MGG Pillai Commentary View

<< Previous || Next >>

Malaysia threatens to sue author for defamation

The world is infested with Al Qaida-linked terrorists. Washington insists upon it. So it must be true. For would Washington ever tell a lie? George Washington would not. So, could the capital named after him? A man writes a book about it, short on verifiable facts, long on unprovable and unproven hypotheses. It came out at a time this war on terror needed a publicist. And an instant expert he becomes. He tells the world, in ever pontificating and authoritative certainty, of what the future beckons if the Al Qaida network is not smashed, recycling his hypothesis at every opportunity that it comes to be taken as fact.

It was once this way with the communists. Those detained in the 1950s were for their alleged links to the communist underground. Those today have to be linked to Al Qaida. The Al Qaida is the enemy of the moment as communism was in decades past. The enemy changes with the times, but not the motive of governments for an enemy. So when Dr Rohan Gunaratna accuses the National Front (BN), ABIM, PAS, and others in Malaysia of being involved with Al Qaeda, it fits in with the Washington belief that Muslim countries, friend or foe, must be, and are, involved. Truth is held hostage to propaganda. Dr Gunaratna is an unwitting but efficient publicist for it.

The deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, is livid BN is linked to this terror. How could it when Malaysia is in the forefront in this war on terror? A UN report which states it -- not surprisingly since Dr Gunaratne had a hand in its preparation -- makes no new startling disclosures; all he did, as the book shows, is to recycle into the terrorist focus what Malaysia, BN, PAS, ABIM and others did in the past to link, or help, those organisations which are today labelled as Al Qaida operatives or links.

It is an academic's search for truth from primary sources but revised, usually to propel a self-fulfilling conclusion, to fit into current thinking to make nonsense of it all. So, if you go by what Malaysia did, and has done, with what are now groups linked by Washington to the Al Qaida network, the Malaysian parties mentioned becomes, ipso facto, terrorist groups. But are they? In the long standing dispute between Malaysia and the Philippines over Sabah, both Manila and Kuala Lumpur encouraged anti-national sentiments and activities in the other's terrority. The Philippines sent armed irregulars into Sabah as Malaysia into Mindanao, where a festering Muslim irredentist movement had kept Manila preoccuped for half-a-century and more. But in today's idiom, what the Philippines did is to protect its territorial integrity; what Malaysia did an act of terror.

The Mindanao Muslim demand for autonomy, and Manila's claim to Sabah, were issues Kuala Lumpur and Manila exploited to the full. But it is Kuala Lumpur alone that is blamed, because it dealt with, and backed with funds and other support, the Muslim irredentists. The late Sabah chief minister, Tun Mustapha bin Datu Harun, openly backed the Mindanao rebels, Malaysia gave shelter to several Mindanao rebels. I have met many a secessionist Muslim Filipino leader in Kuala Lumpur at the time, All had Malaysian passports issued in Kota Kinabalu. The Moro National Liberation Front leader, Mr Nur Misuari, when I interviewed him in Tripoli, Libya, in 1976, was there on a Malaysian passport.

When the MNLF spit, a new separatist group called the Moro Islamic Liberation Front was formed, with as much support from Malaysian politicians and groups as the MNLF had. That support remains. It is now convenient to link that support to the larger war on terror that Washington has unleashed. But the Malaysian support is not so it supports Al Qaida, but to irritate Manila in this ongoing shadow boxing over the Philippines claim to Sabah. When the Abu Sayyaf group seized tourists from a disputed island off Sabah a few years ago, the former chief minister of Sabah, Dato' Yong Teck Lee, and the current deputy minister of education, Dato' Aziz Shamsuddin, backed by sundry Sabah and federal politicians, were deeply involved in the negotiations to have them released. There is more to their presence, as of others high in the government, than meets the eye.

Dr Gunaratna is right only in that Malaysia and the groups he mentions were, and are, involved in these separatist groups. But he cannot extend it any further than that. Malaysia is involved today in this war on terror so it could rein in its political opponents at home. Its support of separatist groups in Mindanao is a local tit-for-tat diplomacy by other means, and has nothing to do with this egregious war on terror. But Washington labels, or leans to labelling, some of these groups -- Jemaah Islamiyah in Indonesia, Abu Sayyaf in the Philippines, BN, PAS, ABIM in Malaysia -- as partners in the Al Qaida network. Dr Gunaratna therefore had few qualms about mentioning it. It needs an enemy it can demonise. Let us not forget the more Muslim groups he includes, however tenuous, the more "complete" his thesis to link Islam with terrorism will be. When these allegations and assertions are repeated ad nauseum it comes to be accepted as the truth. But is it the truth?

Similarly, the Malaysian government accuses the Al Maunah group and the Kesatuan Militan Malaysia of being involved in the Al Qaida network, based on the same assumptions Washington makes over Al Qaida. There is as yet no proof of either group's involvement in the terror the Malaysian government insists there is. When the police harrass any with a different point of view, these allegations get full run and comes to be accepted, as in the global war on terror, to be accepted as truth. When in that perceived truth, and the ever fanciful hypotheses that flow from it, the friend becomes foe, there is no recourse. It is caught in the same Kafkaesque horror that one accused of terrorism is faced with.

Dr Gunaratna has become an expert because he is prepared to make the allegations that confirms the demonised credentials of the enemy of the global superpower. He has the qualifications for it. He is from a third world country even if he lives, and practises his craft, in the first; he is not a Caucasian; he comes from a country which has had an violent and seemingly irreversible irredentist confrontation for decades, and therefore is known to be knowledgeable about such matters; he has the gravitas, and demeanour, of an expert, able to hold his ground in television interviews; he repeats his allegations and supposition with such confidence and assertion that one has no choice but to accept what he says as the gospel. So, is it surprising that he had had an hand in the UN report which repeats the same allegations and aspersions he does, and he is consultant to the United States, Australia, the United Nations. He is now a visiting fellow at the Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies at the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.

Why did the Malaysian government then blink? If the Malaysian agencies and political parties mentioned sue for defamation, it would face hurdles it cannot overcome. Dr Gunaratna parades as truth are half-truths, unverifiable assumptions, unprovable assertions, outright lies, repeated so often that it is accepted, even in Malaysia, as the holy truth. It should have kept quiet, and put out a strong well-researched denial. If you are not prepared to confront your opponent, and force him into a corner, but instead want to grab the headlines by threatening to sue, the battle is lost even before it has begun. For it you don't sue, the allegations must be true; if you do, you would find yourself in a deeper quagmire.

The Malaysian and global terrorist are who Kuala Lumpur and Washington decides they are. They have no recourse to clear their names or challenge the basis of their detention. In the United States, under this war on terror regime, they are locked up, with no recourse to the courts, especially if you are not an citizen. In Malaysia, the Internal Security Act now precludes any appel to the courts: one arrested, one is deemed to what the government accuses you of. When a group is demonised, as now, it gets support from even those who hate it. And when governments use the methods of the terrorist, in the name of democracy, to threaten and terrorise the population, it is the terrorist who gains. As now.

When Washington -- and let us not forget Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia -- decide who is and who is not a terrorist, something must give. And both react in like fashion. When Al Qaida and its leader, Osama bin Laden, cannot be found, find another target. Iraq. When Kuala Lumpur decides terrorism is a problem, it finds groups aligned to the opposition. The opposition can scream as they like, but the deed is done. When Kuala Lumpur is the target -- on the same spurious grounds as it decided KMM and Al Maunah are terrorist groups -- it screams blue murder. But is anyone the wiser?

M.G.G. Pillai
pillai@mgg.pc.my