died in police detention, I feel ill. Repeatedly, families were denied the right to an independent post-mortem, and there was strong suspicion why, but because there was nothing but suspicion, because there wasn't the public outcry, the deaths just kept piling up, at the rate of almost two a week at one stage. And nothing happened.

It's good that this has finally come out. It's tragic, shameful and disgusting that so many young men died before even this much of the truth could be known.

The problem with Kugan....

2009-03-03T02:26:00.000-08:00

Now, please bear with me on this post. I want to play a little mind-game that a lot of people may find unpleasant and somehow intrinsically wrong.

Let us just imagine that A Kugan was indeed a car thief. Let's go one further and make him the car hijacker of the urbanite nightmare - after all in previous inquests, there have been serious attempts made (however irrelevant) to establish that the deceased was in fact a criminal. So let's pretend that he was a criminal.

Does his death in custody deliver justice to his traumatised victims, held up in their own cars with a knife or a gun, forced to climb out of their cars after harassment, and left at the side of the road, no phone, no money, no vehicle?

I would argue, forcibly, that it doesn't. Instead, I would be doubly traumatised because - with good reason - Mr Kugan has become a hero. He has become a victim. In some way, he has usurped the position of his victims.

And even if this hadn't happened, even if he had not been made a hero - there is no process here. Part of the point of the courts of law is that justice is not only done, but is seen to be done. The victim gets to feel the satisfaction that the perpetrator has had adequate chance to defend themselves (more than the victim had), but has been found guilty by the state. Publicly and generally incontestably. It may not bring the car back, it may not appease the trauma but it reinforces faith in the country's institutions, at the very least.

Any victims of a person who dies in custody are denied this cathartic process. They are denied justice, and become, once again, victims.

This isn't good for anybody... the police, the judiciary, the victim of crime, or even the perpetrator.

As it is, Kugan (like many before him) died an innocent man - just as all are innocent until proven guilty.

A little nakedness...

2009-02-28T15:28:00.000-08:00

It's been a while since I posted, and this is meant to be a blog for keeping in touch with friends and family while I'm in Oz so it's a little ironic that my first post in almost a year is the day (pretty much) that I touch down in KL.

Yesterday, I was looking through blogs and such, and caught my first sight of one of the supposedly scandalous pictures of Eli Wong. It was far from scandalous, but what really caught my notice was that this picture was of her sleeping with her glasses on. Now, perhaps this wasn't one of *the* pix, but one concocted from various shots online or somesuch. But I can reveal that I am in a somewhat privileged position. Because I'm quite sure, that Ms Wong does not sleep with her glasses on.

The reason I know this is because I, like many others, have been in a position to violate Ms Wong's trust and confidence in us, and creep into her bedroom late at night and take photos of her. Had it been my whim to do so. Eli Wong is a generous person. Not only have I taken advantage of her hospitality on so many occasions that at one stage she had a bed permanently set up for me, but I know many, many others who have also done so. Journalists from Indonesia, human rights workers from all over the globe, environmentalists, musicians... Eli and her housemates would welcome people into their home and onto their sofas. This is in the best tradition of all major religions, particularly Islam - the granting of hospitality to guests and weary travellers.

Of course, to my knowledge, none of these guests violated the reverse of that hospitality, invading Eli's private space. Not because of locks and keys (though there may well have been such, I never rattled at her doorknob), but because it's just rude, discourteous.

The point is, in this age of mobile phones and pinhead cameras, the only way to ensure your privacy is to lock yourself up. The most chaste woman, who piously provides a stranger with a glass of water and the use of her facilities, could find herself at the stranger's mercy, after he/ she installs a tiny video cam in her toilet. What do we do? We could decide that we all take after the people in 'The Machine Stops', live in little cubicles and never coming into contact with another human being.

Or we could be rational about it. Say, these things happen. How can we help the victims of this crime and discourage the perpetrators?

A lesson from Australia might be pertinent here. Around the same time the Hilmi Malek scandal broke (perhaps this would be a start, naming scandals after supposed perpetrators rather than victims), there was a story in a Sunday paper. A man had been sentenced to 15 years in prison for attempted blackmail, of AUD15,000. He had slept with a married politician, who has children, who he had picked up at an Internet chat site.

The court would not allow the politician's name to be mentioned in open session. And the blackmailer is banned from ever saying the man's name, even to his family. The issue of the anonymous politician's morality never arises - nobody knows who he is. It's possible that his wife discovered the truth - it would have been hard to keep such an affair secret, but generally the blackmailer was punished, the victim left to leave his life as he had before, though hopefully with more concern for the welfare of his wife and children.

Death by law

2008-05-30T22:41:00.000-07:00

I'm rather suprised at the chorus of outrage and disbelief that has greeted the vicious attack on Chang Jiun Haur. Not that outrage isn't the right response for what happened. Even when attacked, it is the responsibility of the police to uphold the law. That means using minimal violence, sufficient to restrain, no more. There is no possible way that the police can claim the use of legitimate violence. The ludicrous attempt to claim that the four occupants of the car were involved in 'attempted murder' is just that - ludicrous.

What suprises me is the disbelief, the suprise that our police officers could be capable of such brutality. The disbelief has to be the result of a fairly wilful refusal to look and see what our officers (or some of our officers, let's not forget that there are good cops, and that they have a difficult time) have been doing for some time.

Even if we forget the 'small fry', the obviously overlookable detritus of society that we seem to think can be deprived of human rights because they are foreign or because they are poor, there are plenty of high profile cases that should have warned us of the nature of our cops. Top of the list, of course, is that a convicted thug was head of the police force for five years. Lest we forget, the judge who read out the conviction said "His action was inhuman. This is the worst act of indiscipline". He got a grand total of two months' imprisonment - and after his release, there were a slew of sympathetic news stories about how he was a 'broken' man.

Police officers have testified that they have seen other officers with detainees who were naked, and thought nothing of it (the officer in question was later found guilty of rape). There have been students, doctors and engineers who have complained of police brutality. At public assemblies, police have repeatedly been found guilty by the Human Rights Commission of using excessive force. Yet I can think of not a single incident where a police officer was charged.

Is it that suprising that the police behave with impunity? Is it that suprising that they think they can assault a young man and get away with it? Why should this case be any different?

The real world

2008-05-22T04:53:00.000-07:00

Apologies for the long hiatus. I think I was getting unemployment blues, falling ill to every small germ that I perceived to be hanging around. These blues no longer linger. I am, once more, an officially productive member of society. I am working in basically, a call centre. While the work was quite interesting for the first few days, it is excrutiatingly dull now - largely because the sector I'm working for had been inundated with work, so went overboard and employed three casual workers where one was necessary.

It is, however, interesting in some ways to be at the bottom of the employment pile (in terms of office employment). The assumption is, of course, that I have barely scraped through secondary education, and am bereft of any intelligence. There are people who treat you as barely human, those who feel that it isn't worth wasting their time on you (to be fair, probably the category I fall into in the reverse situation) and the few who judge you on how they find you. And it seems to be that the higher up the pecking order, the more likely you are to judge on ability, not appearance - the most judgemental of all being one of my 'equals'.

Hm. Maybe I'm just bitching.... but I'm generally really glad to be back at work. All that stuff that lefties spout about ppl, generally, wanting to work has a fairly solid basis!

Stiiiillll, if anyone knows anyone who can offer me job in academia, I'd be very grateful!

Another NS death

2008-05-14T04:08:00.000-07:00

My youngest sister has been chosen to go for National Service. It worries me. But I was worried about the National Service scheme from the first day it opened, if not before.

The cavalier attitude that was taken from the first with our children astounded and still astounds me. The buildings hadn't been finished, there was a strangely relaxed attitude to the recruitment of staff and even the programmes seemed a bit half-arsed. The argument was that they didn't have time... so rather than delay the precious programme, they decided to go ahead, regardless of the harm it did the kids.

It worries me that these decisions were signed off on by those who are still the leaders of our country. It worries me that they are still the ones in charge of the NS programme. It worries me that there is no transparency on what happens in the camps, or how it happens. And I am exceedingly relieved that my sister is studying overseas, so postponing (hopefully till the programme is dissolved) her recruitment to boot camp.

Illness and work rights

2008-05-07T03:36:00.000-07:00

I've not been well. I don't like the cold. I don't like the heater. And my head seems to hurt all the time. BUT I do at last have the right to work here in Melbourne, so have started job hunting, and things are looking vague but promising.

One of the more interesting discoveries is the homophobic policies of Exabytes.com, who, I was reliably informed, have taken down the Ben's Bitches (www.bensbitches.com) site because it is on the Disarseter Records site which also hosts the Panda Head Curry (?) site *and* PHC have lyrics in one of their songs that touches on the issue of homosexuality.

The lyrics include the concern, for example, facing every young male, that if you ride on the LRT you are obviously gay because it is phallic. The song warns homosexuals not to go near the singer or he'll be mean to them. Or somesuch. But such is the level of homophobia at Exabytes that they've taken it down. The most ludicrous thing about this is that they've taken it down on the basis that the lyrics were somehow *adult* content, rather then puerile nonsense. Ah well.

Biking in Bright

2008-04-28T00:33:00.000-07:00

Just had a wonderful weekend away, my first cycling holiday . It may not, and really isn't, sound impressive to the ardent cyclist, but I managed about 25km in an afternoon. I'm proud of myself.

Free health service

2008-04-17T21:19:00.000-07:00

I received an appeal yesterday for funds for a friend who needs chemotherapy. The total bill comes to about RM30,000 for six sessions of chemo.

When I visited the Publications and Al-Quran Texts Control Department of the Internal Security Ministry in Putrajaya, I counted approximately 30 staff employed to censor reading materials. I don't know how many more are employed in departments elsewhere across the country, or the numbers employed in broadcast, film and audio censorship.

How much are we prepared to pay to help sustain life in Malaysia? I wonder what the comparative costs of maintaining the death penalty, of maintaining censorship, of employing people to spy and monitor the behaviour of fellow Malaysians engaged in political action is, in comparison to the amount spent on our public health services.

We are rich enough to give away land in Johor for the construction of amusement parks, but not rich enough to adequately fund our health service. Perhaps we should restructure our priorities before restructuring anything else.

Living rough

2008-04-16T23:19:00.000-07:00

Last night, on the way to my Bollywood dance class (!), there was a woman crying in the middle of the street. She was drunk, she was cold, and she was extraordinarily skinny.

When I sat next to her, she was murmuring that she had been brought up to be strong. She has been suffering ten years of domestic violence, her kids aren't with her, and she feels a failure. She's survived heroin addiction, but still can't seem to make life work for her. She wants to have girl friends that she can talk to and confide in, but I suspect she makes it hard work, having been hurt, she's inevitably suspicious.

She said she'd been turned away from women's shelters, they were all full. In the end the police came, her (abusive?) partner came, and she went off with him. She'd told me that she was worried that if she stayed with him, she wouldn't last two months. But she was more scared of the police than she was of him.

What can be done? I do think society has a responsibility, but how can it be fulfilled? Certainly not the way it was handled last night - the cops know her, know she's trouble and are just waiting for her to mess up once more.

There seems to be no support for these women, hardly any community support, no structures, nowhere for them to stay, nowhere they can go. It's a terrible indictment on this society - and I wonder how well we'd fare by comparison in Malaysia....

Wings of Desire

2008-04-15T23:46:00.000-07:00

Dorian and I watched 'Wings of Desire', the original German movie behind 'City of Angels'. It was remarkable how Hollywood could take such a nuanced film of the joy and fragility of life, set against horror and tragedy, and turn it into a sentimental love story. A good sentimental love story, but with as much depth as your average puddle.

I was talking at the shop today with a sales assistant, about kids and the dangers facing them as they grow up. She seemed to think that one of the main problems is a lack of discipline, that kids just aren't disciplined either by teachers or parents the way they should be. The papers seem to back her up - the dangers of treating children like 'little adults'. Hm. I wonder. Personally, I've never gone for the disciplinarian approach, either as a lecturer or as a bossy elder sister. I've gone for the idea that children (and young adults) are 'little adults'. This doesn't mean they should be exposed to all the nastiness of the world, or that there aren't things that are beyond their understanding - though I did explain basic atomic theory to my youngest sister when she was about three. She seemed to grasp the basics.

What it means is that I've always (tried to anyway) treated children with the respect I'd treat an adult - explaining why things are not right and so on. Whether I'll manage this when I'm a parent remains to be seen - but I think that the problem is not that we're treating our children like adults. I think the problem - as exemplified in 'City of Angels' vs 'Wings of Desire' - is that adults are treated as though they are children, unable to cope with anything deeper than sentimentality and/ or violence. Hardly suprising, if this is all that we're expected to be capable of, that we fail to pass on any meaningful values to our kids.

Yes, this is another rant against the commercialisation of the media, and the dumbing down of the populace. But at least I managed to smuggle *some* personal details about what I'm doing in here .

The joys of exercise

2008-04-14T22:14:00.000-07:00

No, I am serious. I went for a proper cycle this morning and I feel great. Which reminded me of a caller to the Talk Back with Attitude show on 3CR last week. They were saying that rather than pumping money into a public dental service, the Government in Victoria should make toothbrushes, toothpaste and similar dental care essentials free (fancy stuff you pay for!).

I don't think this is a bad idea - but I don't see why it should be restricted to dental care. Public gyms and other health care activities help to make society healthier - and are probably more cost effective than large anti-smoking campaigns.... oh, and free tampons too, please!

Malay unity

2008-04-14T04:32:00.000-07:00

Once again the clarion call goes up - at least it wasn't from a politician this time.

The Malays, we are told, must stay united. It makes me wonder... why? Who gains from unity, what is the benefit? After all, the ruling ethos of democratic Malaysia is one of market supremacy. And the fundamental principle behind that is that competition rather than cooperation is the way to go. Hard to compete when there's unity. Thus we are privatising our essential services, to help foster competition, in other words creating DISunity.

La la.

Protecting our people

2008-04-12T17:57:00.000-07:00

Last week a few Malaysian activists were arrested in Indonesia. They had been there as part of an international 'Save Our Rice' campaign, trying to encourage support for small rice farmers, rather than for genetically modified, pesticide-intensive large scale rice farming, as a solution to current and potential rice crises.

It wasn't only Malaysian activists that were arrested. But the reactions of the Malaysian and Filipino embassies showed a stark contrast. For the Filipinos, the main concern seemed to be the health, well-being and release of the activists. For the Malaysian embassy, there seemed to be no concern at all.

Even if a Malaysian is arrested for murder, it is the duty of the consulate, the embassy, to provide support and assistance. Because the person arrested (under both Malaysian and Indonesian law) is innocent until proven otherwise. This courtesy, this duty of care extends as much to activists as it does to those accused of actual crimes.

Perhaps if we're trying to build a people-centred democracy, this is an area where reform could be undertaken quickly and comparatively painlessly - in the support offered to Malaysians by their embassies when overseas.

Visit www.pan-ap.net for more info on the arrests, the campaign and outcomes.

Practical things to stop the Kelau dam

2008-04-08T16:31:00.000-07:00

Presuming that my last post had some resonance with you, you may want to take action. Obviously, the first thing to do is write to your MP, your State ADUN and to the newspapers, television or radio shows to say 'you're gonna do WHAT?', and express your concern. Make sure you check out the COAC website first, or take a look at the SOS Selangor website, or both, so that you know what you're talking about!

It would be good if, when writing, you could also list things that you personally have done to help cut water consumption. Some ideas:
a. Collect rainwater for watering plants, cleaning cars, mopping floors and the like
b. Get a small plastic bottle (like a small mineral water bottle). Fill it with water, and stick it in your toilet cistern. It saves that amount of water with each flush - and you'll find there'll still be plenty in the cistern for your number two's! Do the same at your office, give decorated bottles to your friends, became a toilet cistern fanatic!
c. Turn off the taps - when cleaning your teeth, when soaping up in the shower, when lathering the shampoo. Whenever you can, save that water!
d. Report leaks - in my experience PUAS is a lot more efficient now that it was a few years back, help them cut water consumption too.
e. Fix leaks in your own home. Stopping a dripping tap by fixing the O-ring is a simple job (just Google it and I'm sure you can do it yourself), and then you get that warm glow of having done your own fixing and mending.
f. Tell others (particularly restaurants!) to turn off their taps too....

Doing this, and then being sanctimonious about it, helps spread the message! Be a saint, then tell the papers, MPs, ADUNs, radio stations etc etc....

Kelau

2008-04-08T03:54:00.000-07:00

How much water does the Klang Valley need, and how much are we prepared to pay for it?

The last stats I had (2001), the amount of water consumed per person (including industrial use and leakage and all the rest) was 525 litres. In Melbourne, they use less than 400 litres per person. According to the authorities, as expressed in their EIAs for the Kelau dam, this amount is NOT expected to decrease - not absolutely but not per person either. It is, in fact, going to GO UP. This is despite attempts to repair leaks, and all the rest of it.

Let us pretend for a moment that this is true. That in order to lead a decent life in the Klang Valley, you, personally need, say, 500 litres of water.

The question then becomes, how much are you willing to pay for it? Do you think that for your car washings, and twenty showers a day, and leaving the taps on while you brush your teeth, that it is worth evicting others from their homes? From their traditional lands? Desecrating their graves and sacred sites? And do this FORCIBLY? Not offering them the right to negotiate their own terms, but telling them, take what you're offered and basically keep quiet?

Because it really really doesn't have to be this way. Even if, even if we say that we in the Klang Valley are desperate. We NEED to have the water. It has to be done. There is still the possibility of entering into an agreement with those who are kindly making way for our 'needs', with the indigenous people of the area. We don't go in, plans in hand.

The first step would be to humbly and with full knowledge of customs, constraints and potential problems (by both the affected people we are asking to move for our benefit and the negotiators) to ask the people 'what would you like, to give up this land'. That's the way it works in business, ain't it?

The second would, um, be to give it to them. Think about what it would take for you, you personally, to give up your land, your livelihood, your graves, and to some inevitable extent your culture (because it is tied to specific sites). You're giving up tens of thousands of years of site-specific information, rendering the equivalent of PhDs of years of study practically worthless.

And if you think that no price would be sufficient, why is it that you're prepared to countenance that for other people? Just because they're Orang Asli?

And why should they be prepared with what the EIA's supplementary documents acknowledge to be an uncertain, harsh and inadequate livelihood (oil palm smallholdings), when they have given up... most everything.

Visit www.coac.org to make a difference.

New hope for Doha?

2008-04-07T01:44:00.000-07:00

It seems, according to some of the Melbourne newspapers, that there may yet be a round of free trade agreements that come out of Doha. These will, they say, help the world's poorest people. So, at least, the leaders say.

Now, in theory, free trade works well, at least the way it was taught in uni. But there is a real problem with the way it was taught at uni - what free trade does is it increases the total amount of 'utility'. It doesn't say anything about how that utility is distributed. For the best outcomes, you need to start with a largely level playing field. And economics doesn't take power into account at all.

This isn't an easy issue, and it's easy for it to get really emotional - discussions about child labour, for example, often miss the point. There are different types of child labour - Jomo's book on child labour in Malaysia makes that clear. The work of kids in flour factories, where they can do nothing else, is fundamentally different from the apprenticeship children serve in a motor repair workshop, particularly if it is family-owned. The former denies them the right to education, to play, and to meaningful work prospects. The latter doesn't. It is often combined with formal education, as well as serving as a career path of its own, enabling the adult to follow open an independent business etc.

What robs children of their childhood is not child employment. This is a symptom of child poverty, excruciating in some instances. And this is what needs to be tackled.

It is the same with free trade. The problem is not free trade. The problem is imbalance of power, and in particular, money (not wealth, some of the poorest countries are some of the wealthiest in terms of natural resources). The current free trade system is not helping. It needs to be seriously revived - in the interests of all. Because the economist's arguments about protectionism are sound, to some degree - driven a Proton lately?

But they should only have force in as far as they've shown themselves able to fulfill their promises, particularly the promises that they make to the poorest, the worst off. And right now, they're failing badly.

Tackling serious crime...

2008-03-28T00:17:00.000-07:00

The police force, it seems, is finally ready to crack down on serious crime. They're starting this crackdown with (shock!) yet another crackdown on 'illegal immigrants'.

This is, because, they say that illegal immigrants are involved in 'a lot' of serious crime. Such as murder. Now, I remember seeing statistics a few years back when we had another 'argh they're out there' scare - foreigners attacking our way of life. And in terms of crime, foreigners were under-represented in convictions. The stats I found today only had the number of prisoners - around 40% were foreigners in 2003, but that includes those who are in detention camps for illegal migrant workers which pushes up the number tremendously.

Illegal immigrants, or preferably, undocumented migrant workers tend to be among the worst off in any society. They have no protection against exploitation and abuse, they tend to have to work on daily rates of pay with no job security, and the last thing they want is the police on their backs. Yes, they operate outside the law (but, according to a lot of the undocumented workers, so do the police who harass them). This doesn't make them violent or evil. It tends to make them desperate.

If we are serious about tackling the crime that involves undocumented workers, we could try having more humane policies. First off would be signed the UN convention on refugees. At one sweep, this would help 10s of thousands of undocumented refugees. I know one case where an engineer and his family are living on their life savings, which are almost exhausted. They have been granted refugee status, but desperately need a country to take them. They haven't resorted to crime, but are in the unenviable state of being reliant on the goodwill of others - for a place to live, for medical care. They are just one family among many. I'm amazed how many refugees and other undocumented workers resist the temptation of petty crime. It must require huge will power. After all, they're already on the wrong side of the law... going to jail isn't really a deterrent, they're faced with that every day anyhow.

Second would be stronger protections for migrant workers, and more transparent processes on visas, stronger penalties for agents who abuse migrant workers... a whole host of recommendations that human rights and workers' organisations have been recommending for years. Refugees are just one category of 'illegal' workers. There are those who came over knowing it was against the immigration laws, and there were those who came over because they were tricked into coming. Either way, they face the same problems.

Third, and this has been discussed by the Government, could we have some laws to protect those who are actively trafficked, please?

Though, to be honest, none of these is the ultimate change that we need. Ultimately, the problem lies in an economic disparity. We have free movement of capital, but we don't have free movement of labour. If people could come and go as they wished, it would have beneficial impacts all round. People who have to undergo lengthy migratory regulations etc are more likely to engage in fraud, to want to move to the country they go to, more likely to be exploited etc. Probably not a move Malaysia is going to make unilaterally, but one we really should be discussing....

PS... Came across an interesting related statistic, we have the highest number of jails (in absolute terms) of any of 62 nations surveyed by NationMaster - and 5th in terms of jails per capita. It works out at about one jail per thousand people.

Corruption

2008-03-25T01:17:00.000-07:00

The disappearance of papers from the Penang State Government building leads me to some very unsavoury conclusions.

If all had been well within the hallowed halls of government, the former state government should have left all in good order. It is one of the hallmarks of both good governance and good grace (though maybe this is where the other state ADUNs were when Lim Guan Eng was being sworn in as CM!). IF you have faith in your own abilities, there is no need to sabotage the new government - they will do a good enough job without your help.

But if you lack confidence in what you did, or worse still, if you deliberately misled, deceived or abused the public and their trust, you would want to hide the evidence.

Which is why it is a shame we don't seem to have great laws on corruption. Now, I'm no ACA expert, and I don't understand all the definitions of corruption - but it seems to me that it is possible that a contract could be legally granted, without pay-offs, bribes or other overt methods of corruption, without being in the public interest.

In the Philippines, they account for this. Alongside extensive definitions of what constitutes proper procedure for the awarding of contracts, freedom of information legislation and a comparatively free media, they include in their definition of corruption signing a contract or award that grossly or manifestly disadvantages the Government. I can think of whole swathes of contracts (privatisation awards in particular) which have this trait.

Until we can declare that such a contract - one that is grossly to OUR, the people's, disadvantage - is a sign of corruption, and therefore null and void, all our Governments seem to be likely to be locked into deals that prevent them from serving the public interest, and instead serving private purses.

Ooo, the excitement

2008-03-23T18:38:00.000-07:00

So we have new governments in some states. What difference is it going to make?

Well one factor is going to be how far the new governments - including those of Perlis and possibly Terengganu - can show independence from the Federal Government. It's interesting that a key debate is centring on the choice of MB - whether the PM's choice or the Sultan's. It shows the slavishness of UMNO's candidates and members that the PM is considered to have paramount power to appoint a MB, regardless of the wishes of State legislative members (as in the case of Perlis).

Looking at other Federal systems, it is clear that at the State level, it is possible for the party to act (to some extent) independently of the Federal level party. Obviously, there are areas where both should be expected to act in concert. But surely, in choice of leadership, the role is for the elected State representatives, not for either PM or Sultan? This is why Terengganu is particularly interesting - it follows none of these models. It would appear the Idris has the support of the majority of his fellow ADUNs (22 out of 34). Yet the Sultan is refusing to appoint him MB. Any alternative would be almost by definition a lame duck Minister.

What, I wonder, does the public in Terengganu make of all this? Do they wish Idris or Ahmad to lead their state into the next decade? Or do they feel, as those who stopped the buses entering into the state presumably feel, that their voices are muted and irrelevant? That perhaps their votes haven't been reflected in the make-up of the State legislature and whether Peter or PAul is chosen by the Sultan, neither reflects the choice of either ADUNs or rakyat. Idle speculation I'm sure - but I can tell you that if I was an UMNO supporter in Teregganu, I would be seriously annoyed at the Sultan's actions. Unless, unlesss... weird how we've seen no UMNO Youth rallies of support for Idris, when they've been so quick to act elsewhere. Speculation, speculation.

This was going to be a post on corruption... but that can wait till I get my books in front of me... Till then.

More details: The wedding

2008-03-22T18:07:00.001-07:00

For friends that missed my wedding, first off, don't worry! We'll be having a ceremony/ party in KL next year, hopefully around July. I've also posted photos on Flickr.com

In typical Sonia-fashion, things were a little topsy-turvy, and rather last minute. We had problems booking a venue - having tried various places that seemed incapable of returning phone calls/ sending menus/ keeping appointments, the whole schebang. We finally settled on Dante's, a restaurant on Gertrude Street. I'm afraid I can't tell you much about the food - what I had was good, but I just didn't seem to get anything!

We had about 50 people, so it was fairly small by Malaysian standards, but large by Aussie ones, and it included various people I hadn't met before. My mum, Richard (the best man), Dorian and of course me all gave speeches. There was dancing until the end of the night (with Sharon, Alexia, Stefan, Dorian and me making up the hard core!), and a small soiree of the hardcore dancers afterwards - minus Sharon, who had made a less than graceful exit!

The room was decorated in a theme inspired by 1920s Shanghai - a lovely tacky purple door curtain, fake cherry blossom on the walls and tables, a few posters of seductive Chinese girls touting products... (thanks Mum!) combined with more traditional red Chinese lanterns, 'double happiness' symbols and other wedding paraphernalia (thanks Jimmy!).

There was also, perhaps inevitably, some last minute panic - needing to make alterations to my dress, finding that the amazing wedding cake would only JUST fit into the car (!), and there being an event in the room at Dantes that afternoon (we had thought it would be empty from Friday afternoon).... but all was smoothed and sorted.

On Monday, we had the wedding itself. As a wedding present, Richard, Aki, Greg, Deirdre, Colin and Berne had given as a night at the Adelphi, a hotel in Melbourne. This was convenient, not least because Dorian could go and change there, while I got ready at home. It also led to me being concerned about him making it to the Registry on time! My mum, Sharon and I arrived first, then Richard, Aki, Sara, Julian and Dorian arrived together.

Again, there were a few things that didn't quite work out - I couldn't make an entrance to 'Here Comes The Sun', as we couldn't plug Sharon's iPod in to the sound system, so we had to make some last minute choices from the Registry's CD collection. NO, we did not choose any of the 569 Celine Dion songs that were on offer! Half of these, if not more, were versions of that Titanic song. Pah. Not sure what it was in the end we did have, but not quite at upbeat as what we'd wanted... then actually got married to some nice Chinese flute music.

Friends who are interested can get in touch with my mum for a copy of the order of service - we wrote our own vows, with Dorian doing the design n layout of the souvenir leaflet thing. After the wedding, we went to a small bar for drinks, then we bid goodbye to the guests and went off to the hotel.

And after that, boys and girls, the shutters go down for the night :P

And what gives you the right?

2008-03-22T04:36:00.000-07:00

It's been a momentous while since I updated the blog. Apart from the earth-changing events of my marriage and ill-timed honeymoon, I understand there have been a few changes in the Malaysian political landscape .

It is the right time for all those who wish to say 'I told you so', to do so - I do stand by my earlier comments on flawed electoral systems, but gleefully admit I was wrong about the 2/3 majority being unshakeable.

One person who doesn't seem to get it at all, though, is Dr Mahathir.

I am fed up with his 'I chose the wrong person', 'You were supposed to step down' carping on.

He doesn't seem to realise that his mistake was NOT in choosing the wrong person. It was in thinking that he had the right to choose in the first place. Yes, yes, he had the power to choose - due to manipulation of the UMNO electoral system. But power and right are not the same thing.

Dr Mahathir is still labouring under his most precious delusion - that he and he alone knew how to govern the country. And that he, and he alone, could choose his successor. If he hadn't been so arrogant, perhaps the people would have chosen wiser, and possibly sooner as well.

So the wedding bells chimed

2008-03-04T02:27:00.001-08:00

On Saturday night, Dorian and I held our wedding reception, and yesterday we actually got married. Some people say this was tempting fate, others sigh and resign themselves to the idea that we enjoy doing things topsy-turvy.

There are photos available, so I'll try and post some soon... but generally a good time was had by all, much was eaten, much was drunk, and there were many murmurs of something that through the haze of wine and other alcohol could be interpreted as interpretation of the fake cherry blossom adorning the walls.

These electoral days...

2008-02-26T02:55:00.000-08:00

It was fun watching the Aussie elections. I think my favourite comment, however, came afterwards, when the business community expressed their concern that the Rudd government would keep its electoral promises. The premise being that promises are merely for getting elected, when the election starts, the real business of ruling begins.

After all, Rudd and his friends have got five years before they need to defend themselves at the polls. It's a long time between now and then, and if they break their promises, what can the electorate do? Very, very little. As Howard showed, repeatedly.

In Malaysia, we've refined this process. Rather than having the Government make promises that they won't keep, our politicians, at least publicly, seem to not bother making them. The headline of the manifesto for BN, 'Security, Peace, Prosperity' says it all to me.

Let's take security. Why is security a problem? Or is this a crime issue? Ah, and well, we've seen the BN track record there... After all, has crime or has crime not grown under this, and the last, regime? Have they shown their ability to tackle it? And yet, they want us to elect them on their track record...

Peace? Are we about to be invaded? Are there troops poised on the border? If not, why is peace a problem?Whoops, silly me. We're talking about INTERNAL conflict. One again has to wonder why this hasn't been addressed sufficiently over the last 50 years.

Prosperity. Hm. For who? We've seen, as the manifesto says, 6.3% in 2007. Doesn't mention decreasing income gaps (maybe cos they aren't decreasing), but forgetting that, obviously minor, point, how much of this has been eaten away in inflation? Whoops, I"m obviously getting old. Inflation isn't a problem! The price of ordinary goods may be going up, but inflation isn't. I can't help wondering what the 'basket of goods' used to calculate this inflation index is - the percentage of imported goods, that would help to keep the official inflation rate down, while reflecting the fact that cost of living, for those living on imported goods, isn't rising. While for those who shop in non-air-conditioned markets, prices keep going up.

There are, of course, some specific promises in this 5plus MegaByte document (along with all those memory-heavy pix that mean that on your average Streamyx connection, you're probably still waiting for it to download). Eradication of hardcore poverty, for example... which is easy. You just keep the definitions static, and wait till inflation (or hunger) eradicate poverty. There are figures given about the decrease in hard-core poverty - which look great, until you look more closely. Last time I looked closely, the decreasing percentage of hard-core poor masked a *rise* in the absolute numbers, covered by the increasing size of the population.

So we have promises. What we don't have is:
a. Information. BN can tell us all it has done, but without freedom of information and the power to look into the public archives, we have to rely on them to tell them the truth of their achievements.

b. A free media. We don't have people who can ask the hard questions for us, and then publish them, or better yet broadcast them. Until then, we can't trust figures, either numerical or biological.

c. Freedom to discuss. The ISA sees to that.

d. Freedom to learn. UUCA.

e. Freedom to vote - which follows from the others.

So, again, I wouldn't bother. I hate being the party pooper - but without the first, the last isn't going to happen. ANd given how our electoral system basically guarantees a BN victory - all voting achieves is to strengthen the status quo, to allow BN to say, 'we have a mandate'. Make your vote mean something. Bin it.

A different version...

2008-02-23T17:42:00.001-08:00

A slightly different version of my monthly Sun column...

Keeping the slaves in check

A partial review of James C Scott 'Domination and the arts of resistance'

By Sonia Randhawa

Keeping subjugated populations under control is not easy. Imagine being the sole white family, overseeing a couple of hundred black slaves on a West Indies cotton plantation. Sheer force would never be enough to keep control – you could be overpowered at any time by those you 'owned'. A whole panoply of devices, devices that monitor the lives of the slaves at any and every point of time, have to be employed.

Control begins the moment a slave is born. In their own interest, their parents teach them to 'yes massa, no massa', to keep their heads down and only say what their masters want to hear. There are two ways of seeing this. It could be an astute strategy for survival, or it could be internalised inferiority. It could, of course, be both.

James C Scott has explored the way in which subjugated societies deal with subjugation, through contrasting 'hidden' and 'public' transcripts, exploring a range of societies from colonised Burma, to Malay peasants, Black slaves and rural serfs and tenant farmers in Europe. He finds that there are common themes running through methods of both domination and subjugation, for example that people feel humiliation and denigration as keenly as they feel physical assault. And that rulers rely on abjection and apology as much as they do the exercise of violence, in order to retain control.

One of the themes running through his analysis of the dominant classes is the fear of organisation by the subjugated masses. In the eyes of the dominant, there should be no horizontal links between their slaves or serfs. The slaves and serfs should only be linked through their master. This translated into concerns about slaves and serfs coming together, even for authorised festivals and religious services. For example, in the Southern United States, it was illegal for five blacks to come together without a white present. They were forbidden from holding religious services outside officially sanctioned ceremonies and times, and even then all sermons had to be officially sanctioned, with a white pastor present.

This was not, according to Scott, paranoia, it was completely justified. There were, again, various facets to this. First, there was the public display of the ability to organise. If the slaves could organise, it showed intelligence and ability, a public rebuttal to the assumption of ignorance and stupidity.

Second, there was the justified concern that if they started to talk, they would start to organise, and for activities other than praise of God.

This was not just a concern about rebellion, it was also concern about public ridicule, the sharing of information that might make the 'master' seem human, prone to foibles and capable of making mistakes. If they were openly seen as human – whether this was overly cruel, overly kind or just fallible – it could incite rebellion.

I find it amusing the irony that this provokes. In order to disguise their intelligence, while still expressing their resentment, still forming relationships and engaging in the activities that make us all human, the repressed have to use more intelligence, double entendre and sophisticated imagery and wordplay to hide their intentions to the oppressor while making the intentions clear to the oppressed. The most extreme example of this was the development of an entirely female language by women in Hunan, taking to great lengths the almost universal differences between the language of men and women. However, we can still see this today. During the year that the Nepalese king assumed complete power, broadcasters in the mountain kingdom were banned from reading the news. So they sang it instead. They weren't allowed to use the names of political parties, so they talked about symbols representing political parties. They weren't allowed to call for the king's removal for power, so they talked about the need to 'change your socks'!

A key lesson that Scott teaches us in his book is that autocratic power always incites rebellion. The further below the surface that the rebellion has to hide, the more likely it is that it explodes in violence, the more it engenders fear, the more it causes both the dictator and the dictated to be confined into roles and masks.

Note: James C Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts, Yale University Press, 1990

GerakSikh

2008-02-18T23:36:00.000-08:00

GerakSikh is an organisation set up to try and persuade young Sikhs to vote. I still can't work out how this works...

Tan Sri: You should vote!
Young Sikh: Why?
TS: It's important!
YS: Why?
TS: Because it's your chance to have a say in how the country is run.
YS: How does that work?
TS: Well, you cast a vote for the party that you think is best to govern the country...
YS: Hold on, but I don't want them to just govern the country, I want them to listen to my say on how the country should be governed... what if I vote for PArty X and they don't do what I want?
TS: THen you can change your vote in the next election!
YS: So, basically, I give someone the chance to govern this country, in my name, for five years, do what they like, and my only recourse is to NOT vote for them next time round?
TS: Well, yes.

YS: Okay, let's say I agree to this blank slate of power. How do I find out what the party in power has been up to...
TS: You read the papers.
YS: But all the papers are owned by the party in power....
TS: Ah. Yes. Well, you can go online.
YS: But we're told that all bloggers are liars, and how can I trust their information?
TS: Look at the Government websites!
YS: But they don't tell me anything.
TS: Ask your MP
YS: But when Samy Vellu was asked about Tamil schools, he refused to answer, and that was in PArliament!
TS: Well, that's his privilege....
YS: What are my privileges?

The young SIkh's only privilege is to put a little mark on a little slip of paper once every half decade. Sometimes more. In exchange, she gets to give the Government a percentage of her income in tax (but doesn't get to know how the money is spent), she gets to be arrested arbitrarily, is allowed to read censored news in the papers, and be subject to harassment if she starts dating someone from the 'wrong religion'. Ain't she just the luckiest person in the world to be born in a 'democracy'?

I say, boycott the elections. The Opposition may put up a good fight. But the system is so flawed that they need a stupidly huge majority just to cut the BN 2/3 majority. And most people are only given information through BN-controlled media, operating in a climate of fear.

In 1999, I helped to legitimise a BN majority. I voted. If I voted again, it would have the same result. With the guaranteed victory, despite barely scraping a majority of the vote, our PM (not this one, t'other one) went on to trample human rights, media freedom and the judiciary, as he had been doing before. And defending his actions by saying, oh but they voted for me.

I refuse to be a pawn of a system which conspires to make me legitimise the ISA, the PPPA, the Sedition Act. So I'm not voting. It is a political act, a refusal to allow the BN government to use my vote (either way) to say that the system is legitimate, that it must be fair because otherwise people wouldn't bother voting.

Why the gripe?

2008-02-17T17:11:00.000-08:00

So last weekend, Dorian and I, with his brother Jimmy and sister-in-law Mickey, went to the St Kilda Festival. Now, I can't say I'm a fan. I think I'm just too old. And unimpressed by queues to toilets that go round the block. The music was good, but it was hot, and there seemed to be just too many drunken people around. Great if you like that kind of thing.

What really bugged me though, was the level of unnecessary rudeness. Maybe this is the Brit in me coming out, but this couple walked straight into me, stepped on my foot, and said 'We're not bloody apologising to YOU'. Which is merely indicative. In the UK festivals I went to, there seemed to be a lot more unnecessary hugs, washing of feet, smiling and general happiness. And giving away of money to nice people like Greenpeace and Oxfam...

My suspicion is that this isn't a UK-Australia difference. Nope, this is the effect of 11 years of neo-conservatism. The festivals I attended in the UK did come just after the Thatcher years, but I think the Howard years were like the Thatcher years on speed. This was no experiment, this was catch-up. And the people are all the more brutalised for it. Individualism, the demise of society, the rights of business (let's all hail Exxon-Mobil for refusing to give into those greedy Venezualans, making the world safe for poverty and want...).... none of this really seems designed to give you what some happy drunken sod in the UK claimed was 'the Glastonbury glow', even if the weather is better.

Or, of course you could just say I'm willing to blame the neo-cons for just about everything. Right down to some bastid standing on my foot and refusing to apologise.

More aches and pains....

2008-02-07T03:12:00.000-08:00

While Drusilla and I appear to have reached some sort of truce, possibly aided by the fact that she's getting more exercise, Dorian's physical fortunes have taken a downward turn. He's torn a muscle in his calf. Which of course gives me a good excuse - if I needed one - to be bossy and authoritarian. He he. BUT he has overcome RMIT's administrative hurdles and been offered a place in their architecture school. Yay! He starts some time in March, which means we'll be quite tight money-wise until I get a job, but he'll still be working part-time, so all should be fine.

Politically, I'm bored by both the US and the Malaysian elections. I do support the Toni Kasim campaign, because I think that she is highlighting important issues. This has nothing, of course, to do with the high esteem I have for Toni, oh no, but is purely about the issues - but seeing as they're part of the reason I hold Toni in high esteem... yes, needlessly circular.

I'm spending more time thinking about the issue of land ownership. And genetically engineered mosquitos (coming to a hypermarket near you!). But one or other of these is likely to be the basis of my next Sun column, fingers crossed, so let's see.

My contribution to New Malaysian Essays 1 has been reviewed by Joe Toscano from the Anarchist Media Institute, and the review is generally nice. What's a bit wierd is how he sees so much censorship in my piece. A Malaysian reading it probably wouldn't see any at all. For myself, it means that I am so accustomed to writing within the parameters, even when trying to push them, that I'm no longer aware of it. I'm not sure how to assimilate this information... I shall mull on it for a while longer before deciding!

And I'm still working on the Pisco Project. Expect to hear more about Pisco, pissoirs and pissants soon!

Bells and all

2008-02-01T22:30:00.000-08:00

As most of you (three) may have heard, Dorian and I are getting married, with the ceremony on 3 March, but the reception will be on 1 March.

More pertinently, I've got a friend who's helping to raise money for some rebuilding work in Pisco, Peru, following the earthquake there. For more information, visit here. They need money and they need it really quickly!

Cuts and bruises

2008-01-31T00:58:00.000-08:00

Today was the first day for Drusilla (my vampire, blood-sucking bike) and I to encounter that great international phenomenon, RUSH HOUR. We both survived, but having got through that comparatively unscathed, I took her out for a spin down by the Yarra Bend park. Now for those of you in Malaysia, this is one of the delights of living in Abbotsford, a green stretch of parkland, with a real river (not those drains that run through central KL) running through the middle of it. We rode up to the bridge, but then I ignored the injunctions to *get off the bike* and continued riding. It was, quite literally, my downfall. So new scrapes and bruises, for once on my arms. My legs, at least, are relieved.

Helped out at 3CR today, first producing the Talkback show - producing being a fancy name for 'answering the phones', then doing reception (answering the phones, slightly differently) and then panelling for another show in the afternoon. The latter was a bit hectic but fun.

It's now getting dark and I'm going out for dinner. Given Dru's vampiric nature, I suspect it best to leave her at home....

Invasion day

2008-01-27T21:23:00.000-08:00

Officially, Saturday 26 January was Australia Day. It commemorates the day the Captain Arthur Phillip landed at Botany Bay and instituted 200 years of colonial rule and genocide of the indigenous people - let's PARTY!

Oddly enough, I didn't join in the general revelry, but joined a rally through central Melbourne, then stayed on for a concert in a park at a place called Treasury Gardens. It started with a traditional welcome and a few speeches. One of the things that struck me was a sense of outraged helplessness that the seasoned campaigners seemed to have. Gary Foley, who's been working on these issues for 30 years, talked about how the struggle has become harder in that time, particularly due to the last 10 years of neo-conservative policies under the Howard government.

To me it underlines the importance of articulating as frequently as possible, and drawing attention to, the real costs of neo-con policies - even by their own terms - and, better yet, the alternatives. That these alternatives are not just the ramblings of people bent on securing power for its own sake, but can be seen in practice across the world.

I recently read an article, though, that says we need to examine not just why persistent struggle exists (from research on Malay peasants) but also why it doesn't succeed. I'd have thought that the answer to this was obvious - lack of resources (labour, capital and symbolic), combined with the fact that businesses persist. If I take on a corporation, you can be sure that even if I win, the corporation or the ideology behind it will live beyond me. And it will continue struggling against my victory.

I'm not sure the way out of this - but it isn't going to happen in Malaysia unless we can come together to articulate alternatives, and build new institutions outside the current defunct system. Perhaps what we need to do is boycott the elections AND run alternative elections. Let's see how that works! And have elections that are meaningful - to adopt the phrase from my favourite 3CR show (Anarchist World This Week) direct democracy not Parliamentary rule. What does this mean?

Extend Haris' Parliamentary initiative. Initiate people's councils. And have representatives that can be recalled by the voters if they support actions that 20% or more of the electorate disagree with.... okay, if you insist, 40%. It's the way it works in democracies not too far from us.

So much for avoiding politics. As a counter, I did go for a Bollywood dance thing in the park last night, which was fun. I may even take up Bollywood dance classes. Then went home and was invited to watch 'There's something about Mary' - which I can't stand. For political reasons. La la.

Did the Monday morning brekky show with Damaris and Dave this morning, had fun with the papers, but wasn't too happy with my interview and stuff. Frank Hytten, from Reconciliation Victoria (promoting ties between indigenous, non-indigenous Oz) made lots of great points, but I was not, as I told Zoe, particularly sparkly. One of the good points he made, and pertinent to my earlier rant was that the best thing non-indigenous people can do for indigenous people in Australia is to not interfere - don't think we know best, etc. Now, if we can only get ALL the governments of the world to see the same way.

On air, alone

2008-01-15T01:06:00.000-08:00

I've decided to change this a little. It'll probably still be political, but I'm going to try to keep my promise to make this a bit of an online diary. So starting from yesterday...

The day started with me limping up to 3CR, the community radio station where I volunteer, doing the Monday morning breakfast show. For the second time, I was doing the show solo. I'd spent large portions of the weekend preparing for this. I'd done myself a meticulous running sheet, including a good mix of stories, writing the script, just generally doing all the things that my students never did . I emailed the running sheet to myself - and then the Internet was down at the station.

Oh, but wasn't I professional. I panicked for a mere two minutes - until I realised that the Internet really was down and there was nothing I could do. I had to make it up. Fortunately, it seems, none of the listeners would have realised the advance state of panic had I not informed them. Which seemed only fair.

News of the day, as far as I was concerned, was on the expansion of the 'intervention' in the Northern Territory. Which seems to be Aussie for 'coming in and stealing indigenous lands'. The new Labor minister, in time-honored tradition, issued some blah statement saying how we now can all see the advantages of 'income management'. I wrote her a sweet little letter today, asking if she can manage my partner's income, as I fear that he spends too much of this on alcohol... now I'm kicking myself. It would have been so much better if I'd mentioned he was an ethnic minority.... ah well.

Played a few Malaysian bands - Azmyl, Sei Hon and Az Samad as well as Shannon from Poland.

Other than writing to the right hon. Jenny Macklin, today's been spent working on my thesis... which I'm really quite enjoying. And meeting the interesting Nic Maclellan. I interviewed him on the trade agreements that the EU has recently signed with Fiji and Papua New Guinea, which appear to be prime examples of big developed bully-boys roughriding over developing nations in ways that are likely to increase poverty etc etc. So met up with him today to discuss issues Pacific - hope to have him on the Monday brekky more regularly...

Other than that, I am mildly depressed by the number of people that think that voting Opposition will make a difference in the next General Election. Ah well.... I suppose I should celebrate the optimism, but seriously... why? Evidence shows that the Opposition are exceedingly unlikely to break BN's monopoly. I've asked LKS realistically, what percentage of the VOTE does the Oppostion need, and he smiles and refuses to answer... Given the BN strongholds, the noose around the media, the money and the machinery... the smile of course fades...

Am also looking forward to reading James C Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance. Does anyone have copies of his earlier works? And have been reading critiques of Foucault, and the space for emancipation within his theories of power, which is good for my research....

Oh, and rode my bike for about half an hour without falling off!

Rape, it's a girl thing?

2007-11-30T21:28:00.000-08:00

Reading the article "Most rapists are known to their victims", I am once again struck by how rape is a women's problem. The MCCF is going to give training to women and girls. Surely, if we want to deal with rape, it's the men who need training, not the women?

It's about poverty, it's about power

2007-11-30T21:03:00.000-08:00

While I support the right to peaceful protest, I'm not in support of the demands of Hindraf.

It is problematic to ask for rights *as Indians*. This falls into the trap of believing that there is a difference between the Indian poor and marginalised, the Chinese, Orang Asli or Malay poor and marginalised and that plays into the hands of the elite.

It strengthens the ruling coalition. The Merdeka Centre reports that UMNO's support is rising. Is it because they have successfully portrayed themselves, again, as defenders of the Malays? If so, isn't a racialised demonstration only going to show the 'Malays' that they need to be defended?

I've been asked if this means I was against the fight for Black rights. The fight for Black rights was important, but as part of human rights - and remembering that although the system systematically discriminated against blacks, that the discrimination against blacks was still a way of ensuring the complicity of poor whites as well. Poor whites are allowed to feel that they have someone to oppress - it's the same with women, with supervisors on a factory floor etc. They are distracted into complicity with a ruling system that keeps them oppressed....

And this is the situation in Malaysia - if not more so. Malaysia has not just systematic discrimination, it also has race-based parties as its parties of Government. The official discourse is one of protecting one race against another - and it is this discourse that has kept BN in power for such a long time.

It isn't because the rights of Indians are not important. There *is* discrimination of Indians as Indians, particularly obvious when looking at deaths in police custody. But the Black rights movement shows how limited a race-based approach is - the more overt means of discrimination are no longer in place, and yet the Blacks still languish in prison in disproportionate numbers, same in poverty etc etc.

The only way to really address the problems faced by poor Indians (Samy, Ananda Krishnan and Tony Fernandes aren't worried about discrimination!), is to encourage them to look at their problems in a holistic manner - it isn't a race problem, it's a class and poverty problem. Estate workers suffer from poor wages - but look at the problems faced by Malay tobacco farmers especially since the ASEAN FTA introduction. We need to be overcoming the racial barriers, not giving the rich, powerful, multi-ethnic politicians and elite a reason to draw the poor to their 'racial' cause. It leads to the argument that only Malays can protect Malay interests, because those interests are threatened, not by the rich and powerful who negotiated ASEAN FTAs, but by the Indians and Chinese. And likewise for Indians, and Chinese.

The problem of poor Indians is not that they are Indians. Ananda Krishnan is an Indian. I don't think he suffers from discrimination. The problem is that they are poor. We are continually *told* that the reason is because they are Indian, whether it is from the point of view of being Indian (the Malays and Chinese do this to the Indian community) or from the point of view of a non-Indian (Indians are lazy, stupid, whatever).

But it really isn't. It's because they are poor. And as long as we see this as an Indian problem it will persist - it will persist after the dismantling of racial legislation. Because the problem is the system that discriminates, regardless of race, in favour of the rich. Again, ask the tobacco farmers of Kelantan, the fisherfolk of Penang, the rice farmers of KEdah. Of the supposed 'three' races in Malaysia today, the group with the LARGEST gap between rich and poor is the Malays.

The people who marched have real grievances. But they are playing into the hands of the elites by putting their grievances forward as race-based, not poverty-based. The Brits put into place the strategy of divide and rule, and this plays directly into that. It is not, ultimately, empowering. And it turns potential allies (poor Malays, Chinese) into enemies.

(Taken from correspondence with a colleague)

Bad for business?

2007-11-26T18:04:00.000-08:00

Once again, the centre of KL was closed off for a mass demonstration. And once again, shopkeepers suffered. Both of these is true.

But are demonstrations bad for business?

I was amused, after the Bersih demo, to read how one 7-11 that had stayed open was inundated with shoppers buying cold drinks - and this was presented as being bad for business! Nevertheless, chances are that demonstrators are not going to be buying clothes or souvenirs. Businesses dealing in items other than food, drink and maybe umbrellas suffered.

But why?

On the same day as the Bersih demonstration in KL, there was a rally of much the same size in central Melbourne. As with the Bersih rally, it was well-organised and policed by volunteers. But it was also policed by the police. Rather than time-consuming roadblocks, police diverted traffic away from the route of the march. They kept the protesters on their pre-determined route, and largely off the sidewalks. Shops and shoppers remained open and active - suffering the minor inconvenience of a leaflet thrust in their faces.

This begs the question - why are Malaysian demonstrations bad for business? It appears to me that tear gas and water cannons, demonstrations were police and demonstrators face off, rather than are facilitators, these demonstrations are, indeed, bad for business.

WHich means that the problem is not one of demonstrations being bad for business. Bad policing of demonstrations is bad for business. Instead of confronting demonstrators with riot police and roadblocks, use the police to keep order in a peaceful manner. LEt the demonstrators onto the streets, keep them off the sidewalks. Beforehand discuss the least disruptive route for the demonstration, taking into account the political needs of the demonstrators. And work with the organisers for a peaceful, prosperous march for all.

From Bangkok

2007-11-12T14:21:00.001-08:00

By Siew Eng:

I had my own adventure of sorts in Bangkok.

When I arrived a little after 2pm at the embassy, I was surprised to find people outside since I didn't think there was anything organised there. They were from Thai NGOs, showing solidarity with us - lovely, ain't it? They told me they had just submitted a letter to the embassy and we exchanged information briefly.

Then the embassy security guard, whom I had taken to be "okay" because he was smiling and carrying a bunch of yellow carnations presented to him by the Thais, also asked for my name, which I gave readily, thinking that the embassy should know that at least one Malaysian was there.

(Yeah, I'm naive that way.)

A second later, he told it to someone else, who jotted it down.

Yep, Special Branch.

I would expect harassment from our own force, but had thought the Thai police more clued in to democratic rights (coup notwithstanding), since they have been allowing anti-coup protests.

Nope. Same mould as ours.

And here's a damn big disadvantage when it comes to protesting in Thailand - I had no way of holding to account the Special Branch officer who took down my name. I kept saying, "Why is he taking down my name?" "Have I committed a crime?" "If the Malaysian embassy wants my name, I'll give it to them; this is none of the Thai police's business"...all water off the duck's back. Only the "friendly" security guard understood what I was saying but even he could not answer me. I was getting rather agitated to the point that my new Thai friend asked whether I was okay when I had finished my tirade.

Well, I wasn't. I was upset that I had to face harassment from the Thai police, who also took pictures of me. There were about 10 of them and four in plainclothes (btw, I have come to the conclusion that SBs have a universal look - properly combed closely cropped hair, ruddy face, heavy-set body, pot belly, steel-tipped boots...and when it comes to Thai SBs - a Pathunam amulet-pendant around their thick necks).

Our points made, our pictures taken, I thanked my new Thai friends for being there. I must admit I would not have relished facing the Thai police/SBs on my own and vowed from then on that the only demonstrating I would do would be on my own turf. At least at home, I can READ their bloody name tags.

I left for Chaktuchak after that, thinking I could get more "eyes" on my placard - salah strategi; everyone there (including me :-) had eyes only on the many goods on sale.

However, it was not a total loss as I met a friendly Thai shopkeeper who could speak English well (thank you, god!) and we chatted about politics (he admires Mahathir (!) except for what he did to Anwar), my placard (he was shocked that we get only a fortnight's notice for the polls) and compared Thai and Malaysian police. The lovely man affirmed my indignation at the Thai police's noting of my name, saying the very words I had uttered at them, "Why? It's none of their business!"

Of course, I bought some stuff from his store after that (discounted for me on top of the sale price) and promised to bring my Malaysian friends there whenever they come to visit.

So that was two heart-warming encounters with the generally lovely Thai people and one unpleasant brush with the Thai police.

I was lucky.

When it takes fiction writers to tell the truth...

2007-11-12T14:12:00.000-08:00

http://www.othermalaysia.org/content/view/127/1/

The Islamist aftermath

2007-11-11T03:07:00.000-08:00

As I alluded to in my commentary to the events on Saturday, I was a bit miffed when Harakahdaily.net temporarily stated that PAS had managed to get 100,000 people out onto the streets.

This seems to be a bit of a larger problem, where Saturday was seen (by some) as part of an Islamist agenda. See here, for an example. So far refutations of this point of view aren't being accepted by the moderator.

I don't think that this is merely a problem for moderates/ liberals/ non-Muslims. It's a problem for PAS, if they are seen to be unreliable partners in the pro-democracy movement. It is a problem that has been mentioned in connection with the Anti-ISA Movement, that the political parties, PAS in particular, only getting involved in activities if they can control or take credit for them, not if they support the broader aim of ISA repeal. It dampened NGO enthusiasm for working with political parties in the post-Reformasi period. Let's hope this isn't repeated, and that Bersih is seen for what it is - a multi-racial, multi-religious coalition bringing together people from across Malaysian society to campaign for greater democracy, accountability and transparency.

Suaram update

2007-11-11T01:30:00.000-08:00

This is the latest from Suaram:

Latest updates: 11 November 2007

Total number of arrests 34 all released by 11pm; several more injured

When the final 10 of those arrested were released by the police at approximately 11pm last night (10 November 2007), the total count of arrests during the BERSIH rally was 34.

In SUARAMs previous update at 9pm, 10 November 2007, there was a list of 24 names of those who were released and 5 who were still held. In addition to that list, SUARAM obtained names of 5 more individuals, who were still being held at that time.

Those who were released by the police as before 9pm:

1. Salleh Puteh

2. Muhammad Haji Yaakub

3. Mariel Fong

4. Hasnah Hashim

5. Mohd. Asri Ahmad

6. Mohd. Farouk Hussin

7. Daud Samad

8. Raja Salim @ Raja Daud Raja Abdullah

9. Khairul Anuar Safsie

10. Khairul Amirin Safsie

11. Ahmad Asmadi Adnan

12. Haji Hamid Baharuddin

13. Rawandi Repini

14. Sufian Manas

15. Haji Sulaiman Ahmad

16. Mohd. Harif Fathilah

17. Azhar Yusuf

18. Zamrol Majid

19. Shaharul Anuar Abdul Ghani

20. Mohd. Abdul Rahman Ariffin

21. Mohd. Salim Yesman

22. Abdul Rahman Mat Lodin

23. Khairul Salleh Ahmad

24. Nazrullah Ahmad

Those who were released at approximately 11pm:

25. Taib Abdullah

26. Ishak Othman

27. Mohd. Shafie Ismail

28. Mohd. Nazrin Nasir

29. Abisalam

30. Abdullah Ariffin*

31. Yahya Mohd. Nor*

32. Mohd. Rifiu*

33. Nawi Abdullah*

34. Fauzi Awang*

* Names obtained by SUARAM after 9pm, therefore was not in the previous update.

In addition to the arrests there were also individuals reported to be injured and sent to hospital. One individual, identified as Aleyasak Hamid, suffered from a broken leg and was sent to the General Hospital, Kuala Lumpur (Hospital Kuala Lumpur).

Police reckon 245 arrested?

2007-11-10T15:14:00.000-08:00

The Star Online reported that the police said *245* people had their statements recorded. I don't think this is true! Harakah is saying that 42 were detained, Suaram has 29 (24 released, 5 still in detention).

There are still people in detention, so please keep those letters coming in. If possible cc to suaram@suaram.net. The names of the five still in detention are:

1. Taib Abdullah
2. Ishak B. Othman
3. Mohd. Shafie Ismail
4. Mohd. Nazrin Nasir
5. Abisalam

Take action!

2007-11-10T02:56:00.001-08:00

Urgent appeal: 10 November 2007

At least 20 arrested in peaceful rally for free and fair elections

At least 20 persons, including women, were reported to have been arrested during a peaceful rally this afternoon (10 November 2007) in Kuala Lumpur. They are currently being held at IPK Jalan Hang Tuah.

The rally calling for free and fair elections in Malaysia was organised by BERSIH, a coalition of over 70 civil society groups and political parties, including SUARAM. The organisers had applied for a police permit on 3 November 2007 but their application was rejected by the police.

The arbitrary arrests by the police during the rally is a gross violation of Article 10 of the Federal Constitution, which is the highest law in the country, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR).

Despite the fact that the organisers have given assurances that it will take all measures to ensure peace and public order, the police still attempted to stop the rally even before it even started by setting up roadblocks in several locations near the venue and arrested 20 persons who were merely exercising their Constitutional rights to demand for free and fair elections.

So far, 15 names of those arrested have been obtained. They are:

1. Salleh Puteh (Male)

2. Anuar Abdul Ghani (Male)

3. Muhammad Haji Yaakub (Male)

4. Mariel Fong (Female)

5. Hasnah Hashim (Female)

6. Raja Salim (Male)

7. Asri (Male)

8. Mohd. Afrarouk Hussin (Male)

9. Daud Samad (Male)

10. Yahya Mohd Nor (Male)

11. Wan Zulkifli (Male)

12. Mohd. Mohd. Awu (Male)

13. Zainal Abidin Haji Abdullah (Male)

14. Elias Raja Daud Raja Abdullah (Male)

15. Mohd Ehsan Mokhtar (Male)

Actions needed

Please send letters to the Prime Minister and the Inspector-General of Police to register your strongest condemnation towards the utter disrespect for Malaysians' fundamental rights to freedom of assembly and to demand for the release of all those arrested.

Your letters should be sent to:

1. Tan Sri Musa Hassan
Inspector-General of Police
Ibu Pejabat Polis Diraja Malaysia
Bukit Aman
50560 Kuala Lumpur.

Tel: +603 2262 6222
Fax: +603 2273 9602

2. Dato' Seri Abdullah bin Haji Ahmad Badawi
Prime Minister and Minister of Internal Security
Prime Minister's Office Malaysia
Perdana Putra Building,
Federal Government Administrative Centre,
62502 PUTRAJAYA,
Selangor, Malaysia.
Tel: + 60 3 8888 6000
Fax: + 60 3 8888 3444

Cc:

1. Ibu Pejabat Polis Kontinjen Kuala Lumpur

Polis Diraja Malaysia

Jalan Hang Tuah

51100 Kuala Lumpur

Tel: 03-21460522, 03-2485522

Faks: 03-20726786

CPO: Datuk Zul Hasnan Najib Baharudin

2. Human Rights Commission of Malaysia (SUHAKAM)

Tingkat 29, Menara Tun Razak Jalan Raja Laut 50350Kuala Lumpur.Tel: 03-26125600

Fax: 03-26125620

Chaiman: Tan Sri Abu Talib Othman

3. Attorney General of Malaysia. Aras 1-8, Block C3, Parcel C Pusat Pentadbiran Kerajaan Persekutuan 62512 PutrajayaTel: 03-88855000

Fax: 03-88889378

Email: ag@agc.gov.my

AG of Malaysia: Tan Sri Abdul Gani Patail

---

SAMPLE LETTER

[Letterhead of organisation]

10 November 2007

Tan Sri Musa Hassan
Inspector-General of Police
Ibu Pejabat Polis Diraja Malaysia
Bukit Aman
50560 Kuala Lumpur.

Tel: +603 2262 6222
Fax: +603 2273 9602

Dear Sir,

Peaceful demonstrators arbitrarily and unlawfully arrested by police; release them immediately

We are writing to you to register our strongest condemnation and protest against the arbitrary and unlawful arrests of at least 20 citizens who were participating in a peaceful rally in Dataran Merdeka this afternoon (10 November 2007).

So far, 15 names of those arrested have been obtained. They are:

1. Salleh Puteh (Male)

2. Anuar Abdul Ghani (Male)

3. Muhammad Haji Yaakub (Male)

4. Mariel Fong (Female)

5. Hasnah Hashim (Female)

6. Raja Salim (Male)

7. Asri (Male)

8. Mohd. Afrarouk Hussin (Male)

9. Daud Samad (Male)

10. Yahya Mohd Nor (Male)

11. Wan Zulkifli (Male)

12. Mohd. Mohd. Awu (Male)

13. Zainal Abidin Haji Abdullah (Male)

14. Elias Raja Daud Raja Abdullah (Male)

15. Mohd Ehsan Mokhtar (Male)

The arbitrary arrests by the police during the rally is a gross violation of Article 10 of the Federal Constitution, which is the highest law in the country, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR).

Despite the fact that the organisers have given assurances that it will take all measures to ensure peace and public order, the police still attempted to stop the rally even before it even started by setting up roadblocks in several locations near the venue and arrested at least 20 peaceful demonstrators who were merely exercising their Constitutional rights to demand for free and fair elections.

With such a blatant disregard for its own citizens' fundamental rights, we question the legitimacy of Malaysia as a member of the United Nations Human Rights Council.

We therefore demand that all those arrested by the police be released immediately.

Thank you for your attention.

Sincerely yours,

[Name]

CC:

Dato' Seri Abdullah bin Haji Ahmad Badawi
Prime Minister and Minister of Internal Security
Prime Minister's Office Malaysia
Perdana Putra Building,
Federal Government Administrative Centre,
62502 PUTRAJAYA,
Selangor, Malaysia.
Tel: + 60 3 8888 6000
Fax: + 60 3 8888 3444

Ibu Pejabat Polis Kontinjen Kuala Lumpur

Polis Diraja Malaysia

Jalan Hang Tuah

51100 Kuala Lumpur

Tel: 03-21460522, 03-2485522

Faks: 03-20726786

CPO: Datuk Zul Hasnan Najib Baharudin

Human Rights Commission of Malaysia (SUHAKAM)

Tingkat 29, Menara Tun Razak Jalan Raja Laut 50350Kuala Lumpur.Tel: 03-26125600

Fax: 03-26125620

Chaiman: Tan Sri Abu Talib Othman

Attorney General of Malaysia. Aras 1-8, Block C3, Parcel C Pusat Pentadbiran Kerajaan Persekutuan 62512 PutrajayaTel: 03-88855000

Fax: 03-88889378

Email: ag@agc.gov.my

AG of Malaysia: Tan Sri Abdul Gani Patail

Those detained...

2007-11-10T02:31:00.000-08:00

Mkini is still difficult to access, as is Malaysia Today, but Suaram is publishing the names of those detained, as yet:

1. Salleh b. Puteh

2. Anuar b. Abdul Ghani

3. Muhammad b. Haji Yaakub.

That's it so far....

Photos at: http://rockybru.blogspot.com/2007/11/yellow-day.html

(And Harakah are now reporting that Bersih, not PAS, gathered 100,000, so I'm mildly happier!).

And it goes...

2007-11-10T01:58:00.000-08:00

Everything seems clear, although getting some messages that the police want to clamp down, though not sure where. Might be some people gathering at PAS hq, but unconfirmed. PAS are claiming *they* brought out 100,000 (!) people, and that over 30 have been detained.

First impartial estimate puts it nearer 15,000....

Central Market clear...

2007-11-10T01:12:00.001-08:00

Got a message that says that Central Market is clear, everyone has dispersed, and the atmosphere there is quite relaxed.... not sure if that's true of everywhere, can't get through to the sites!

Confirmation that all is clear, but now just waiting for updates on those arrested, will let you know as I do.... (5.25pm).

20 down, 9,980 to go?

2007-11-10T00:34:00.000-08:00

It seems 20 people have been arrested, according to Harakah daily, and the memo has been delivered. Al J and Reuters are covering it, but not with the blow-by-blow accounts of the local media (duh!).

And it seems that someone, at least, has been hurt by the tear gas. Not sure how badly.

Pockets of peace, pockets of trouble

2007-11-10T00:14:00.000-08:00

It seems that in some areas, outside the Istana for eg, things are going peacefully. But in other areas there is trouble. 13 people have been arrested, it seems, in Jln TAR and around SOGO, according to the latest Harakah daily reports, blogged on MT.

4.24pm: MT is now down, but if you can get onto Harakah Daily, you can see the live stream.... and hear the chants. Amazing job by the Bersih organisers!

FRU moving in

2007-11-09T23:59:00.000-08:00

From the MT blog (I think the RPK via handphone), a total of 9 arrests, and the FRU dispersing people at Jln Melayu.

4.08 pm: The area around the Istana is clearing peacefully, thanks to the volunteers.

MT blog - 3 arrested

2007-11-09T23:46:00.001-08:00

The Malaysia Today blog is saying that 3 people have been arrested. No further details, 3.45pm.

3.56 pm - Two more arrested.

There's live tv coverage online at http://webtv.pas.org.my/, if you can connect. Mkini is better now, but Harakah is on-again, off-again.

Mkini is back...

2007-11-09T23:35:00.000-08:00

and saying that a 7-person delegation is going up to the Istana to hand in the memorandum, waiting on Anwar who is stuck in traffic. 40,000 people, held away from the Istana by FRU.

How many???

2007-11-09T23:20:00.000-08:00

Harakah daily had been more modest in its estimates than Mkini had been, but they're now saying 50,000 people!! It was raining, the rain has stopped, and a delegation is still trying to get to the Istana.

My latest sms works with that - says people are walking straight to the Istana, in individual trickles... seeing what happened at Masjid Jamek as a Bersih-organised diversion. It seems there's also a stand-off happening at Dataran Merdeka itself.

If you're bored, or a Michael Jackson fan, see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4ycaduE_D4.

Unknown source

2007-11-09T22:58:00.000-08:00

Not sure who this is from, but some buses have been stopped and ordered to turn back at the Gombak Toll, at 1.30pm. Mkini reports about 2,000 people there.

Latest Mkini report, before site seems to have gone down, was that 10,000 people were marching into Dataran Merdeka, taking two different routes. Was trying to access full story, and now can't get anything :(.

More tear gas.

2007-11-09T22:47:00.000-08:00

The reports I'm getting on sms don't tally with what's up on Malaysiakini, but it seems more tear gas has been fired, and the crowd pushed out of Jamek station, with 'in out' tactics.

Tear gas! Update 3

2007-11-09T22:38:00.001-08:00

The crowd has been tear-gassed, retreated to Masjid Jamek/ Burger King. Msian time: 2.37pm

Moving forward, pushing back, Rally post 2

2007-11-09T22:24:00.001-08:00

The crowd is surging forward towards Dataran Merdeka, pushing back the FRU. It sounds hectic there, but the FRU is moving back. Not sure how many people are there. 2.24pm Malaysian time - not even time for the rally to start yet!

Bersih Rally 1pm - First update

2007-11-09T20:59:00.000-08:00

Two things. First, the Bersih.org website is erratic. There are problems accessing it. And if you can get onto the main page, it's difficult to get into any of the inside pages.

Second, an sms that says that there are road blocks, with the police checking car boots. They stopped a girl with a yellow wrist band. There are helicopters buzzing and FRU and police at corridor between Central Market and McDonalds. There are five policemen sitting at BauBau cafe (in the Central Market Annexe).

It seems that the KTM trains aren't running, officially because there are delays, but there have been no announcements. The LRT *is* running.

Here! Tomorrow!

2007-11-08T23:26:00.000-08:00

Real time updates on the events at Dataran Merdeka. Promise. If my troopers come through...

Indigenous rights and Oz

2007-11-08T23:17:00.000-08:00

There are some *serious* issues facing indigenous people in Australia. THe most recent is the Federal Govt 'intervention' in the Northern Territory. The aim, officially, of the intervention is to prevent child abuse, which is at shockingly high levels. But the Federal Govt has some interesting ideas on this - ignoring most of the recommendations made by the people who had spent time in the communities and engaged in consultation etc, and instead engaged in a series of measures that include:
1. Sending in the *army*!
2. Changing the land rights and title of Aboriginal people
3. Suspending/ exerting control over welfare payments.

What's great, in comparison to Malaysia, is that there are articulate indigenous spokespeople who are given a reasonable amount of coverage in the mass media, and loads of coverage in the independent media. What's annoying is that these spokespeople inevitably argue that the Australian indigenous people have 'the worst' deal in the world.

Sorry, but this bugs me. It ignores the bad deal, terrible deal, and often equally genocidal deal, that indigenous people in the developing world. If you compare the deal they get in Australia with New Zealand, Canada and the US, it is horrendous. If you compare with Thailand, for example, or Cambodia, or Vietnam, it looks a lot less bad.

The reason I bring it up is because this focus on the bad West, has led to problems at an international level. When at the World Conference Against Racism, for example, the indigenous womens' caucus put forward a whole series of demands (negotiated in English) that completely ignored the needs of indigenous women in the developing world. And because they *didn't* speak English, they were marginalised by those who are in turn marginalised within their home states.

Grouch.

And now to Oz...

2007-11-07T20:45:00.000-08:00

It's bright, sunny and the birds are (seriously) singing. I'm in a comparatively chilly two-bedroom apartment, looking for an excuse not to do the laundry, and this is it! I'm working from home, much as I have been in my retreat in Rawang, still keeping an eye and a half on what's happening back in KL, and keeping my fingers crossed.

Here, it's election time. I was listening to a wonderful group of people on the radio this morning. Ah, this should really start with a discussion of 3CR, and the other community radio stations in Melbourne, but that will have to wait. Was listening to the John Howard Ladies' Auxiliary Fan Club
who have now started a 'paramilitary' wing to declare war on the working classes. The ladies had staged a 'terrorist' event at one of 'Johnnie's' events this morning. Strapping Christmas crackers on themselves, they rallied round one of his events, then pulled the crackers at an opportune moment. According to them (the stunt was conducted live on air), this was to provide Johnnie with an opportunity to declare, once more, a war on terrorism, create fear and thus guarantee himself another term as Premier.

There are lots of serious issues in this election - but nobody seems to want to talk about them. The Labour leader, Kevin Rudd, seems to have his behaviour largely dictated by John Howard. Howard says 'sack the Trade Unionists' and Rudd obliges. Yet, despite startling low unemployment (watch those figures morph as definitions change!), something like 10% of Australians experience poverty - much higher than the number of unemployed. Not an issue to mention in this election.

Maybe in the next post I'll talk about indigenous issues - the Aborigines here have a bad deal, but I am sometimes annoyed about how focussed they are on the industrialised and developed world...

Our children vs the tourists

2007-08-21T06:28:00.001-07:00

Was just listening to the news over Traxx FM tonight... and they reported a new Government initiative. School buses will no longer be allowed to operate, even on a temporary basis, as tourist buses, because they don't meet the required safety standards.

Read that again slowly. The tourist buses have higher safety standards than our SCHOOL buses have.

Is it me, or is this just a bizarre ordering of priorities? How on EARTH have we arrived at a point where tourists are worth more to us than our own children?

Another spiked article

2007-07-23T20:38:00.000-07:00

Hi people,

This is my column for June, which didn't make it into the Sun. And I was, seriously, trying to be careful. Didn't mention baby-snatching or locking up effeminate men. Sigh.

The proper jurisdiction

By Sonia Randhawa

Almost 40 more books have been pulled from our shelves. As Malaysians, we are considered insufficiently mature to read them. They may be pornographic or, worse still, they may confuse us. All these books are banned under the Internal Security Ministry, signed off by the Internal Security Minister (better known as the Prime Minister).

Book banning, or restricting, is always an infringement of our fundamental rights. It is always an abrogation of Article 10 of the Constitution. But, so what? Many of us feel that there is a need to put limits on freedom of speech, as well as our other fundamental freedoms. And the Constitution recognises this. Article 10 is limited, there are matters that do not fall under its protection. The problem then becomes how do we interpret these limitations?

I recently met with the secretary for the Publications and Quranic Texts Control Division, a civil servant of the old school. Seemingly steeped in his responsibility, he acknowledges both his shortcomings and his attempts to overcome them, and best of all is willing to engage in frank dialogue with some of his sternest critics to improve. His sternest critics, of course, including me. After all, his job is to ban books. And other publications.

He and his staff argued that there is a need to prevent religious confusion, and that the proper place for it to be decided whether or not a book causes religious confusion is Jabatan Kemajuan Islam Malaysia, Jakim. There, religious scholars can sit and discuss the number of angels on a pinhead, or whether discussing the number of angels that can fit on a pinhead is liable to cause confusion.

Now, my first question was, so what if people are confused? Is confusion a matter of national security? Public order? It is hard to see how causing confusion, religious or otherwise, is a justification for censorship. It certainly isn't there under the Constitution.

And this is where I get disconcerted. Because every functionary, every civil servant, from the lowliest traffic policeman to the Yang DiPertuan Agong derives their power, position, prestige and even salary from the Constitution. If the Yang-Dipertuan Agong wishes to make laws, he can't. He does not have the authority to make legislation. Because it says so in our Constitution. The legitimacy of our offices, the legitimacy of our laws, all derive from the Constitution. The right of the Internal Security Ministry to ban books derives from the Constitution.

The Constitution, however, does not enforce the will of the majority. It was designed to be sturdier than that. Because a consistently marginalised minority is unlikely to support a state. So one of the first things written into the Constitution was protection of fundamental liberties, liberties which will ensure that minorities are not consistently marginalised, or persecuted. Regardless of subsequent laws. If they infringe the Constitution (such as Article 198A of the Penal Code), the courts can declare the offending article, or act, an infringement of the Constitution – and therefore not valid law.

So when books are banned, it is an abrogation of our fundamental liberties. But the Constitution says this is alright, under certain circumstances. Now, Jakim has responsibilities. It is responsible to the Ummah, the individual scholars are responsible to their own consciences. They are not, however, responsible for the decision to ban, or not ban, a book. They can make recommendations, of what is best for the Ummah.

This is not the same as what is best for Malaysia. The Internal Security Ministry is responsible for banning books. Unlike Jakim, it has to consider whether or not it has the right, under the Constitution, and in light of what is best for all Malaysians, to ban a book.

The secretary elaborated the appeals process that has been put in place, emphasised that it is impossible for his department to scrutinise all eight million publications that come into the country each year. All of which is valid and important. But his role is a hugely important one. He makes the recommendations to the Minister on whether or not a book, or publication, is dangerous enough to warrant abrogating our fundamental liberty of freedom of speech. It is a weighty decision. Because deciding the wrong way does two things.

First, it brings his own department (and thus the law) into disrepute. Banning (or restricting) children's books (which he plausibly denies having done), books on breastfeeding, or important academic texts, makes him, and his office, look silly. Not the best reputation for a Government department to have.

The second is worse. It indicates that the Internal Security Minister, who is currently also the Prime Minister, is showing a lack of respect to the Constitution. And the Constitution is the fount of all law, it is where the Prime Minister, the police officer, the tax collector, all derive their power. If those who derive their authority from the Constitution show it a lack of respect, it sets an exceedingly bad example, and sets us one step further down the path to lawlessness.

Malaysia After Lina Joy Forum

2007-06-07T20:51:00.000-07:00

The DAP organised a forum on the Lina Joy case last night. Much as it was vaunted to be dialogue, there was very little of that. For dialogue to exist, the two sides (and there are two sides here, there appears to be little middle ground) need to be talking the same language. And that seems to be impossible.

This was no reflection on the organisers or the speakers. Lim Guan Eng wasn't particularly compelling, but Leonard Teoh from the Malaysian Consultative Council of Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Sikhism and Taoism (MCCBCHST) suprised me. In the past, I have been critical of the way in which they have phrased their statements, which basically seemed to me to lack backbone. I was highly critical of the way they handled the Moorthy case. Leonard however made some very pertinent points - most important, I think, that this is NOT an issue of Islamic theology, but an issue of Malay nationalism, looking at what the Mufti of Perak had said on al-Jazeera.

He also pointed out the contradiction - we insist that Malays profess Islam, but less emphasis is put upon the other definition of a Malay as one who regularly practices the Malay adat.

Tan Sri Khalid was also dull, but was succeeded by Azmi Sharom. The most important point he made, imho, was that this is not a merely administrative matter. It is a matter of detention without trial, a matter of civil liberties and suffering. And by refusing to take a stand on this matter, the civil courts are not living up to their responsibilities.

Yusri Mohamad from ABIM was next. He was understandably defensive, but to the point almost of insult, questioning the motives of DAP in organising the forum, stating openly that he hoped that it was not to mock Islam. He said very little, but basically asserted the rights of the Syariah courts, made the point that everyone thinks we are better than our neighbours in terms of integration and harmony (which most of the audience disagreed with!) and warned about 'extreme secular' views. Was generally elitist in outlook, as in we have to discount the views of those who are not educated etc.

Ambiga S., President of the Bar Council spoke after Yusri. Two main points here was that this is NEW - that previous judgements have upheld the Constitutional right to freedom of religion in similar circumstances, up to 1999. And that the minority judgement was diametrically opposed to the majority judgement on every point. This is the scary thing for me - there seems to be no common ground.

I missed Lim Kit Siang's speech, but caught some of the questions.

This was where it became more apparent that while we were using the same words, the two different sides (and that really is what exists) are not using the same language. Ambiga had said that referring criticisms about referring non-Muslims to the Syariah court is not a judgement on the courts themselves, whether they are fair or just. It is that non-Muslims and those not professing Islam should not be subject to the courts upholding the religious law of a religion not their own. It is akin to Muslims being subject to the Ecclesiastical court, and the views of non-Muslims are given less weight etc. The comment from the floor was that this is already happening because Muslims are subject to the civil courts on a daily basis.

Where is the space for dialogue? We can point out a million times that this is just inaccurate, that it is not the same thing as being subject to an ecclesiastical court, but it would make no difference.

So all we can hope is that there are fence-sitters, a silent majority, out there who do not think that compassion allows for Lina Joy to be subject to detention without trial on the grounds of her belief. I think that the silent/ silenced majority is out there, but our mis-education system, our castrated media and culture of mediocrity make critical discussion and debate less likely with each passing year, reducing the silent majority and increasing the strength of the forces who are rapidly turning Malaysia into a theocratic state.

Speak out, or you'll lose your voice.

Oh Zam!

2007-06-01T09:09:00.001-07:00

The Western media, it seems, are running us down again, engaging in Islam-bashing because of the Lina Joy decision. And the Prime Minister has said that 'one must have a hole in the head' to think that this was a political decision.

Both of these are obviously wrong. Zam's barely bears answering, but the PM's statement is wrong because regardless of whether or not there was pressure from the Government, this was BOUND to be a political decision. Politics needs to be reclaimed from politicians, and acknowledging that the judiciary, and the public, play a role in politics is one of the ways of doing this. As Malaysians, we seem to be fond of saying that we're not interested in politics or that we shouldn't discuss politics. It's a form of abdication of responsibility, and one that allows politics and political decisions to be decided by anybody and everybody else.

The politics of the Lina Joy case:
1) Whether our Constitution is supreme - a decision with profound political consequences
2) Whether the Federal Court is supreme - likewise
3) Whether the judiciary is swayed by arguments outside the confines of the law (such as whether or not it would result in violence)

Which of course means that the court is deciding whether it is willing to uphold the rule of law. Or not. These are, undeniably, political decisions. Whichever way they're decided.

Dua, tiga dalang berlari

2007-06-01T08:26:00.000-07:00

This excellent play by Mark Teh, performed by Fahmi Fadzil, Wong Tay Sy and Lim Chung Wei, looks at the history of two dalangs post-57, and by inference the history of the National Cultural Policy. It is a sympathetic look at what both dalangs lost in their individual ways of dealing with political change, slightly subtly directing attention to the changes in interpretation of Islam, the problems of mixing state and religion, and the unifying factor among all our politicians, the will to power.

(Visit www.kakiseni.com for more info).

Lina Joy

2007-05-31T06:47:00.000-07:00

I'm pondering what this means for all of us. Some of my friends see this as a blow for women's rights (which it is), others a blow against Christians. It is both these things, but only in as far as women and Christians are Malaysian. Because what has been undermined is the Constitution, and by implication, the rule of law in Malaysia. To deny someone the right to follow the religion of their choosing - there is no doubt that this is denying freedom of religion. Anything else is mere semantics. Our Constitution may be a living document, but it is one that is being buried alive.

I refrained from writing on this yesterday, having driven home in a state of rage and misery parallelled only once in my history as a political activist. Because I was hurting, am hurting, too bad to really be rational about this. But I'm trying. So please bear with me, I'm grieving. I'm grieving for the judiciary, I'm grieving for Lina Joy, I'm grieving for my nation. (Though I feel a small spark of satisfaction at thinking that Pembela have argued themselves out of being members of a meaningful profession - because what use is a lawyer, when there is no rule of law?)

We have lost the narrow boundary that preserved us from sliding into a theocracy. Which was Constitutional supremacy, upheld by an impartial judiciary. The judiciary, at least as represented by two of the three judges, decided that this was not their job, their job did not lie in upholding the law but ensuring a politically acceptable outcome. The last bastion of law and order has fallen.

Yes, a mob would have been a bad thing. It may well have happened. But a mob can be overcome. The police could have, within the bounds of the law, coped. How do we cope with the abdication of responsibility by the judiciary?

We have had our freedoms abrogated by acts of Parliament, in the past. And the judiciary has upheld that. But this is taking things further. The fundamental right of freedom of religion can be abrogated by mere regulations. Presumably that means so can the other fundamental freedoms.

What's in a name

2007-05-30T08:00:00.001-07:00

This is an article I wrote for THe Sun, but which was never published. Given the demise of the Constitution earlier today, it no longer seems relevant, but for those interested in the recent history of Malaysia, it may be worth reading. Just so we know what we've lost - I don't think that the majority judges or Pembela realise it.

What's in a name

By Sonia Randhawa

I've always been grateful for my first name. Sonia doesn't rhyme with anything. My brother, in contrast, endured years of primary school suffering.

My name has a meaning, and I learnt what it's formal meaning was long after I had learnt that 'Sonia' meant me. But names aren't always as carefully constructed to their owner as Sonia now seems sculpted to me. Some names are, merely, labels. The nicknames that various friends called me in school, none of which have stuck. The nastier names thrown by enemies. These names are only as important as the truth they contain, vicious or virtuous.

Some names, however, can shape the named. If you call a child worthless, it internalises the label and begins to incorporate this into its identity. It shapes the child's behaviour, his or her outlook on life.

But it isn't just people that can be shaped by labels. It's hard to see how a table would change, even if you persuaded successive generations to call it 'Kate'. Call a State something, though, and it can have exceedingly worrying consequences. Which is why I was worried when I was engaged in a conversation about whether Malaysia as an 'Islamic state' is merely a label, or if it is indicative of something deeper. And was before we couldn't protect our Constitutional rights through peaceful forums, closed due to the threat of mob violence. Before one of the leading organisations in the 'Gerakan Mansuhkan ISA' declared that it was okay to imprison people without trial, if it was for religious transgression. Before the clampdown on 107 religious 'deviants', with barely a whimper from civil society.

The Islamic state label is more than just on name, regardless of what Mohd Nazri may have maintained earlier this year. It is an issue at the heart of many recent debates, from Anthony Rayappan and M. Moorthy, to Lina Joy, Shamala Sathiyaseelan, even the closure of radio shows on Ai FM. Because what is at stake is who or what is the supreme legal power in this country. 'Islamic state' is more than just a description. It is prescriptive as well. It prescribes how our courts, our Parliament and our Executive should behave. It prescribes a theocratic state, one in which God, as interpreted by one religion and its proponents, is in charge of the day to day running of the State. Not the Constitution, not the law, not Parliament, not the Government.

This might work, if God deigned to come down in, as it were, person, to rule in the stead of our Prime Minister. Or if our Prime Minsiter (as Bush has claimed to be) is directly inspired, a Prophet. Both solutions, of course, are blasphemous in Islam.

So we can't rely on God to govern directly. Which means that people will be governing. And my experience has been that most people are fallible. Except, possibly, Tun Dr Mahathir.

What we have is a State where, in name, God is the supreme power, but in practice, a person rules in his stead. A fallible person. What happens when the fallible person makes a mistake? Well, that's the problem with a theocracy. With God as the head of state, they can't make mistakes. Because then it's saying that God is making mistakes, and that is undoubtedly blasphemous.

It was for these reasons, along with a host of others, that democracies in Europe replaced monarchies. Not because the societies were mature, just or wise. But because they were fed up with dealing with the mistakes of monarchs who believed they were infallible. In the UK, as here, they rather liked their monarchs, so rather than beheading them, they just ensured that their powers were limited. True, it took civil war to get to the point, but they did get there.

Unfortunately, even in a democracy, there is no guarantee that the ruler will not attempt to usurp God-like powers from those who first put him or her in power (that's us). That's where Constitutions come in. It's our first line protection, saying, sorry, but no, you don't have the power to do that. You, no matter who you are, can't tell me what religion I should follow. You can't curb my freedom of speech. You can't send me into exile, deny me the right to life, the right to assemble.

I am equal with anyone else, before the law, regardless of race, religion, gender or class. (That one I love so much, it's painted on the side of my house).

If we are a theocratic state, then these rights are taken away from the Constitution and put in the hands of a man-made interpretation of what God wants. If we're an Islamic state, it's put into an interpretation of God that neither myself nor anyone in my multi-religious family adhere to.

It's just a name. Call us an Islamic state. What difference will it make, to Lina Joy, or any of us. Sticks and stones may break my bones, sure, but names will never hurt me? I hope not.

Asia Media Summit 2

2007-05-29T07:24:00.000-07:00

Mini break: Dr Hamadoun Toure from the ITU. The ITU regulates telecommunications internationally – he is the recently elected sec-gen. It is NOT a trade union, a mistake I first made when I heard of the International Telecommunication Union.

Pointed out that this is a wealthy industry – so it can afford to help promote the MDGs. Still thinks that a profit-oriented market is the best model for ICTs.

Also talked about the cyber-security agenda....two years for a global agreement on cyber-security. He talks about concerns that schools that are e-enabled will be prey for chld pornographers and other criminals. These are, obviously, real concerns. Does anyone else know more about this? I worry that increases in cyber-security in turn lead to increases in cyber-surveillance. How much civil society input has there been on the global cyber-security agenda? How much more likely is it that the child in the village, prey for pornographers, would be better protected by education rather than an international cyber-security agenda? Pornographers, etc, are actively looking for ways round regulations – any cyber security protocols enacted today are likely to be obsolete, soon. But if you teach the child to protect him or herself, then and only then are they guaranteed safety. Unfortunately, that requires empowerment, transfer of resources to vulnerable communities etc. Much harder.

Seemed to think the key problem with Internet access is cost – which some of you will know I think has been conclusively debunked by the Akshaya project in Kerala. The website doesn't say much, but the presentations I've seen by those involved in the implementation of the project, say that it allows 23 million rural farmers access to an Internet portal, with basic information available free of charge, and with training provided for 80% of the families in the region.

Session Two: Future of Public Service Broadcasting

The first speaker, unfortunately, was from the Maldives – he did however draw the distinction between State and Public Service Broadcasting. He sounded great – but it was hard to reconcile what he said with what I've read on the repression being faced by Minivan journalists and broadcasters – Minivan being a pirate-type community radio broadcaster. And the problems that journalism in general has been faced by journalists in the Maldives.

Murray Green from the ABC was the next speaker, focussin on impartiality. The broadcasting law requires the ABC to be accurate, impartial and objective. Impartiality is expressed in two forms – it doesn't apply to performances. Hm. I wonder if there is an argument here for some form of regulation... remembering Nazi propaganda, dramas full of happy young blondes, and thinking about the need to represent Australia and many other countries in all their diversity, not just in the news.

Some form of impartiality perhaps could apply here – but how soon would it lead to censorship? He says public broadcasters will stand or fall by the quality of public broadcasting, and the key features of what public broadcasters can offer is this fairness, imparitality, objectivity in news reporting.

Radio Netherlands, an important funder for radio in this region, D-G Jan C Hoek spoke next. Started with free press and independent journalism. Yay! Need laws guaranteeing freedom of speech. Definition of PSB – financing from society, via government, but government has no influence on content. Diversity of commercial stations, owned by indivis and cos with their own agenda – and so it doesn't mean it is working in the public interest. For PSB they aim to show a diversity of opinions, deal with difficult subjects. Big difference is that commercial bcasters work for sponsors, advertisers and shareholders, PSB works for society.

Jim Thomson, from NZ spoke next. His talk was titled 'unlocking the archives', dealing with the rights issues related to distributing content. Problems faced include inadequate documentation, the impossibility of finding out who owns the rights, the people who own the rights demand prohibitively expensive demands. And if anyone who holds the copyright doesn't want it to go ahead, or can't be found, then they can scupper the deal. Everyone loses out in the current scenario – those involved in the programmes, those who want to watch the programmes. So TVNZ has proposed legislation to allow PSBs to rebroadcast any prog made with public money, more than seven years earlier, that a fee is paid to those involved, can be broadcast in any format. The license fee would be fixed. A new way of looking at copyright. Sounds good.

Eric Soulier, French Embassy in Singapore: He emphasised that culture is not a commodity, so doesn't come under agreements for commodity trade, such as WTO (though he didn't mention it specifically). He was acting as an ambassador for the UNESCO convention on cultural diversity.

The Asia Media Summit 1

2007-05-29T07:16:00.000-07:00

For my first posts, I am going to start with rants that I wrote today during the Asia Media Summit - one of the big regional media events. I'm splitting it into sessions...

The first session was on participatory media, with three speakers, none of whom, I suspect are bloggers. The main things that they raised about participatory media was the one to many side of things – that people can talk. They seemed to be completely ignorant of what Marina Mahathir said was the most important thing about blogging – that people can talk back. It's true of blogs, of YouTube... And of course none of the speakers mentioned community radio.

The first speaker, Haroon Siddiqi raised supposed problems with participatory media, failing to mention the digital divide, he concentrated on the usual problems of credibility, and the use of the Internet to encourage terrorism. It reminded me of Bruce Sterling's book 'The Hacker Conspiracy' – that hackers were going to bring down the modern world, according to the FBI etc. The same sources, incidentally, that he quoted as evidence for the use of the Internet by terrorism. He did also mention that those making most money from blogs are probably those monitoring them. Cause, effect, anybody?

I think it is scary at a forum such as this when a renowned academic and thinker such as Dr Siddiqi can stand up and say that terrorists are among the biggest beneficiaries of the Internet.

The second speaker Erik Betterman from Deutsche Welle did mention the digital divide, but mention it was all. He also made a point about users wanting tailor-made information and that if broadcasters want to retain their pre-eminent role, there needs to be a focus on the key functions of journalists – ethics, professionalism etc. Which is good.

The last speaker, from NHK Japan saw the blogs, wikis etc as one-way forms of communication – or at least that was the main aspect he talked about. Oh, and how blogs can 'make people irrational'. He was talking in the context of blogs helping to stoke racist sentiment. I think again, problems of confusing cause and effect. There are racists (anti-Chinese and -Korean) in Japan. Their views are not reflected in the mass media – it doesn't mean they aren't there. The blogs aren't causing these views, they are reflections of them – and a sensible Government will look at these opinions and react to them. Obviously, we can hope that they'll react by engaging in education etc, rather than pandering to racist sentiments. But that is a question of policy.

The Q&A was more interesting. The most interesting questions came from Palestine. An academic from the occupied territories spoke about how participatory media are vital for human survival in Palestine – the equipment of local radio stations has been confiscated by the Israeli forces, so the only means they have of telling their stories is through YouTube etc. Then there was the formidable Alison Weir (go to her talk! Thurs evening, at Sin Chew!). She asked the speakers about the biases for Israel in the news organisations, which only DW answered convincingly. Haroon Siddiqi claimed that the pro-Israel bias in papers etc reflected the pro-Israel bias of viewers etc. And I'm thinking, hello, so why is the Malaysian media so pro-America – right down to the foreign news in RTM. The top story on Traxx FM this morning – memorial services in the US, and Bush talking about fallen heroes. Doesn't RTM have any inkling of how the average Malaysian feels about the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq? If so, how do they justify leading the foreign news with this story, and if not, how do they justify their own existence? But anyway – it indicates how the Western biases permeate not just the Western media, but the entire world.

What would I have liked to have heard?

First, from bloggers themselves – bring them together with public broadcasters. The old men on stage obviously had no idea of what blogging and participatory media consists of. Second, of course, from community radio practitioners (ie not me) – people who are actively using participatory media to promote MDGs and overcome digital divide. And perhaps more on the role of public broadcasters in a digitised world.

La la.