Two Saturdays ago, the performing arts troupe Teater Bukan Teater brought ‘Bilik Sulit’ to Nottingham, on the final leg of its #UnoMalaysia Political and Cultural Exhibition tour in the United Kingdom.

Led by social activist, comedian and serial jailbird Hishamuddin Rais, the short play depicts the terrors of the now-repealed Internal Security Act (ISA).

Yet, while the ISA is gone, the horrors of detention without trial live on in the new Prevention of Crime Act (PCA) (Amendment and Extension) 2013, which came into force a mere three days before that final performance. It made the show all the more relevant and timely.

The play opens the same way many ISA arrests do: in the dead of night, some unwelcome visitors knock on the door, there is a commotion and a struggle before silence drops again as our protagonist is hauled off to Kamunting.

This scene, like a lot of abuse in the play, takes place off-screen. It makes use of sound, some dim lighting, and a darkened room. The audience’s imagination does the rest.

While the show is all about the brutality and abuse of an outdated idea, it is also just as much about the horrors not seen. When we hear the protagonist scream at some untold torture behind a curtain, our imaginations conjure up visions worse than anything Hishamuddin could put on stage – and the play is that much more effective for it.

What we get to see is certainly enough. The poor prisoner is blindfolded and beaten as his captors try to coerce a confession out of the cuffed man.

His identity and humanity is chipped away at, both figuratively and literally. His name is substituted for a serial number and he is made to strip. He is put on all fours like a dog and stepped on. He is cut off from anything familiar – no family, no food, no sight, no sleep. His clothes are traded for an orange prison uniform. He stays silent, throughout most of the play.

The Special Branch men lack identities as well, their lacking intelligence being their only notable trait (something of a running joke in the play).

They have no names – as Hisham later relates, he came to know his interrogators by the shirts they wore or the habits they had, rather than their names. They commit their abuses with no seeming remorse or compassion.

Just following orders?

Hisham later told a story that puts an interesting spin on this. Sometime after his detention he apparently came across one of his interrogators – funnily enough, it was the driver of a taxi he was in.

The best part was that it wasn’t Hishamuddin who recognised the man – it was the driver who recognised him! Neither was he embarrassed or upset at seeing Hisham, apparently.

He was just saying hello, as one ‘professional’ might do to another. Imagine an off-duty Wile E Coyote waving to the Road Runner across the street. Or Tom giving Jerry a handshake after hours.

“Till today, I have his number on my phone,” Hishamuddin tells us.

The seemingly nonchalance of the interrogators about their past raises some interesting questions.

Do these officers see the torture they perpetrate as ‘just following orders’, as part and parcel of their job? Is the identity-stripping just a way for them to dehumanise and depersonalise their victim, the better to mitigate any guilt?

We may never know for sure. But seen in that light, the scenes play out a little more frighteningly – to think that these men could be so abusive and vindictive, all in the name of their job.

Passions provoke passions

Amidst passions running high in the play, the lone voice of reason during much of this is the protagonist’s unseen wife, whose thoughts interject at several points.

She plays an important role, not just to poke holes in the flawed logic of the interrogators, but to act as an audience surrogate by actually speaking what we think. The interrogators tell the man to sign a confession, saying they have a mountain of evidence against him – but if they did, why not just take him to trial?

In a way, she is also a stand-in for her silent husband, a sort of soundboard for the thoughts he is having throughout.

But passions provoke passions. Those thoughts of reason boil over by the end of the play’, as the detainee breaks free of his cuffs, rips off his blindfold and rains his righteous fury on his captors.

Throughout the play, his orange prison clothes stick out against the dull blues and whites of his captors. It ties in nicely with the idea of the impersonal captors versus the caged man, clinging on to life.

He never gives in and never signs the confession, and at the end lets his passions burst free. The fact the play is done entirely in Malay also adds to this – something about volume and passion just works well in the language.

Recalling ‘Beng Hock’

The play is fairly reminiscent of ‘Beng Hock’, a take on the death of political aide Teoh Beng Hock at the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission’s (MACC) Selangor headquarters in Shah Alam five years ago.

Both make use of sparse and minimalist settings to offer us an intimate look into the potential cruelties of interrogation. The protagonists in both are wronged men who manage to hold out, rather than falter.

However, the differences between the two are more illuminating. While ‘Beng Hock’ was a man-on-the-street’s imagined take on the events, ‘Bilik Sulit’ comes from the first-hand experiences of Hishamuddin and others.  

At the end of ‘Beng Hock’, the protagonist ‘rises’ from the floor and takes his seat again as the unnamed stranger on a bench – if only Beng Hock ( left ) could have just got up as well. The fantasy of ‘Bilik Sulit’ also lies in its ending, but instead of our protagonist meeting his end, he manages to rally against his tormentors.

What we get in the end is one story about losing control and irreversible consequences, and another about fighting back. The victim’s rant at the end is almost a rallying cry, and the way it reflects the thoughts of the audience makes it resonate.

‘Beng Hock’ offers us its closest approximation of the truth, a painstaking reconstruction of events based on reports from the MACC. ‘Bilik Sulit’ is as true as it gets, and even then, it only shows us a fraction of what happens in Kamunting, as Hisham lets on.

He gives us an example: the long interrogations are torturous, but the long solitude is as well. Detainees resort to anything to stay occupied – nasi lemak wrapping is cut up, chicken bones are used as pens, dried coffee is used as ink and voila – makeshift playing cards.

It was funny to hear of Hisham playing solitaire in prison, but only because it was Hishamuddin Rais telling the story. On paper the story is much more chilling.

We may never know what really happened with Teoh Beng Hock – but of the ISA, though, we already know too much.

NICHOLAS WONG is a former intern with Malaysiakini 's Newsdesk. He was an Asean scholar and is now pursuing his law degree in the UK.