Kawan-kawanku yang dikasihi

semalam kita bertemu kembali memadu

ketika matari tersangkut di bumbung Utusan

kita tidak menerima apa yang ada

yang dinyanyikan dari hati berani

dengan tangan erat pada keyakinan terpahat

- Usman Awang, ‘Duri dan Api’

Speaking or writing about former Utusan Melayu editor Said Zahari is difficult. Difficult because the Utusan Malaysia of today is anything but “Malaysian” unlike the Utusan Melayu of the past. The Utusan Melayu of Said Zahari.

One finds it difficult to write about patriots because the term patriot is problematic in an intellectual and emotional sense. Patriotism, like nationalism, is about context; and context rarely is clear-cut. It does not fall into neatly defined categories.

During a recent memorial to Said Zahari co-organised by SIRD (GerakBudaya), Pusat Sejarah Rakyat, Monsoons Group, Civil Rights Committee of KLSCAH and Yayasan Usman Awang, Jomo KS, one of Malaysia’s leading public intellectuals, halted at the podium. Anyone who knows Jomo understands that he is an individual never at a loss for words.

Speaking to Jomo afterwards, he said that speaking about Said Zahari during the brief time allocated would not do justice to the man. He intends to write a three-part article on Said Zahari and nationalism.

Said Zahari would approve. In former Malaysiakini staffer Masjaliza Hamzah’s poignant interview (and one of the best pieces I have read on this particular patriot), Said Zahari recounts the loss only a political detainee would understand and the ameliorating words of a fellow comrade and true friend, like Jomo:

"I would ask myself if I wanted to sacrifice principles for the sake of my own family. I believed that I have to make some sacrifices and that I had chosen to do that at the expense of their happiness. As my friend (Universiti Malaya lecturer KS Jomo) would say, that is the ghost that'll haunt me until today. And I accept that.”

There has always been under Umno a sustained effort to use race and religion as a means to separate communities. Being ‘Malay/Muslim’ carries with it certain privileges that Umno claims needs constant safeguarding. However drowned out in the putrescent calls for Malay/Muslim solidarity are the quieter voices of our Malay brethren who just want to live in peace and principle.

Voices which are often condemned for not speaking out forcibly enough or are overlooked by an angry oppositional demographic who are on the receiving end of every dirty trick of the Umno state.

Said Zahari represents the aspirations of many Malays when he said, “While in prison, I indulged in beautiful images of what life was like for my children. I would see them doing well in school. I visualised them growing up and marrying people of different races because that was the kind of multi-ethnic family I had wanted to build.”

Remembering Said, Syed Husin Ali related to the audience, how the former Utusan editor was such a jovial affable man. Gentle in demeanour and unlike the firebrands who operated at the time. When they heard that he was detained by Singapore’s strongman Lee Kuan Yew for a few years, they wondered if this gentle soft-spoken man could last a year.

He lasted 17 years. They understood that beneath his affable demeanour was a resolve of steel. Syed Husin relates that after six years in detention there were rumours that he would be released. So he (Syed Husin) with a few friends went to Singapore to celebrate the occasion. Apparently when Lee got wind of this, Said Zahari’s detention was extended for a further 11 years. He did not want to see a celebration for the release of someone who he accused of being a communist.

After his detention, Syed Husin says that Said Zahari was offered certain inducements as part his rehabilitation and acceptance by the establishment. There was also the condition he worked in the New Straits Times (NST). An emphatic “no” was all they got from Said Zahari. As Syed Husin reminds us, when former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad said our struggles - “our” being undefined - Said Zahari’s response was that “ours is not over yet”.

Different sides of the glass window

As Tan Peck Leng writes in his piece about Said Zahari: “Detention without trial allows the powers-that-be to dispose of those that stand in their way without solid proof or grounds. In Said’s case, the charges against him were not even consistent over the years. Although he was initially alleged to have been ‘an intelligence agent of a foreign power’, this charge was subsequently dropped. Sixteen years later, however, he was accused of having ‘refused to renounce violence as a political instrument’ when no such charge had been laid against him previously.”

Imagine being detained for 17 years, on charges that evolved or devolved depending on your point of view or sense of humour. As Syed Husin said in an old interview: “Those days it was common practice for the police to assassinate political dissenters by accusing them to be ‘communist’ or ‘socialist’. It is quite different these days, after the Cold War. Now they can be branded as ‘sodomists’ instead. The accusations are different, but the methods of political assassination have not changed very much. You chose the enemies you want to destroy.”

People often forget that not only are lives of political detainees irrevocably changed or damaged but the lives of their families. Here is a day in the life of Said Zahari’s wife, Salamah Abdul Wahab, during her long watch:

"We were both suffering; the only difference was that we were on different sides of the glass window. Sometimes, when he asked for a book or something, I'd pretend that I'd forgotten to bring it when in fact, I hadn't. Sometimes, we couldn't make ends meet. There wasn't enough money for rent. Once, the car was repossessed because I couldn't pay the installment. My children and I had to unload all our cooking utensils from the car onto the roadside and flag a taxi down and load everything again.

"I never told him because I believed that whatever it is, somehow, we who are on the outside can manage. But he's on the inside. Even if I were to tell him, there wasn't much he could do. What was the point of worrying him? Sometimes, I felt there was no need to tell him anyway because he knew in his heart that all these things were happening."

And maybe this is how we should remember Said Zahari, a man who was detained for his beliefs, whose family was held hostage by an establishment bent on suppressing those beliefs and ultimately a man and family who could not be broken.

These are the forgotten patriots of Malaysian and Singaporean history. These are the men and women who wanted to build a better country but instead the people of Malaysia and Singapore voted in regimes who promised them stability and prosperity in exchange for their basic human rights.

In the end, we are all haunted by ghosts.

S THAYAPARAN is Commander (Rtd) in the Royal Malaysian Navy.