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The Consequences Of A Death Not Foretold

The Inspector-General of Police, Tan Sri Norian Mai, is swift to suggest a possible murder charge (or one serious enough to keep the natives quiet) against the two policemen who shot dead an unarmed medical doctor at the near-deserted carpark of an LRT station in Cheras on Monday night. But police statements thus far accuse the dead man, a 29-year-old Chinese doctor, of the usual police explanations for their action: attempting to escape, trying to ram them down. Dead men tell no tales, so the public accepts these explanations. Or would have if he was Ah Chong the carpenter or Muthusamy the taxi driver. The reports I have read (and all of them from the Malaysian newspapers) suggest these explanations to be post ipso facto. A man was out with a lady friend, in this case a 25-year-old nurse, is sitting in a carpark, with airconditioning on and without lights, is tapped on the car windows by men looking like policemen, panics and attempts to drive away, is shot dead in what looks like a deliberate attempt to kill. The nurse, miraculously (or is deliberately?) unhurt is distraught and in hysterics? The doctor is shot in the head and arm.

The trigger-happy police shoot to kill, where possible. No attempt appears to be made to disable the fellow in the speeding car (if indeed, the car is speeding), when shooting at the tyres would have stopped the chap effectively. If the man then tries to run, the police explanations for the shooting would have made some sense. Lawyers at the criminal courts come across cases like these where the fellows are shot dead to, they allege, to obviate the need to bring them to court and relieve the police of the attendant police work despite which they might not get the convictions they want. A former Bar Council chairman said not long ago that more than 50 people were killed in 30 months. The inspector-general of police did not express shock at the figures in almost every incident, indeed did not even bother to charge the errant policemen involved. They did did not have the political clout as had the family of a man killed in a police lockup in Cheras a few years ago during investigations into a bank robbery. That hit the headlines, as the doctor's murder a few days ago, and some low ranking policemen were punished. As the two men implicated in this would be. The two policemen who shot the doctor -- the IGP does not deny this -- reacted as they did at seeing a Chinese man with a Malay girl. The doctor's panic at a possible khalwat charge is undeniable; not so long ago, a police officer shot dead a religious department affairs official who caught him for khalwat in circumstances similar to this.

The public is so afraid of the police that panic sets in when they want a word with you. Frequent police warnings of fake policemen around causes additional fear even in the cities, but especially when driving a lonely road and come face to face with an unexpected police block, usually so placed that should the driver, in fright, speed, they could be shot and blamed for fleeing in fright. The political events of the past year, and the police's hostility towards any action of He Who Must Be Destroyed At All Cost and his followers, coupled with the government's police mentality in handling the dissent, ensures the continued distrust of the police in the Malaysian mind. Crimes and murders are unsolved. Report a theft or an accident, and hear what the policemen tell you. I have. The reports are taken down by the policemen who has no intention of proceeding with it. Often they are made only for insurance purposes. The police professionalism, which like the judiciary once was second to none in the region, is a euphemism to mask an unprofessional force with a tendency to be hostile to any who disagree with the government on policy or politics. Why is the need, for instance, to lack the water cannons with ammonia and pepper and coloured with a corrosive indelible die (so corrosive that cars and motorcycles sprayed with it in the melee that the paint peel off) when spraying them on demonstrators? Why could they not use plain water like the Jakarta authorities?

It is in this light that I question Tan Sri Norian Mai's sincerity in this affair of Dr Tai Eng Teck. Because of the political reverberations of this case, he is quick to suggest a possible murder charge even before investigations are completed. It is good, of course, the police act as quickly as they now promise. But it is this highly selective approach that I question. When the just sacked deputy prime minister, shackled and blindfolded, is assualted to near death by the inspector-general of police (Tan Sri Norian Mai's predecessor) before arrest formalities were completed, the same police department dragged their feet (and continue to) in its investigations. When a serious charge was expected after a Royal Commission of Inquiry, he is charged with a minor offence. If the Police want to regaim some of their lost link with the public, it should, while charging the killers of the doctor with attempted murder or worse, bring Tan Sri Rahim Noor and charge him with the most serious offence he could be charged with what he did. The government should also ensure that senior appointments are not subjected to political considerations: Tan Sri Norian's appointment was delayed because it was perceived in the highest levels of the government that he had an independent mind and would not have, if it came to that, beaten Dato' Seri Anwar senseless.

Otherwise, despite police rules and regulations, the men on the ground would take such transgressions of the law as licence for them to emulate. In any case, how many policemen have been brought to book for the regular killing in the course of duty of innocent men and women? But this doctor's death has become a highly emotional issue amongst the Chinese community that could cost the governing National Front a lot of votes. Especially when Chinese parties in the coalition view discretion as better than valour. The inevitable feeling that the police's sudden interest in resolving this case quickly has to do with the government's comfiture about what happened last Monday night, and its impact among the voters refuses to go away. The government should now come out with a clear explanation on what happened, what it intends to do about it, besides charging the two men in court, and what it intends to do about bringing the police back to the professionalism it lost along the way.

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