Watching the police crabs with icy cold eyes

By Sim Kwang Yang

“ 1st – you are not allowed to wear YELLOW
2nd – you are not allowed to wear ORANGE
3rd – you are not allowed to wear BLACK
4th – you are not allowed to mention AMN, RB
5th – you are not allowed to light CANDLE
6th – you are not allowed to celebrate BIRTHDAY
7th – you are not allowed to FAST

You are not allowed to do this, do that, if I do not allowed you to.

But, you can never disallow me to vote.

I know which one to vote, so do you?

Let’s see until when you are allowed to do 1st to 7th.”

That was a comment posted by a reader on my piece on RPK yesterday.  He was referring to the harsh police action in arresting a whole bunch of people for illegal assembly in Ipoh yesterday, when the PR people tried to launch their hunger strike at the DAP office.

I cannot recall the name of the relevant law that disallows the gathering of more than four or five people in public space.  It originated long ago when the country was fighting an armed communist insurgency I think.  When the communist insurgence ended, this stupid piece of legislation was retained purportedly for the police to maintain public order – especially against the spectre of racial riot.

What it does is to give tremendous ultra-constitutional powers for the police to infringe upon the constitutional right of citizens to freedom of movement, freedom of association, and freedom of assembly.

Since the police falls under the jurisdiction of the Home Minister, who has always been an UMNO leading figure since Merdeka, the police has been politicised beyond recognition.

Instead of being a branch of the neutral civil service serving the people of Malaysia, and the political masters of the day, the police have been consistently used as an instrument of the state security apparatchik to silence the opposition political parties and other opponents of the ruling BN coalition.

We have witnessed in our nation’s history the use of the police by their BN masters to arrest opposition leaders in massive waves, in 1969 and in 1987.  We have seen how in recent days they arrested lawyers who went to the police station to offer legal service to those arrested for lighting candles.  We have seen how they arrested people for eating breakfast in Ipoh.  Now they even arrest event organisers for helping people go on hunger strike.

When they arrest elected representatives on the flimsiest pretext, putting them in fetters in public gaze, they are not merely showing great arrogance over the personal dignity of the YBs.  They are insulting the collective dignity of the rakyat who voted these YBs into office in the first place.

Can you imagine what would happen if the policemen do that to the MP in the United Kingdom, or the Senators and Congressmen in the USA?  The government of the day may fall overnight.

I will like to think that those policemen are just doing their job as they are told by their superiors.  But many certainly like to wield their terrible ultra-constitutional powers to arrest harmless citizens with relish and glee.  The OCPD at the Brickfield Police Station is a classic example.

Policemen are paid to protect the personal security of the people out of the tax-payers’ money.  The people are their bosses, whom they are pledged to serve, even at the cost of losing their lives.

When scenes of policemen arresting civic-conscious, innocent, and engaged citizens at will are played before a national audience, especially on the Internet, the policemen do great disservice to the good name of the police force that was so crucial in fighting the armed communist insurgency.

If they thought that their harsh actions would intimidate those opponents of the ruling BN coalition, then they could not be more wrong.  This is a new Malaysia. Those upstart newly elected PR YBs need to be arrested like that to make their name, and claim the moral authority of martyrs to gather influence.

Then, there are those who say that nobody is above the law, not even YBs and members of the Malaysian Bar Council.

But as Martin Luther King has taught us, laws are not just laws.  There are good laws, and there are bad laws.  There are the just laws of God, and there are the unjust laws of man.

Unjust laws like the one that bans “illegal assembly” blindly when the assembly poses no threat to public security bring harm to the people and the nation.  If you obey these laws, then you are accessory to the evil of injustice wrought on by these bad laws.

Therefore, it is the moral responsibility of engaged concerned and wise citizens to disobey these unjust laws in a non-violent manner.  That was why Martin Luther King led those “illegal” marches in the US in the 1960s, and he was jailed many times for doing so.  Eventually, he was killed by an assassin’s bullet.  But because of his sacrifice, they have a black American President in the White House to-day!

There is another way the people can fight back.  Those arrested in recent weeks by the police can sue the police for wrongful arrest.  They would probably lose the case in court, but they would help keep public attention on this issue for a long time.  Why, even a dog is entitled to yelp when kicked for no reason!

There is an old Chinese saying that goes: ”watching a crab walk with cold eyes – to see how long you can walk sideway!”  In Mandarin, “walking sideway” sounds and means the same as “behaving brutishly like samsengs”.

Right now, the national audience is watching the police crabs with icy cold eyes, making judgment in the silent privacy of their hearts.  Just like the reader quoted at the beginning of to-days musing, they are waiting to vote, to throw out the BN altogether in the next general election.

Only the rakyat can police the police crabs.

(SKY can be reached at kenyalang578@hotmail.com )