He
said this on Oct 22, during the debate in Parliament on the amendments
to the Security Offences (Special Measures] Act (Sosma). The amendments
seek to place organised crime as an offence punishable under Sosma.Noh (left) said there was a threat of racial riots in 1987, resulting in the dragnet that saw more than 100 innocent Malaysians arrested and detained without trial under the Internal Security Act (ISA).
I was one of those detained and I happen to be one of the few Malaysians who have been documenting and monitoring Umno and the way it orchestrates "sensitive issues" whenever there is a crisis facing the party.
Yes, like the May 13 pogrom, Ops Lalang was also orchestrated by Umno. Unlike May 13, we have the benefit of more media coverage and more witnesses among the present generation regarding Operation Lalang.
Umno is facing a break-up
We know that 1987 that time during Dr Mahathir Mohamad's term when he faced the biggest threat to his rule, with Team B under Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah challenging the results of the Umno elections.
A court decision in Team B's favour would have meant the end of Mahathir's grasp on power.Thus, in the run up to Ops Lalang and before the assault on the judiciary resulting in the sacking of the Lord President and several other Supreme Court judges, the ruling party orchestrated a tense situation in the country by creating various "sensitive" issues.
These included the sending of non-Mandarin qualified administrators to the Chinese schools, conversion of Muslims to Christianity and even threats to organise a 500,000-people Umno rally in the capital.
All these were to justify the unleashing of ‘Ops Lalang' to deal with the so-called "threat to national security".
The country's first prime minister Tunku Abdul Rahman Putra, in his twilight years at that time, had more perception and integrity than Mahathir in his prime and certainly more political nous than the Tanjung Karang MP.
The Tunku, like many other perceptive democrats at the time, could see how Ops Lalang was orchestrated. This is how he described the situation:
"Umno was facing a break-up. The Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad's hold on the party appeared critical when election rigging was alleged to have given him a very narrow victory over Tengku Razaleigh. The case alleging irregularities brought by Umno members was pending in court. If the judgment went against him he would have no choice but to step down. So he had to find a way out of his predicament. A national crisis had to be created to bring UMNO together as a united force to fight a common enemy - and the imaginary enemy in this case was the Chinese community."
Gangsters new ‘threat to national security'?
The ISA has been at the convenient disposal of the government of the day ever since its introduction in 1960. When it was first introduced in Parliament, Abdul Razak Hussein tried to justify it by saying it would only be used against "communist terrorists".
Through
its grisly career, the ISA has been used most blatantly by the ruling
coalition to cripple its political opponents, most notably the arrest
and detention of practically the entire leadership of the Socialist
Front, the main threat to the Alliance during the Sixties.This sham democracy was the main reason for the Socialist Front's boycott of the 1969 general elections.
Since then, "threats to national security" have included Members of Parliament, trade unionists, environmentalists, educationists, Christian evangelists, Islamic practitioners, document forgers, and the list goes on...
Since the repeal of the ISA, detention without trial now comes in the guise of the Security Offences (Special Measures) Act. With the latest amendments to Sosma, we are told that gangsters are the new "threat to national security".
All this points not to any threat to the nation but to the machinations of a very insecure regime that orchestrates "sensitive issues" whenever any crisis to the ruling party necessitates it.
DR KUA KIA SOONG is adviser to the human rights NGO Suara Rakyat Malaysia (Suaram).
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