Keeping up RPK's spirit

On Saturday night, Marina Lee Abdullah was telling that her husband Raja Petra Kamarudin had gotten Hari Raya cards at the Kamunting camp. She said he’d been given 10 and assumed the guards would pass more to him in batches.

Then on Monday, RPK told his lawyers he had not received any cards from well-wishers of late. One of the lawyers speculated that the authorities were withholding them to weaken his resolve, to make RPK think that he is not being remembered.

Here’s what Marina wrote about her Sept 27 visit to Kamunting on RPK’s birthday. "He said he is also given the yesterday’s New Straits Times newspaper to read. Then he asked us about what he was told by an officer on a report in the NST that there was a signature campaign asking for 150 thousand signatures to free RPK and it was not getting any response and it was a failure."

Marina wrote that she replied to him, "Love, please don’t believe anything they tell you, they trying to break your spirit". I said, "Trust me, you have tremendous support out there, this time around I am not alone fighting to get you out.

"We have a huge family out there and they are all praying every day, burning candles in their homes, having candlelight vigils all over the country for your release and to abolish the ISA". I saw tears in his eyes at this time, he was touched. I said, "Love, don’t let them tell you otherwise".

I’m not sure what the paper might have actually said as I don’t usually read NST but it’s again possible that Raja Petra’s jailers are playing mind games with him. Raja Petra (left) is presently in three months solitary confinement.

As for the petition not getting any response and being a failure, that’s what the newspapers suggested, too, of the Bersih rally. But I daresay for the first time, we can better empathise with the ISA detainee because this is no longer 1987. Malaysians today are less reluctant to oppose authority.

Blogger Nathaniel Tan has shaved his head and is (temporarily) bald, an act in solidarity with RPK as suggested by the ‘Malaysia Today’ team. Other bloggers and Hindraf supporters wore their ‘Free RPK’ and ‘Abolish ISA’ t-shirts at the prime minister’s Raya open house.

RPK has been in my thoughts vide The Star group editor Wong Chun Wai’s description: "As a critical writer, he makes no bones of his plans to bring down the government …" Not sharing RPK’s preparedness to go to jail, we hold to discretion as the better part of valour.

If the ‘indiscreet’ Father of Bloggers is undermining anyone, it is chiefly Umno – the party hogging the ministerial portfolio which wields ISA. To punish his political gambits, Umno clubbed him with it.

Previously Umno advanced this reasoning: You, the people of Malaysia, always vote BN and therefore we take it you endorse our policies, one of which is the ISA for our handy use. Umno has reiterated adamantly: ‘No review of ISA’.

On the other hand, Pakatan Rakyat promised that should it come to power, the first thing it will do is release all detainees and repeal the ISA. Therefore, RPK going to Kamunting is forcing their hand; as Wong has correctly assessed, he is a ‘political player’.

There have been complaints that the reinvigorated anti-ISA movement is too focussed on a single personality (just as the political solution is too much centred on Anwar Ibrahim). I disagree with the current hero worship as well and prefer power to the people.

But the complainants should nonetheless see the pragmatism of a campaign using RPK as the mascot, and adopting a rallying cry which even rhymes: ‘Mansuhkan ISA, Bebaskan RPK’. Raja Petra is arguably the most popular detainee ever and Teresa Kok, picked up in the same ISA swoop, is the parliamentarian with the biggest electoral majority.

It is because of the duo’s public profile, the flimsy excuse given for Sin Chew reporter Tan Hoon Cheng’s and the Hindraf Five’s detention that the anti-ISA campaign has gained momentum. Credit certainly goes to Gerakan Mansuh ISA (GMI) which has been on the case for years and the handful of NGOs that have consistently criticised the ISA.

However, they failed to get significant take-up earlier because the socio-political climate before March 8 was not conducive for sustained dissent.

But the timing is opportune now for GMI & Co. to galvanise support. Their call to do away with the ISA is beginning to appeal to a broader base. During Saturday’s vigil, a group holding candles stood on the roadside facing Kuala Lumpur City Hall. Motorists, motorcyclists, bus drivers, taxi drivers, lorry drivers passing by waved and honked their support.

By and large, Malaysians are non-confrontational and do not court arrest. Here are the reasons why: No privacy using the loo in lock-up, a prolonged stay will leave us with back problems like Anwar Ibrahim, we fear mental pain inflicted through instruments of torture like the New Straits Times and Utusan Malaysia (provided in the Kamunting dorm), and don’t like boiled eggs every day.

Yet even as Malaysians are peaceful, police are belligerent and the state is losing the stale plot. A Mahathir administration would not have done a catch-and-release, and let the fish get away.

The big fish remaining in the ISA dragnet is RPK. Deprived of his liberty, Raja Petra writes: "They say you appreciate something only after it has been taken away from you." He says in his cell, the heat is unbearable and the air stuffy. Having one’s liberty means being free to go out and smell the flowers, or the wafting aroma of ikan bakar.

Kamunting’s menu gave RPK diarrhoea and he is similarly insulting egg by saying the food is unappetising. Another aspect of his detention regimen, according to reports, is that he will be made to undergo religious rehabilitation. Since a prisoner has nowhere to run, RPK will be the ustaz’s captive audience for remedial instruction.

Some of my non-Muslim friends who read RPK’s articles in Malaysia Today say he has painted them a positive picture of Islam. On the other hand, certain high-ranking officials like the mufti of Perak (where Kamunting is located) have evoked negative perceptions of the faith through their words and actions.

But religious rehab infers that the state-sanctioned version of Islam is truer than a believer’s personal understanding of his faith.

Using the religious card against RPK is a low blow. For Umno, a sure ace in persuading Muslims to close ranks against an accused is to charge him with ridiculing Islam. Kok has also said that the establishment portrayed her as anti-Islam and anti-Malay to justify holding her.

An overwhelming majority of Malaysians tend to shy away from an issue if it touches the religion of the Federation and more so, when it concerns a Malay. However, politicising Islam the Malaysian way is infringing on human rights; it is coercion to turnover an individual into a Hadhari follower.

Whether one believes in RPK’s exposes and statutory declarations, the fact of the matter is that he has successfully provided an alternative reading diet, both in politics and philosophy, and weaned a multitude away from the official-line info sources.

RPK had been a one-man media industry, single-handedly exposing the shenanigans in the corridors of power. More than that, his writings tackled the practice of Islam here, which few dare. The fact that he is a Malay-Muslim pushing the envelope is what makes him a serious threat to the Umno hegemony, rather than if a ‘non’ were to rant and rave.

He peeled the scales off where Malaysians have preferred to sleepily close one eye. And when the ISA of old used to have the populace cowering in fear, RPK is looking it eyeball-to-eyeball.

The ‘Free RPK’ petition target is 50,000 signatures and has garnered about 37,000 signatures at the time of writing.