The 70-year-old man living in a remote farm house in the semi-rural area near Kuching raped his three teenage daughters for a few years. Two of the girls gave birth to a baby each, and the father was alleged to have killed and buried them in the backyard.

The whole ugly thing came to light when the third daughter became pregnant and was sent to the Sarawak General Hospital. She thought it was just a bad case of stomach flu. She had become intellectually impaired by then.

The old man was taken into police custody. A year later, the case went to court, and the case was thrown out, partly because the culprit's confession was not voluntarily given to the police. For the uninitiated, that means he was beaten by the interrogating officers into confessing his crimes.

Again the question arises: is it a standard though unofficial practice for policemen to torture prisoners under remand, or is it just the misdeeds of a few rogue officers who abuse their powers of detention?

The answer depends on who is being asked, I think. Ordinary innocent citizens who have had little business with the police department would probably not care either way. But people living on the shady fringes of our mainstream society would seem to know best.

Secret societies and gangs of bad hats do exist in Malaysia. They run a sort of black-market economy to the tune of probably billions, if you can call drug trafficking, prostitution, gambling, collecting protection money, loan-sharking, various forms of thefts and robbery, and various other kinds of unsavoury activities as "business".

In recent decades, some of the more market savvy among these gentlemen of questionable honour have also begun to put up legitimate business fronts, partly to launder their ill-gotten gains, and partly to gain a respectable footing in the community. The forward looking god-fathers will even join a political party or two, and aspire to the title of "Datuk"!

These illegal economic activities are the centrifugal centres that attract generations after generations of lost youths to the rank and file. The money is easy, and the lifestyle is lavish, even if the risks are high.

Sacrificial lambs

These are the gentlemen who know the local police department better than Bukit Aman and the Minister of Interior Security.

They would know the market price for bribing any particular police officer, and follow the promotion or transfer of high-ranking policemen with keen interest. I have seen with my own eyes how, during the heat of a police raid, such a godfather would just pick up a telephone and call the commanding officer.

They would explain with great patience to naive person like me why their friends in the police cannot avoid taking action sometimes. When the heat from above within the police department is too great, some sacrificial lambs have to be offered in appeasement. All these have been arranged, and all would blow over soon. It is just an "operation", a routine but necessary bleeding exercise.

These are the gentlemen who would tell you that their subordinate henchmen, errand boys, and foot soldiers expect to be "roughened up" when held under police remand.

They would never dream of complaining to Suhakam, or sue the police for violating their human rights of course. To them, it comes with the territory, as if being beaten by the police from time to time is one of their professional hazards.

Theirs is the murky universe of the underworld, replete with their own unique value system. Once you listen to them, and try to understand their way of reasoning, they are not the nihilistic criminals that the mainstream media have made them out to be.

'Interaction' with the cops

Not so long ago, it was my job to listen to them, or their friends and relatives, when they were held by the police under remand. Their human stories ought to be told, for us to understand how the social problems of crimes originated at least, if nothing else. (Unfortunately, the peculiar nature of their world forbids those interesting stories from seeing the light of day.)

One of the motifs that permeate through their alternative trove of dark lore is their 'interaction' with the police.

For instance, here was this leading light in the world that lives and dies by violence, whom I shall refer to merely as RM. His reckless ferocity in gang fights and his sense of honour had become a legend among young recruits.

After he had been detained and interrogated by his opposite number in the police, a certain Inspector GBH and a legend in his own right, he was unable to do the toilet thing except to shed blood for quite a few days after his release. Strangely enough, RM did not seem to bear much grudge against his tormenter afterwards; perhaps he thought the experience enhanced his status among his peers.

Here is the paradox. RM and countless fearsome warriors like him throughout Malaysia would have no qualm to recover their assortment of weapons from their hiding places and go on a war path against their rivals for various reasons. But, unlike the communist fighters in earlier years, they would not attack policemen.

It is as if they have accepted in their hearts the legitimacy of the police as the enforcement branch of the state.

High moral ground

In fact, they often feel a kindred spirit with the policemen who monitor and haunt them. The policemen live and die by violence also. The only difference is that the police people are licensed by the state to deal out violence. A few godfathers would jokingly tell me that policemen are merely licensed gangsters!

Their perception of the police is vastly different from the self-perception of the policemen themselves of course. The thoughtful officers often see themselves as the guardians of the society in which we live, almost in the sense of guardianship as described in Plato's Republic.

Since most of our senior police officers are Malays, I can imagine them justifying their work after the model of the legendary Hang Tuah. They act against criminals from the moral high ground of the sanctity of the law, in the tradition of a hero - or pahlawan - as exemplified by Hang Tuah.

After all, their job - along with that of the armed forces - is the only one in the country that would put their life at great risks. Within the rank and file of the police, they have their own myths of those past heroes who sacrificed their lives for the country in the fight against communists and criminals. And now, they have "terrorists".

With the exceptions of the young constables who are still wet behind their ears, and those seasoned sergeants and corporals who have passed their shelf lives, many policemen I know are still motivated by their sense of duty, dedication, courage, and heroism, even if these fine sentiments may be misplaced at times.

This is how they justify their rough actions to themselves when they have to elicit confessions or information from those held under remand.

As a young police inspector told me laughingly, "If you don't beat them up, how will you make them talk?" Surprisingly, a senior lawyer known for his defence of human rights privately admitted to me once, "The police seldom beat up the wrong people."

From my superficial knowledge of secret societies and gangs, I must give credit to the police for keeping them in check, most of the time. True enough, we are nowhere near Japan, which has one of the lowest crime rates in the world. But, Malaysia is relatively safe, for citizens and tourists, except for some trouble spots in certain large urban centres.

Nevertheless, the amount of violence applied on detained suspects to obtain information is still disturbing.

As a senior police officer who had taken a course in criminology in the US told me once, the powers of the police to detain prisoners under remand for up to 14 days may make the policemen lazy in doing detective work.

Respect, protect dignity

Detectives are supposed to detect crimes. But with the power to pull in suspects and coerce information out of them, why should they work so hard on information gathering from the local community and conduct cumbersome surveillance on criminal elements?

More importantly though, is the idea of Rule of Law. Under the law, all citizens are presumed innocent until proven guilty by a court of law. This is the bed-rock of a democratic civilisation, a First World ideal if you like.

This is the principle that demands the State to respect and protect the dignity and personal safety of every citizen, and a reminder that the State is supposed to serve her citizens, and not the other way round.

Policemen who have worked too long with criminals tend to regard every suspect as a potential criminal. When the crucial line between mere suspects and actual criminals is blurred, it is all too easy for policemen to assume the self-appointed role of judge and executioner as well.

Therefore, policemen who inflict any act of violence on prisoners under detention for any purpose have subverted the legitimacy of the state and the sanctity of the Rule of Law. They also undermine the moral authority of the institution of the police in the hearts of the people.

In this context, the number of deaths of suspects held in police custody is a crying shame. So is the case of numerous innocent citizens being hauled into detention under remand for up to 14 days, and then released without charges levelled against them.

What this country needs is not the mere piecemeal improvement of the treatment of remand prisoners. What you need is a total overhaul of our philosophy on security, and a review of all the legislations that have given the police such sweeping powers over the lives of the citizens.

It is about time our police force also makes a frog leap from a Third to a First World mentality!

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