I wanted to write some thoughts down about Ops Lalang, today being its anniversary. I find I can’t say anything that hasn’t already been said by those more able and closer to the events of those days. It’s been about 18 years since Ops Lalang by my reckoning. I was barely a teen and only interested in badminton and comics from the Sunday Star, which was I noticed it missing at the time.
I don’t know if the memory of Ops Lalang remains a rallying point for anti-ISA activists, or just plain normal folks who think giving the government the wherewithal to lock you up without question is wrong. Do Malaysians even bother, these days?
Don’t get me wrong. I don’t remember Ops Lalang at all. It just doesn’t form part of my memories of those days. I wasn’t as obsessed about politics then as I am now, I suppose, and more’s the pity. It became a non-event for me, and straddling as I am between a generation that grew up under the spectre of the ISA and a generation that grew up on a staple diet of MTV music videos, I find my position in the larger scheme of things rather disturbing.
I suppose old events fade like a bad stain over time: a residue of memory lodged deep in the collective consciousness, but slowly fading like a candle burning down to its roots. Here’s to the 106 arrested and held without recourse to the most basic of rights. I just hope more people would remember.
Can’t say I was ever political at all, then or now. Of that incident 18 years ago, I can only very vaguely remember that front page of The Star, full of mugshots of those arrested.
FFWD to present… that lingering though extremely blurred memory is still very powerful in my consciousness, albeit connected to a different, not unrelated context - that of the freedom of the press. It is, for me, a powerful reminder that today, the freedom of the Malaysian press, is to all intents and purposes, really and only, a freedom of the powerful. One that produces a blandness that continually threatens the democratic process.
FFWD to the boom and bloom of the media industry in the last decade. If anything, the democratic right to freedom of expression has been even more severely restricted over the past 18 years. The ISA, the PPPA and the Sedition Act - are part of the regulatory regime that intimidates or silences critical reporting.
The chilling reality of these terrible threats is still within living memory - “Operasi Lallang”.
In the words of Kean Wong (a former editor of The Sun): “… in one fell swoop… a whole generation of mainstream journalists who until that time had some tradition of independent inquiry was wiped out and that whole culture was compromised and hobbled”.
That faded but still powerful memopry is why, unthinking nad self-righteous people (with the ‘Bush you-are-either-with-us-or-against-us’ mentality) who lodge police reports over stupid rants in their comment boxes - both published and unpublished - parading their intolerance and publicity-obsessed behaviour under the guise of social responsibility have nothing but my utter contempt.
Comment by percolator — Wednesday, 2 November 2005 @ 11:11 am
I think there are several ways to tackle the problem. I think there has existed a certain presumption about online postings being inviolable and exempt from real-life consequences. There are instances in which some of us might agree that there should exist a certain kind of governance on the web, but it’s currently all a jumble, really.
On the one hand, apologists feel you get what you deserved if you write seditious content, and on the otherhand these same people declare that you get what you deserve from that other, titular deux ex machina online viz. other bloggers.
There should, at least, be some kind of consistency, I hope.
With respect lambasting other bloggers, what minishorts wrote might have sparked off something in my head, but is by no means an imprecation on her and her alone, but what seems, like you’ve said, a whole culture of “calling others out”. The extreme example (bordering on absurdity) is that whores.blogsome.com blog.
The disjunct is precisely that there now exists a culture of criticizing rather than being critical, I suppose. The irony, I feel, is that we all partake in this. I suppose the only cure is to be critical when an issue warrants such attention.
I never quite realized that angle on a whole generation of reporters suddenly being swallowed up, but I think that might explain the bland coverage we’ve been subjected to for the past decade or so.
I suppose it’s true when they say talent takes time to develop; it’s unfortunate so many reporters found themselves cut short in full bloom.
Comment by xpyre — Wednesday, 2 November 2005 @ 10:26 pm