special

A few days after Hari Raya, late one October evening in 1975, a figure stood on the banks of a river by the northern frontier town of Golok. Thailand was just a five-minute rakit ride across the shallow waters.

It was nearing maghrib , perfect for a crossing. He instructed the old boatman to take him across for 20 sen. He didn't look back as they made their way to the other side. It was only when he stepped onto Thai soil that he allowed himself that glance backwards.

"I remember the bamboo of the banks and the old man taking the rakit back to the Malaysian side. The sun was setting. That was my first sense of freedom." Oliver Stone would have wept.

The funny thing about this cinematic moment in Malaysian history was that, while all this drama was unfolding at the Thai-Malaysian border to the audience of one pakcik nelayan from Rantau Panjang, members of the Special Branch were speculating if Hishamuddin Rais was among a group of hooded protesters in Sydney demonstrating against the official visit of the Malaysian Prime Minister Tun Abdul Razak.

Little did they know that, after a year underground, Malaysia's trendiest rebel was finally leaving the country.

Rebels do not thrive in Malaysia. Well, not before Mahathir and Anwar, anyway. Traditionally, the entrenched 'values' of piety, honour, respect and budi bahasa that mixes with our inherited feudalism within a more insidious patriarchal order make it difficult soil for rebel seedlings to take root. Jebat learnt his lesson the hard way while Tuah was rewarded for his loyalty.

Arrest binge

One Sunday morning, Dec 8 1974, several thousand students in Malaysia learnt it the hard way. After a week of students battling with tear gas and the Federal Reserve Unit, the universities finally capitulated and opened the gates to the authorities.

A wave of police swept through the campuses beginning at 2am in Kuala Lumpur's Universiti Malaya on an arresting binge. Students were lined up and checked - anyone who was on the 'list' of rabble-rousers was taken away.

This national storming of universities was Operasi Mayang - or Operation Nip-it-in-the-bud ( mayang referring to the seedling or bud of a plant).

Across the causeway, Singapore followed suit. Those who were caught up in this wave of arrests joined Anwar Ibrahim, whose detention one week earlier had sparked off the December 3-8 student 'uprising'.

With Operasi Mayang , Anwar's call-to-action cry for students to be the 'Conscience of the Majority' that rallied across the country from 1971 to 1974 was effectively silenced.

The rebels were gathered and locked up, the Universities and Colleges Act was amended, efficiently killing any sort of fledgling dissent or protest from students.

Catching everyone by surprise was the unprecedented use of the Internal Security Act (ISA) on a number of student leaders, including Anwar, who stayed at the Kamunting detention centre in Taiping for two years.

However, one student managed to slip through the net. He was Hishamuddin Rais, and was - for a long time - a thorn in the side of Malaysia, an unwanted reminder of a time when the country failed its younger generation.

The class of '74

Nov '94 - By the time I got to Baze II, the party was already in full-swing. It was the annual year-end party for the Turnaround Managers Inc group, a low-profile Malaysian-based business corporation with a host of high profile projects.

Their specialty - taking over ailing projects and companies and turning them around, hence the company's name. I scanned the crowd - Halim Saad stood in one corner chatting with two Malay College of Kuala Kangsar (MCKK) old boys.

A few senior executives from Renong exchanged witticisms with a business writer by the bar. I recognised familiar faces from the advertising industry. It was definitely a mixed group.

In that first sweeping impression, however, I noted that the common thread that linked all of them together was the fact that most were forty-something, no less.

I found Hishamuddin - 'Isham' to his friends - Rais quite easily in the crowd. I was there on his invitation to meet a few other members of Universiti Malaya's infamous Class of '74.

Kamarazzaman Yacob was the president of the university's student union or the Persatuan Mahasiswa Universiti Malaya (PMUM) at the time of the student crackdown in 1974.

He spent two years in Kamunting, detained under the ISA. Alim Latif, now an assistant editor with Utusan Melayu , was the editor of the union's paper, Mahasiswa Negara , Adi Satria, senior account director with ad agency McCann-Erickson was then the PMUM deputy secretary and had also spent about two years in Kamunting with Kamarazzaman and Anwar Ibrahim.

As Isham made the introductions, one corporate-type slapped him on the back and laughed, "So how's our favourite communist?" The others laughed, Isham the loudest. Before Isham could respond, someone came by to drag him off to meet yet another long lost friend.

I stood at the fringes of this strange private world watching as Isham moved through the crowd of one-time fellow rebels, now corporate movers and shakers, stirring memories dulled by time and change. The camaraderie that night took on the air of a reunion. After 20 years, the prodigal son had returned.

When news came that Malaysia's most famous exile was to return to Malaysia - " tanpa syarat " (unconditionally) - I was intrigued. Most of my years in Universiti Malaya were spent discussing the sad state of affairs of student activism - or the lack of it - in the country. There was little to choose from the narrow racialistic lines of the main student bodies like the PMUM and all the unashamedly fascist groups that masqueraded themselves as 'language' societies.

Among the names that cropped up in our "Where have all the activists gone?" ruminations was 'Mr Conscience of the Majority' himself. Saudara Anwar Ibrahim (now Datuk Seri).

While Anwar's name was respectfully invoked frequently in our discussions, the mystique had disappeared. He was, after all, the Minister of Education (at that time), having shed the rebel image and become a respected member of the ruling party. He was the UM graduate-done-good, a beacon for us to strive towards.

Independent spirit

In a way (albeit through no fault of his), Anwar's meteoric rise through the ranks of government has become somewhat a negative influence on genuine activism. Now, ambitious student leaders had something else on their agenda - and a new breed of wannabe Anwars emerged.

They imitated him in everything, even getting right down to his pidato -style inflections. Go to any PMUM-organized talk, debat (debate) or demonstration today and you'll know what I mean. The only thing this ragtag group did not manage to imitate was Anwar's willingness to go to jail for his beliefs.

Then again, Anwar et al had solid issues of poverty and imperialism on their agenda, rather than gate-crashing concerts and inflicting holier-than-thou exhortations on their peers. Isham Rais, however, was different matter.

He was, like Anwar, a reminder to us that there once was a time when students in our university were a little more exciting, intelligent and honestly passionate about the 'real' issues. However, unlike Anwar, he was never caught and reoriented into mainstream Malaysian society.

He was never around long enough to be made into a parody. The memory of his rebellion was preserved. This made him the perfect icon that appealed to our young and (I admit it now) raw idealism and that instinctual streak of rebellion that all self-respecting youths were supposed to have.

Professor KS Jomo of Universiti Malaya's economics faculty remembers Isham Rais in an almost similar light, although without the romanticism of our youth. "Isham was the recognised leader among the trendy counter-cultural group of students. He was a very independent spirit and enjoyed being outrageous. This spirit was not necessarily political."

Jomo, who was then lecturing at Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM), met Isham through a student of his, just before the Tasik Utara incident in September 1974.

"He sold me a pirated copy of Felix Green's The Enemy ," Jomo recalls wryly. "You must remember that in the 70s, it was very trendy to be an activist. There were extroverted and exhibitionist elements in both the UM and USM fringe groups.

They were the real 'trendies' - the long hair, the studied casualness. I don't think Isham managed to persuade anybody that he was a disciplined member of any leftist organization. Even now.

"In fact, I've always maintained that the repression of students in '74 was a case of overkill. I mean, putting Anwar in Kamunting? I don't think anyone seriously believed Anwar was a threat to national security, except perhaps in under-worked minds and overworked imaginations."

Lawyer Philip Koh, who was a first-year student at UM's law faculty during the 1973-74 period, acknowledges that some of the youthful exuberance of the students then was misguided.

"However, there was an idealism that is absent in the moribund, banal live students lead today". Koh was the assistant secretary of UM's Law Society during the crackdown. "As first year students, we were more bystanders in the whole commotion. However, we did not dissociate ourselves from the issues. I could relate to Isham's perspective because it transcended race to tackle the issue of class struggle."

While Koh views that period in a positive light, he admits regret for the extreme right-wing backlash that followed. "The clampdown was total, from the tightening of the Universities and Colleges Act to the poisoning of the trees at the Speakers' Corner. The raison d'tre of a university as a place for passionate inquiry and learning was gone".

For many who attended UM after 1974, the return of Isham Rais to Malaysia has become a sort of vicarious rite-of-passage - a de-mythifying experience which I suspect has been long overdue. In many ways, I represent the typical post-74 student, the ones who inherited a stricter UCA from the Class of '74.

On one hand, in awe of them, on the other, resentful that their exuberance had effectively clipped our wings, our voices. They had beaten us to it - they were the anointed martyrs. Everything that came after paled by comparison.

While there might never be another Anwar Ibrahim, here was Isham Rais. In the flesh. Like a well-preserved icon caught in a time-warp. What more could an ex-UM journo ask for?

The making of a rebel

While most people like to believer that the career of Isham Rais as rebel-with-a-cause began in Pantai Valley, I am more inclined to believe it all started in Jelebu, Negri Sembilan, where he spent his formative childhood years.

Having been enrolled into school by his teacher-mother at an earlier age than most, the young Isham quickly displayed all signs of being your typical precocious brat. He read voraciously - everything from Jules Verne to newspapers in vernacular Jawi.

Being underage was something that would haunt him later in university - while everyone happily trotted off to Singapore on their own passports for an inter-varsity visit him throughout his life like an ironic leitmotif .

Isham finished his secondary education at the Malay College, Kuala Kangsar (MCKK) - yet another alma mater he shares with Anwar. In fact, although Anwar had already left MCKK for UM when Isham was there, he recalls frequent visits by his senior to the college for what was then known as Malam Pidato on Thursdays and Fridays.

"My time in MCKK radicalised my perspective," he recalled. It was the post-69 era, the memory of the racial riots still very fresh in the minds of the young and homogeneously Malay inhabitants of the college.

"I was caught in a strange situation, living with 500 other Malay boys who all shared one ideological perspective as far as the events of 1969 were concerned. I felt isolated by the shallow debates that went on and particularly by the fact that I refused to take a racial position. It was during this period when I sincerely wanted to leave Malay College".

But Isham stayed on, with the rest of his good middle-upper class schoolmates, brought up in true boarding school fashion to support the status quo, not rebel against it. "In fact," Isham laughed as he spoke about his MCKK days, "the Special Branch wanted to know how and why I deviated after such a good upbringing?"

So, why did you? I asked. "I'm not very sure myself. But my theory is that it must have been my intellectual curiosity. The need to understand was a very basic need for me. I questioned everything."

While it is very easy now to look back and applaud Isham's independence, one has to remember the context of 1969 and the paranoia of the times. These young Malay College neophytes had to return to school after the holidays in trains guarded by the army, with strict instructions not to disembark until they got to Kuala Kangsar. Of course, curiosity got the better of Isham. When his train stopped at KL from Seremban, he sneaked off all the way to Kampung Pandan to view the devastation of burnt houses. He went on to college, still maintaining his non-racial position.

'Freshie young punk'

When Isham joined Universiti Malaya as an undergraduate in 1971, the campus was already a hotbed of activism. The Speakers' Corner in front of the university's main library was the gathering place for students to debate issues. It was also the platform from which their leaders would inform them of ongoing plans of action.

"The university was truly autonomous then," recalls Adi Satria, two decades on. "It was a place where all ideas could be discussed. And there were so many ideas - whether it was nationalism or socialism, left, right or centre. Everything was there."

Adi Satria was one of the first friends Isham made on campus, both meeting as freshmen at the 5th College. The then deputy secretary of the University of Malaya Student Union (PMUM), he was also among the student leaders who were detained in 1974's Operasi Mayang .

"In many ways, the PMUM's progressive stand on the issues of justice and social equality was shared by the majority of the other student bodies. The ideas might have differed and the students were generally linked by a common goal," he explains. "But we were not just rabble-rousers. People tend to forget that during our time, the PMUM was a fully functioning student union. We operated the university's bus system, issued scholarships and loans. Did you know that the PMUM was the richest student union in Southeast Asia at that time?""

Isham lost no time getting active in the union, standing for elections in his first year there. "I ran for a council seat as a first-year student. The returning officer was Megat Junid," Isham laughed. "I was basically a young punk of a freshie standing for elections. Of course, I lost!" Undeterred, he joined Mahasiswa Negara , the union's publication, as a reporter in charge of the very hip cultural section.

Isham's enthusiasm led to his appointment as the executive secretary of the national coalition of student unions, a post he took so seriously that he decided to take a year's sabbatical leave and spent most of 1974 working in the student union building of UM. "My parents were shocked, they couldn't understand why I didn't want to graduate as soon as possible and get a job afterwards!"

This was the early 70s - a time when 'Student Power' was at its peak. All around the world, students were taking the lead in championing various causes, from the Vietnam War to matters closer to home, like poverty and corruption. Anwar Ibrahim's favourite call-to-action to students to be The 'Conscience of the Majority' was taken very seriously by the union, which was beginning to emerge as a formidable power by the time Isham joined UM.

Public agenda

There were many reasons why the PMUM became as strong as it was. Unity among the various student groups within the campus was one factor. Another was its links with other student unions, whether within or outside Malaysia.

Through Pertubuhan Kebangsaan Pelajar-Pelajar Malaysia (The Malaysian National Unions of Students), the students had links with other international student bodies in Thailand, Singapore and Hong Kong. "It was inevitable. After all, the issues were shared concerns - whether it was the Vietnam War or the Palestinian issue. These were all common issues in the 70s".

In the fallout and paranoia after 1974, there was much speculation that the PMUM and other student bodies were linked with international intelligence organizations, like the CIA and the KGB. In his book, Bersama Anwar Ke Penjara , (1994), Kamarazzaman Yaacob dedicates a whole chapter to describing how, as a student leader, he was 'courted' by various groups. While this might have been true, most students of that time believe that none of these organisations were successful.

"The union was quite open about which organisations it had links with, like the Al-Fatah arm of the PLO, for instance," Isham explained. "For instance, Abu Yacob, the PLO representative to Malaysia at that time, was invited to speak at forums organized by us. Our agenda was public knowledge. We supported the issues genuinely and sincerely."

[Part 2 will appear tomorrow]

SHERYLL STOTHARD is vice-president of Parti Rakyat Malaysia (PRM). She originally wrote the above article for the Men's Review in February and March 1995. The above is the first of a five-part series.

DOTMAI

Hishamuddin Rais

Penulis kolum ini sedang dinilai oleh polis sama ada akan dibawa ke kem tahanan lanjutan atau dibebaskan. Beliau telah ditahan selama 48 hari sejak 10 April lalu.

Hishamuddin Rais dibenarkan menerima lawatan anggota keluarga Rabu lalu.

Penulis kolum 'Dotmai' di malaysiakini kini sedang menjalani soal siasat secara intensif oleh unit-unit khas pasukan polis Cawangan Khas (SB).

Selepas 60 hari dikurung seorang diri dalam bilik kecil dan gelap dalam keadaan rehat yang tidak mencukupi, Hishamuddin akan dibawa ke kem tahanan lanjutan selama dua tahun di Kemunting, Perak jika Menteri Dalam Negeri Abdullah Badawi menurunkan tandatangan sebagai persetujuan.