# Pray for Memali, too

That it took Tun Musa Hitam 29 years to reveal that Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad was in the country when the Kampung Memali massacre took place in November 1985 speaks volumes about his loyalty to the former prime minister, as was the filial loyalty publicly expressed by another Dr Mahathir deputy about a decade later.

With such a loyalty, Malaysians can be assured that no “Deep Throats” can let out official regime secrets, and that may be worrying to relatives of passengers on board MAS’s flight 370, who are convinced that there is more to the disappearance of the jet than what has been officially told by the Malaysian government.

Musa’s silence means he was equally complicit in the Memali killings and he cannot now turn around to say his hands are clean.

Things would have been different had he come clean earlier and spilled the beans as soon as he was forced to resign. It is for this reason there was immense public sympathy for Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim after his sacking, despite the fact that he had been the flesh and blood of a party responsible for so much mess that we see today.

Musa’s revelation also fulfils a prediction by the late president of PAS, Fadhil Noor, who, amid the propaganda which followed the Memali incident, said: "They may be able to cover up history as it occurred today, but they will not be able to continue covering it up 10, 20 or 30 years from now."

I remember it was the long school break when the incident took place on November 19, 1985. I clearly recall the Memali killings being on the news and splashed on front pages.

When school reopened, teachers were parading the official version to us primary school kids, blaming the criminals who were armed to the teeth with parang and sticks, who had attacked a hapless paramilitary police force armed with M16 rifles and military vehicles, who came with good tidings of the Internal Security Act (ISA).

On November 20, 1985, news splashed across the Umno-owned newspapers that 14 “criminals” had died in clashes with the police.

No one bothered to ask who the criminals were. No one really knew what had happened. How could they, when there was no Internet or portals or social media.

I regard the villagers gunned down in Memali as martyrs, and the rest were heroes, all deserving the highest human rights award for their sacrifices.

Here were sarong-clad and slipper-wearing people who had abandoned their daily lives on that November morning, standing up and being prepared to die against one of the most cruel laws, long before there was any well-coordinated and well-financed human rights movement in the country.

It is perhaps another reflection of the sad state of journalism in the country that there has been no attempt, barring some political party-inspired propaganda, to tell a sympathetic story of Memali, with the exception of a brilliantly written series of articles by Dina Zaman and published by The Malaysian Insider in 2012, telling the tale not from the perspective of the “victors”.

Sadly, our politicians have failed to give Memali the importance it deserves in the struggle for justice.

In some countries, such an incident would have seen mock trials and even petitions at the international courts, and would remain etched in the nation’s psyche, the people of Memali had none of those.

I get worked up every time the Kampung Memali incident is mentioned, especially after my visit there in 1999. It was an impromptu stopover during a nationwide road trip that we – four jobless varsity buddies looking for adventure before biting the dust few years later –  undertook in 1999.

I remember one Pak Long, who came to greet us as we sat at a stall just upon entering the village, and started to chronicle that fateful day, like a tourist guide repeating a historical anecdote to explain a monument.

"The police had surrounded the whole village by then. Motorists to and from Memali were stopped and their names taken. Ustaz Ibrahim had just finished delivering his daily lecture – kuliah Subuh (lecture after pre-dawn prayers)," he said.

"On that day, the police numbered around 4,000. They were heavily armed and dangerous. They were acting on orders from Mahathir,” he said.

It was Ibrahim Mahmood to whom he referred, the man the government had accused of spreading deviant teachings, and who the villagers had been ready to defend until their last drop of blood – which they did.

“The whole of Memali was almost deserted. There was no one to arrange a proper burial for those killed,” he recalled on the day after the incident.

There was nothing extraordinary about Ibrahim. He was no Ayatollah whose words shook the stockmarkets.

Like many local Muslim scholars of his time, he had studied at the University of Tripoli, and also in India and at al-Azhar in Cairo.

Upon his return, he had even appeared on RTM, the government’s television channel, to give talks on Islam.

But his close association with PAS worried Mahathir's Umno so much that its outfit, the Islamic Religious Department, started making allegations of “deviation” against him. Nothing extraordinary there either.

Many times, police officers attempted to arrest him, but he refused to surrender, and demanded to know his crime. It was then that the government decided to move a battalion of paramilitary police to arrest one man under the ISA.

For this, 14 villagers paid with their lives, and an entire population of the village was carted away in police trucks, including women and children.

Dr Mahathir, who we’re now told was in the country and not China as previously believed, had then said that the villagers "had resisted arrest which was a crime".

Clearly, the only “crime” the government could pin on Ibrahim is committed after the police were sent in.

Ibrahim and the people of Memali, with their worldview, may not exactly look like candidates for some legion of honour from some former colonial power whose past is tainted with atrocities.

They are what the urbanites would call simple kampung folk, who refused to be cowed by the threats of force against their leader.

They had no clue that what they had done was to uphold universal principles of justice endorsed by international bodies – that there can be no detention without trial and that one cannot be held for one’s views.

The story of Memali should not be forgotten by Malaysians of all creeds. It should be told to the younger generation.

Perhaps, Musa’s revelation may not be too late, but timely, so that three decades later, Malaysians who were not born or were too young to remember, will know that little has changed in the way the government works. – March 29, 2014.

* This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malaysian Insider.