Moving towards a police state
Tsu NamPublished: Mar 23, 2001 9:00 AM | Updated: Jan 29, 2008 6:21 PM
A recent report concerning police disruption of a signature campaign by students of TAR College in support of SJK (C) Damansara highlights just how authoritarian the ruling regime has become ([#1]Police stop TAR students from petitioning for D'sara school[/#], March 21).
Any country that disallows this, the most inoffensive form of free expression to flourish, should not, in all honesty, describe itself as being democratic. Do the authorities imagine that being democratic equates only to being allowed to vote once every five years in elections, and then having no further say in the affairs of the nation until the next time around?
The TAR College incident comes on the heels of several others including the harassment of an academic for supposedly inappropriate postings to news groups, the hauling in of opposition figures for so-called sedition, the seizure of a reformasi webmaster's computer and the attacks on malaysiakini.
All these underline the growing desperation of Mahathir's regime whose battle to win the hearts and minds of the populace has degenerated into those tactics of fear more commonly associated with the totalitarian jackboot. And fear is, of course, the invisible ingredient that oils the machinery of authoritarian regimes- a brutal police force, unjust laws that are selectively applied, sickening show trials, relentless media propaganda - Malaysia has all of these in some measure, even if not yet to the same intensity as Stalinist Russia or Maoist China.
If this country is to have any hope, it is only because of those few who refuse to be cowed into submission and who are prepared to pay the price. The alternative will be to spiral downwards to the sort of hell that now characterises North Korea, where the brain-washing of an entire nation has produced citizens who see no contradiction in praising their Great Leader while, at the same time, dying of starvation. Perhaps it is significant that there has already been a call for local colleges to run courses on the thoughts of Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad.
Any country that disallows this, the most inoffensive form of free expression to flourish, should not, in all honesty, describe itself as being democratic. Do the authorities imagine that being democratic equates only to being allowed to vote once every five years in elections, and then having no further say in the affairs of the nation until the next time around?
The TAR College incident comes on the heels of several others including the harassment of an academic for supposedly inappropriate postings to news groups, the hauling in of opposition figures for so-called sedition, the seizure of a reformasi webmaster's computer and the attacks on malaysiakini.
All these underline the growing desperation of Mahathir's regime whose battle to win the hearts and minds of the populace has degenerated into those tactics of fear more commonly associated with the totalitarian jackboot. And fear is, of course, the invisible ingredient that oils the machinery of authoritarian regimes- a brutal police force, unjust laws that are selectively applied, sickening show trials, relentless media propaganda - Malaysia has all of these in some measure, even if not yet to the same intensity as Stalinist Russia or Maoist China.
If this country is to have any hope, it is only because of those few who refuse to be cowed into submission and who are prepared to pay the price. The alternative will be to spiral downwards to the sort of hell that now characterises North Korea, where the brain-washing of an entire nation has produced citizens who see no contradiction in praising their Great Leader while, at the same time, dying of starvation. Perhaps it is significant that there has already been a call for local colleges to run courses on the thoughts of Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad.
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