Editor’s Note: The following is an excerpt from Chapter 22 of Lim Kit Siang: Malaysian First, Volume One: None But the Bold, the latest biography on the DAP stalwart by Kee Thuan Chye.
IT wasn’t enough that the senior journalist (Tan Sri Abdul Samad Ismail) and the two deputy ministers (Datuk Abdullah Majid and Tan Sri Abdullah Ahmad) were taken in. As if to balance things up or kak hoay (literally, adding goods) as the Hokkiens would say, three members of the Opposition were also arrested and detained in November 1976.
Two of them were from the DAP – Chian Heng Kai, MP for Batu Gajah, and Chan Kok Kit, the party’s assistant national treasurer. The third was Kassim Ahmad, then president of Parti Sosialis Rakyat Malaysia (PSRM). They were also accused of being involved in pro-Communist activities.
Heng Kai and Kok Kit were actually champions of Chinese education – not agents of the Communists. They categorically denied ever having been involved in any pro-Communist activities.
Kok Kit was earlier charged with sedition for publishing posters before the 1974 general election of which one said, “The Dacing (BN’s symbol) destroys Chinese education. The Rocket (DAP’s symbol) defends Chinese culture.” But he was eventually acquitted.
The allegations of their Communist link were not substantive nor backed up by evidence. They were based on inference made by the authorities from the speeches the two men had made from 1971 to 1976 advocating that the Chinese had a constitutional right to pursue Chinese education. What they did in making those speeches was, however, not illegal.
And yet Inspector-General of Police (IGP) Tun Mohammed Hanif Omar said something strangely unbecoming about their detention on February 4, 1977.
He said they and the others were being detained “because of their involvement in the activities of the Communist United Front (CUF) or in activities which could be regarded as assisting the advancement of the CUF, whether directly or indirectly, deliberately or unknowingly”.
This was flimsy and flawed phrasing. It made the authorities appear like they were doing guesswork. Shouldn’t they first be convinced that the detainees were irrefutably involved in the CUF before even arresting them? Furthermore, how on earth could a person be held culpable for doing something “unknowingly”?
How could someone like the IGP endorse the detention of anyone on a charge that sounded so wishy-washy?
Kit Siang was quick to pounce on that. In Parliament the next month, he asked, “Have we reached the stage where Members of Parliament or political leaders can lose their freedom and civic rights not because of any involvement with CUF activities, but because ‘their activities could be regarded as assisting the advancement of CUF, whether directly or indirectly, deliberately or unknowingly’?”
If that were the case, he said, anyone could be randomly slapped with such a charge and lose their freedom regardless of what they actually did.
“One’s involvement and association with the CUF, it would appear, does not rest on the need for objective evidence, but a subjective belief of the police or the political masters,” he rightly mocked.
“Is this the respect for law, the rule of law, which the Barisan Nasional leaders prate about at home and at international forums?” he asked.
Getting right to the point, he declared that Heng Kai and Kok Kit were being detained not because they had been involved with the CUF “for which the Special Branch has no single shred of evidence” but because of their “lawful and constitutional advocacy of Chinese educational issues”. They were being “politically victimised”, he charged. They were being “sacrificed on the altar of Umno intra-party infighting”.
He called on the Government to immediately release the two men. – Nov 2, 2021
** Lim Kit Siang: Malaysian First, Volume One: None But the Bold is available in major bookstores. The book will be officially launched online on Nov 9.
(Photo credit: The Rocket)
