Amanah veteran Ishak Surin dies

Amanah veteran and long-time activist Ishak Surin passed away this morning.

The party announced that he died at 4am and was slated to be buried at the Kampung Puah Muslim cemetery, Kuala Lumpur, at 11am today.

The 88-year-old had led Amanah’s Batu division and was previously the Batu PAS leader.

Ishak was also among the earliest members of Angkatan Pemuda Insaf (API) - which is the youth wing of the influential independence movement Parti Kebangsaan Melayu Malaya (PKMM) - prior to the British colonial authorities banning it in 1947.

He played a key role in starting up PAS’ mouthpiece Harakah by finding ways to circumvent the publication's lack of a permit to print newspapers.

In his later years, Cikgu Ishak - as he was fondly called - was best known as a heritage activist calling for the preservation of heritage sites around Kuala Lumpur, whether it was Jalan Sultan in the Chinatown area, Kampung Railway with its predominantly ethnic-Indian communities, or Kampung Banda Dalam that he called home.

“Take Kampung Railway, for example, the Indians there were brought in as railway workers and given a place there to stay. What's wrong with preserving the place properly as a part of our heritage?

“The Chinese on Jalan Sultan; there are many historical places there. There was a place in Jalan Sultan that was a meeting point for independence fighters – to plan, discuss, oppose the colonists, and win independence.

“It was the opera house (Yan Keng Benevolent Dramatic Association). It looks like an opera house, but behind it was where they met. I heard that even (Kuomintang leader) Dr Sun Yat-sen was there to discuss how to free our country from the colonists.

“With places like this, of course, we must look after it. But these are the places that people want to tear apart. This is vile, very vile!” he told Malaysiakini in a 2016 interview.

Read more: Malaysianskini on Ishak Surin

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