They're still scared of Chin Peng
The arrest Sunday by Malaysian security forces of a Socialist Party
member of parliament and 30 others for allegedly intending to wage war
against the country’s Yang di-Pertuan Agong, or king, appears to be a
throwback to 50 years ago when Communists still thronged the country’s
jungles.
The arrest has opposition party members scratching their heads in
confusion and attempting to discern what actually happened at a police
checkpoint in Penang, where police said the party members had been found
with subversive materials instigating an overthrow of the government.
Opposition figures said the 30 were on a campaign swing in the north of
the country to seek to generate support for a bigger rally on July 9
that has police – and the ruling Barisan Nasional – much more clearly
worried. Sources within the United Malays National Organization, the
country’s biggest ethnic political party and the leader of the ruling
Barisan Nasional, say that rally, by an organization called Bersih, or
the Coalition for Clean and Fair Elections, an umbrella group
encompassing 64 civil-society groups, has been hijacked by Pakatan
Rakyat, the three-party opposition coalition made up principally of
Parti Islam se-Malaysia, the Democratic Action Party and Parti Keadilan
Rakyat, headed by opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim.
The Bersih rally’s organizers say they are not connected to any
political parties. Although the July 9 rally has been declared illegal
by the police, the organizers, headed by Ambiga Sreenevasan, the former
president of the Bar Council, say they plan to march through the streets
of Kuala Lumpur to deliver a petition to the Agong, whom Parti Sosialis
supposedly wants to overthrow.
Adding to police concerns, the Malay nationalist NGO Perkasa, led by
firebrand Ibrahim Ali, and the youth division of UMNO say they will hold
counter-rallies, increasing the possibility of violent confrontation.
Home Minister Hishammuddin Hussein has said that he wouldn’t rule out
using the country’s strict Internal Security Act, which allows in effect
for indefinite detention, on the organizers of the Bersih rally, but
maintained that other laws will be used for now.
Indeed, the security establishment has considerable reason for concern
even without the counter-rallies. A massive rally in Kuala Lumpur in
November 2007 by led by Bersih brought 40,000 people to the streets in
one of the biggest anti-government rallies Malaysia had seen to that
point. It was a harbinger of the March, 2008 vote that cost the Barisan
Nasional its two-thirds lock on Parliament and the leadership of five
states.
That rally turned central Kuala Lumpur into chaos as baton-wielding riot
police used water cannon and tear gas to try and thwart an attempt by
tens of thousands of marchers to deliver a petition to Malaysia’s king,
asking for royal intervention in delivering electoral reform.
As the current Bersih rally has become closer to reality, the government
has grown more concerned, warning that any violence would be met with
force.
“The Bersih marches have been hijacked by opposition parties ahead of
pending national elections in a bid to cause unrest while clamoring for
electoral reform despite the elections that yielded huge gains for the
opposition,” said a lawyer close to Umno. “Furthermore, elements of the
outlawed communist Party of Malaya have reared their ugly head with the
tacit backing from the DAP and the Bar Council, which is widely seen as
engaging the ruling Umno Government to dilute its Malay privileges and
national identity that places Islam as its official religion. How else
to explain the arrests of 30 Parti Sosialis Malaysia (PSM) activists in
Penang late Saturday, apparently under section 122 of the Penal Code
which arraigns rebellion against the king?”
The Penang deputy police chief, Abdul Rahim Jaafar said police seized 28
T-shirts, eight of which bore pictures of figures such as the long-dead
Argentine revolutionary figure Che Guevara, from the 30 Parti Sosialis
members. As a flock of critics pointed out, the Che T-shirts can be
bought all over the night markets of Kuala Lumpur and Penang.
Although the Communists were defeated in 1960, the insurgency dragged on
in the northern jungles on the Thai border until 1989, almost unnoticed
by the bulk of Malaysians, who had got about the business of turning
their country into a capitalist, exporting powerhouse that made
Communism basically irrelevant. With the insurgency over for the past
22 years, the Communist Party remains outlawed and the party’s elderly
longtime leader, Chin Peng, remains outside the country despite a plea
to be allowed to come back so that he could die with his family.
Opposition figures including the DAP’s Lim Kit Siang ridiculed the
arrests, saying on his blog that they were more an indication over the
government’s “fret and fever” over the planned July 9 march that “has
driven elements of our security establishment nuts.”
“The arrest and remand for seven days of 30 individuals (including two
juveniles in their teens), apparently for having in their possession
certain paraphernalia including T-shirts with images of former communist
leaders, for waging war against the King is a reflection of such a
clampdown,” he told the news website Malaysian Insider.
“By analogy, if one were to be at home wearing a Che Guevara (the
Marxist revolutionary) T-shirt listening to a song attacking the
institution of royalty by either The Smiths or The Sex Pistols, one
faces a very real likelihood of being investigated for waging war
against the King. This surely cannot be.”
“The Communist Party is an outlawed political organisation. It is
unlawful to display and promote communist elements,” Abdul Rahim, the
police official, told reporters. Among other things, he said, some of
the Ts-shirts bore the emblem of what looked like the Barisan Nasional
logo being cut with a pair of scissors, and the words Anti-Capitalism
and Udahlah tu.. Bersaralah (That's enough, retire).
Other items confiscated included copies of the Sosialis Party organ in
various languages along with 600 pamphlets advertising the Bersih rally.
Some, Abdul Rahim said, contained “seditious content.”
Most of those arrested have been ordered held for seven days.
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