The Police give us food for thought

By Pak Bui

A fortnight ago, as I was waiting in transit at a local airport, I found the small snack counter at the departure gate had closed. I was hungry, having endured a glass of mystery fruit juice on my previous flight, and not much else the entire day.

I approached the police officers on duty at the security checkpoint, and asked for permission to leave the gate for a few minutes to buy some food. The two police officers sitting at the X-ray machine, a man and a woman, appeared relaxed, and were chatting with each other.

“You want to go out?” the policeman asked. “Are you leaving the terminal?”

I told him I did not want to leave, but wanted only to go to the main concourse.

“Sure,” he smiled, “you go out. And buy something for us too. We’re hungry as well. Maybe doughnuts or something?”

I walked out through the security barrier, shaking my head. This was not the first time I had encountered a policeman at work, who wanted some favour, some private compensation, for being on duty and for wearing a uniform.

I had made it a habit, though, not to hand out any “tips” for coffee, or for anything else. Paying off parking tickets at a counter feels less abrasive to the soul than paying off a policeman on the street.

But in the event, I didn’t get very far, because the sliding doors could only be opened from the outside. I returned to the security checkpoint and handed the policeman my boarding pass again.

“Why? You didn’t buy any food?” the young policeman sounded disappointed. “Come, I’ll show you the way to get out. We want some food too, you know.”

I declined politely, saying my flight would be called soon anyway.

Policing food

The food police, in the Malaysian context, can have more sinister implications than pestering citizens for doughnuts.

A close friend tells me of the horror of an ordeal suffered by a young Iban man, Layen, of about 30, while Layen was working in Kuala Lumpur.

Layen is one of many thousands of Iban and other Dayak working in Peninsular Malaysia. The Iban are driven partly by a yearning to travel – “bejalai”. The Iban are also forced to seek employment outside Sarawak, because our state’s economy is in the stranglehold of a clique whose priorities most certainly do not include job creation for poor Sarawakians, Iban or otherwise.

Layen was eating in a coffee shop during Ramadan several years ago, when he was arrested by the religious authorities. He protested. He was taken to a lock-up, he says, and was beaten by policemen, for refusing to confess to being a Muslim, caught eating in public during the fasting month.

Layen tried to point out that his name was printed as “Layen anak Ujen” in his Identity Card, that he was a Iban from a longhouse in Sarawak, that he was a Christian, and that he had never heard of being beaten for eating in a coffee shop, after having paid for his food.

Since Layen had been jailed on a weekend, he spent two nights in the lock-up, with a motley band of drug addicts, thugs and petty criminals.

He says his captors shouted abuse at him, and slapped and punched him when they felt like it. He was offered a packet of cigarettes for fifty ringgit. Just like ISA detainees, he had no idea when, if ever, he would be released.

Eventually, on Monday morning, Layen was released from this torment. He finally managed to convince his jailors that he was a law-abiding, hard-drinking Iban from Sarawak (and not Sabah, as the police kept asking).

As Layen walked out from the lock-up, he received no apology, nor expression of remorse, from his captors. Instead, he received some advice: he was told not to eat in public during daytime hours.

My friend says Layen is now back in Sarawak. Layen remains bitter to this day, and despises the policing of food.

Carnal sins

The fasting month truly is the holiest month of the year for Muslims.

To be able to fast an entire day, forsaking food, drink, sex and – hardest of all – withstanding the craving for a smoke, is difficult enough for a single day. To do it for a month forces a man to examine his own beliefs and values, and how much he treasures them: never a bad thing.

Still, I wonder whether Malaysian officialdom is overly obsessed with the visceral and carnal aspects of religious showmanship.

Threatening to whip Kartika for drinking beer (then see-sawing in indecisiveness as the contempt of the world descends on us yet again) is one example.

Beating a young Iban man for eating in public is another. Arresting partygoers in a nightclub and forcing a female to urinate in front of policemen is another ugly instance.

Threatening to disrupt a state government in Kedah over the location of a pig abattoir is a further – politically irresponsible – example.

The emphasis on material expressions of religious piety, and abhorrence of the sins of the “oh, that this too too solid flesh would melt” variety, are echoed in all cultures. All the major religions have injunctions against some kind of meat, at some time during the religious calendar.

The physicality of religious devotion is obvious during mortification of the self.

Some Catholics practise self-flagellation and crucifixion during Good Friday re-enactments. Some Buddhists, Hindus and Jains prostrate themselves, then kneel, then walk, every single step during the circumambulation of Mount Kailash in Tibet. Some Shia men wield chains against their own bodies during the festival of Ashoura. Some Hindus skewer their own flesh when they carry the kavadi during Thaipusam.

Yet all religions also teach that the flesh is temporal and is but an empty shell for the dwelling of the soul.

To take this to its logical conclusion, religious devotion would best be served by purifying the mind and soul, rather than focusing on injunctions on food and flesh. The sins of greed and envy, corruption and hunger for power, violence and racism, do far worse damage than the consumption of certain proscribed foods.

The theological debate goes on, whether a sin performed on oneself, such as humping a cow or drinking a beer, does more harm than, say, embezzling 12 billion ringgit from Malaysian taxpayers in PKFZ.

Chua Soi Lek has been thrown out of the MCA for sexual indiscretion, supposedly for bringing the party into disrepute. His dismissal begs the question why perpetrators of the RM12 billion PKFZ theft have not been brought to justice, having made the party a butt of scathing jokes.

Perhaps we should remind our political representatives via open debate, and via the ballot box, that holding to a maxim such as “you are what you think” would be better for the country than “you are what you eat”.

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