To know Malaysia is to love Malaysia

To know Malaysia is to love Malaysia. This familiar phrase was the key feature of a saccharine advertising campaign that successfully wooed Western tourists to our green lands not so many years ago.

This sentence rings true for us locals too, but we look beyond the sun-dappled hills and our characterful cuisine to find that our political and social problems leave us no choice but to love this foundling of a nation.

Otherwise we have only the dank refuge of disillusionment and apathy. Many would like to think we banished this black dog of depression on March 8. But it is only too easy to lapse into it again. After all, we have battled it for decades.

And yet of late, developments have been nothing but worrying. Tear gas is de rigeur as a method of disrupting demonstrations and police intimidation a feature of opposition ceramahs. Karpal Singh has been charged with sedition and his son suspended from Parliament for a year. It is easier to be apathetic and disinterested in politics than not.

It appears that we inhabit an entirely parallel world to our politicians. Government officials receive kindly coverage in the newspapers and it seems that their words become the gospel truth the more often they are repeated. This is common throughout much of Asia. Yes, it is ultimately “Malaysia, truly Asia”.

Often it feels as though we are stuck in a vicious circle. Anyone who fell into a coma in September 1998 would wake up today to find that little had changed. Once again we see claims from Mahathir Mohamad that the Malays are under threat, and Anwar faces yet another sodomy trial, just five years after his last conviction was overturned.

There is one set of rules for the powerful while the rest of the country must contend with another. A great hole has been torn in our social fabric by the breakdown of the legal system and the corrosive impact of rapid urbanisation. Women and children are the greatest victims, with violence having risen dramatically in this decade.

Rape cases - a statistic which is traditionally under-reported due to fear and shame - have more than doubled from 1,217 in 2000 to 3,098 in 2007. These figures are not plucked out of thin air: they were collated by the Royal Malaysian Police and cited by the Women’s Aid Organisation on their website.

It is all the more shocking that 53.35% of the rape victims in 2007 were under the age of 16. Similarly, incest soared by over a third - from 213 reported cases in 2000 to 360 in 2007.

Deaths in custody have also continued. According to the Prison Department, 1,535 died in immigration detention camps, rehabilitation centres and prisons from 2003 to 2007. The police alone recorded 85 deaths in their custody over that period.

For some, exile is their best option

In this febrile environment, quite a few see exile as their best option. We all know someone who has decided to leave for a well-known roll call of countries – Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Hong Kong, the US and the UK. In past decades, Malaysians have rushed to apply for permanent residence as each new political crisis unfolded.

There are those who choose to migrate, packing up and saying goodbye to all they have known, loved and despised. And then there are the young who stay on abroad after finishing their degrees. Some have parents and grandparents who urge them not to return.

So young Malaysians stay away in pursuit of opportunities few could have at home unless they are well-connected. This brain drain ages the country prematurely, leaving parents and elders bereft and the young living their days far from their families.

This is just part of the toll our country takes on us emotionally. Euripides once remarked: “Hopes are the food of exiles (so ’tis said)."

But we dare not hope nor dream too much. Instead we flock to Malaysian restaurants to fill our bellies and calm our hearts. When London seems at its most cold and greyly inhospitable, it is Malaysian food that heals best.

As I once consumed one such meal of laksa, I watched a man my age wait for his takeaway in sad silence as he sipped his teh tarik with the greatest care. He inhaled the sweet scent of the condensed milk as I sipped my curry soup, both of us trying to quell the ache and hunger caused by distance from the warmth of the souls and the home we love most.

Pity the Malaysian who winds up in a city where there are none of our restaurants. And we admit to this openly: one of the most popular groups on Facebook is titled “I Miss Malaysian Food”, and is illustrated with 831 photos of dishes ranging from chendol to kangkung belacan.

But I also recognise that London has always been purely meritocratic as far as I’m concerned. I came here not knowing a single soul and managed to secure good jobs by virtue of my abilities. I have never felt that I was denied a job because of the colour of my skin or my family’s lack of familiarity with the CEO.

Most of those who were in my year from school have left Malaysia. And of my friends who have stayed? Those who are not well-connected struggle to make ends meet, let alone progress. They bear degrees from good universities but make just a few thousand ringgit a month, and this makes it difficult for them to survive without parental support when they are trying to raise families.

As those women crooned not so long ago: "It's true, this land so beautiful, it will steal your heart away". But for too long, it has been heartbreak for too many.

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LIZ CHONG grew up in KL. She attended the London School of Economics, where she studied government and law. A Chevening scholar in 1998, she obtained a MSc in comparative politics, also from LSE. Liz spent seven years as a print journalist at Bloomberg News and the Times. She lives in London.