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Contents

Introduction 4
Yin Shao Loong

1. H
 ow to Demonstrate Creatively: A Manual of Innovative
Civil Disobedience in Malaysia 8
Wong Chin Huat

2. An Empty Canvas on Which Many Shadows Have Already Fallen 23

Simon Soon

3. Q
 ueer Ways: An Un-straight Survey of the Direction of Malaysian 40
Popular Culture and Fashion
Clarissa Lee

4. U
 wang Asli Moden | Orang Asli Moden 59
Mor Ajani

 mongst the Exiles: Reflections of a Refugee Lawyer 79

5. A
Sumitra Visvanathan

Bios 89
4

Introduction
Welcome to New Malaysian Essays 3 and welcome, perhaps, to a different Malaysia than you may
be used to. The essays in this volume deal with peoples and subjects that do not normally reach the
public at large, yet all are distinctively Malaysian issues and passions.

We will meet protesting men in black, art critics who urinate over gallery works, drag queens,
Orang Asli in cyberspace, and refugees in Malaysia. The theme for this volume could be described
as the ‘other’ Malaysias that persist and have persisted alongside more dominant or official nar-
ratives (and here I tip my proverbial hat to the efforts of historian Farish A. Noor). Datuks and
Tunkus may be mentioned here and there, but they take a back seat to the awesome diversity and
inventiveness of everyday common people.

Since 2010 is the first year that Malaysia Day, September 16, is being celebrated as a national
holiday, we are marking this belated occasion by making this volume of New Malaysian Essays
available as a free e-book for all.

By making this a free e-book we hope to further New Malaysian Essay’s mission of increasing the
availability of original non-fiction writing of substantial length to Malaysians. Happy 47th birthday,
Malaysia! Enjoy the read, it’s on us.

So, don’t worry about intellectual piracy or trouble getting this from the stores before authorities
seize it, as long as you have an internet connection you can download, enjoy, and share this with
your nearest and dearest, or even total strangers! If you like what you read, let the authors and the
publisher know at info@mataharibooks.com

Unfortunately, as the observant among you will no doubt note, despite plans to the contrary we
were unable to include any submissions from East Malaysians this time around, but this is some-
thing we hope to rectify in the future. In the meantime, we have started to address exclusions by
featuring work by and about Orang Asli, in an Orang Asli language.

Which brings us to what’s in store in this volume.

We have political scientist Wong Chin-Huat’s upbeat guide to civil disobedience, a small handbook
of ideas on getting your views heard whilst pressing for political reform in Malaysia. Wong may be
familiar to readers as a columnist for the online news portal The Nut Graph, as well as Malaysia’s
‘man in black’, a form of sartorial protest he launched after the Perak state constitutional coup that
5

occurred in February 2009.

His relentless advocacy of democratisation in Malaysia earned him some time in the lockup in May
2009 on accusations of sedition, a situation that led to the Brickfields police arresting even the law-
yers for supporters of Wong who were detained while protesting his arrest. All, including Wong,
were released without charge several days later.

Wong’s essay draws on concepts developed in Gandhian non-violent direct action and its descend-
ants in the U.S. civil rights movement. Here, he applies them with a twist to the Malaysian context.
With the repressive laws on free speech and public assembly in Malaysia, and a political culture and
media inhospitable to dissent, principled civil disobedience offers a non-violent way for concerned
citizens to reach out to the public and inspire, if not action, then a transformation in attitudes and
opinion.

Repressive political regimes will often go to absurd lengths to retain hegemony, but in doing so,
they risk losing legitimacy or may provoke public outrage to such an extent that it overcomes the
fears inhibiting wider dissent. The reformasi protests of the late 1990s and the debacle over the
2009 Perak constitutional coup, which included the arrest of people for simply wearing black, are
homegrown examples of this phenomenon in action. Wong’s hope is that Malaysians will make the
shift from kopitiam grousing to more focused forms of action, which can still involve savouring
one’s favourite kopi O in novel politicised ways.

The next two essays take on popular culture and the arts in an historical light. Simon Soon, an in-
dependent art curator, takes us on a journey through the debates surrounding the development of
a homegrown aesthetic in the arts. His account takes place amidst the social upheaval in the wake
of the 13 May, 1969 ethnic riots and the subsequent period of national emergency and suspension
of democracy under Tun Abdul Razak’s National Operations Council (NOC).

For many decades frank discussion of this period has been frowned upon by the authorities, though
in the last few years new writing has emerged, such as Dr Kua Kia Soong’s controversial thesis on
the origins of 13 May, 1969, and more commentators have stepped forward to argue that we should
leave the shadow of 13 May behind us and instead embrace the idea that dramatic change in the
political landscape need not result in a bloodbath. The electoral aftermath of March 2008 seems to
suggest that peaceful political change is possible.

Less discussed, however, have been the cultural consequences of the post-1969 emergency. In par-
ticular, the efforts to forge a unifying national culture; an attempt to make a single Malaysia before
it became a public relations catch-phrase. The 1971 National Cultural Congress and its National
Cultural Policy (NCP) sought to chart out an ‘authentic’, homegrown direction for cultural pro-
duction in Malaysia. It shared much in common with similar efforts across the Third World in its
antagonism towards derivative cultural production dependent on the former colonial masters.

However, a stance opposed to foreign domination all too easily slips into a reactionary closure to
all external influences, whether beneficial or not. The result is not unlike cutting off oxygen and
sunlight for a plant. Malaysia, today and in the past, is the product of the confluence of great Asian
civilisations and their Western usurpers. It has, on the whole, grown stronger as a result of such
interaction, and isolation has never been a viable or attractive option.
Soon takes us through these big issues via the careers of a dynamic duo of the Malaysian art world,
perhaps ‘terrible twins’ is a more apt moniker; Redza Piyadasa and Sulaiman Esa. These two artist-
6

intellectuals debated, challenged and provoked each other and those around them to find a fruit-
ful way to produce art in a manner that was both critical and socially relevant. Both were early
enthusiasts of the NCP, but found themselves having to chart out a more flexible and ecumenical
direction in order to make themselves both Malaysian and globally significant. Along the way, they
have to contend with the urinary critique of an even more formidable enfant terrible, poet Salleh
Ben Joned.

Soon’s analysis of the good intentions of the NCP and its eventual failure to nurture creativity or au-
thenticity in the arts could offer instructive lessons in this period of vague talk about one Malaysia, our
persisting concerns to establish ourselves in globally-relevant terms, and struggles over our capacity
to do so. Even readers unfamiliar with the particular lingo and dynamics of the art world will find na-
tional and humanistic significance in the struggles of Piyadasa and Sulaiman to make themselves into
better artists.

Clarissa Lee’s essay takes us into another side of the cultural world that is seldom subjected to anal-
ysis; the world of fashion and popular culture since Merdeka. This is not an exhaustive survey, but
rather one that explores multiple strands including advertising, branding, film, beauty pageants,
burlesque, stripping, dress, cross-dressing, nasyid, drag shows, and men and women’s magazines.

Lee also challenges her readers to question any assumption that Malaysian history is simply a histo-
ry of heterosexuals. In order to break this presumption of heteronormativity (a technical, scholarly
term now finding increasing use by gender activists – meaning that heterosexuality is considered a
norm), she blends queer with straight in her account of Malaysian cultural mores and obsessions
over the decades. For those of us who rarely venture into the diverse sub-cultures she details, her
essay offers a sense of the diversity that is urban Malaysia, both past and present.

Taking us into the zone between village and city is Mor Ajani’s essay on modern life amongst the
Orang Asli, Peninsular Malaysia’s indigenous peoples. Mor is a young comic book artist, cultural
documenter, and cultural activist on Orang Asli matters. He paints a picture of how Orang Asli
have engaged in modern urban life, an encounter that has frequently placed their lands and tradi-
tions in jeopardy.

However, one will not find a trace of bitterness in Mor’s essay. Instead, we find listed the diverse
initiatives underway, many with Mor’s involvement, to bring Orang Asli together via new media
channels as well as to promote their culture.

I am also very pleased to present his translation of his essay in Bahasa Temuan, the language of his
tribe, or suku. It is rare to find Temuan in published works, as it is primarily an oral language, but
Mor has been at the forefront of releasing materials in both Malay and Temuan.

If you have not encountered Bahasa Temuan before you will find many similarities with Malay.
Reading and speaking it is somewhat akin to engaging with the various regional dialects of Malay.
If you are one of the 8 million-odd Malaysians on Facebook you should seek out the Club Bahase
Temuan which Mor helped found to educate people on his language.

I hope the reader who is unfamiliar with Orang Asli matters will find that the Orang Asli share
much in common with urban Malaysians in their cultural pride, dreams, delights, and aspirations.
Last, we travel further afield to the terrain of exile. Sumitra Visvanathan is a veteran refugee lawyer
7

who has worked in Malaysia and the region for the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR).
She has personally processed thousands of asylum applications in her 14-year career. Working this
closely with refugees has given her a sharp insight into their plight and their humanity.

Recognition of refugees in Malaysia is still in its infancy. The laws of the land regard them as ‘il-
legal immigrants’ rather than human beings deserving of help and protection. However, there is a
growing and dedicated core of concerned Malaysians striving to extend compassionate assistance
where the authorities have failed to do so.

Part of the solution will involve the development of empathy on our part for those who find them-
selves refugees. Sumitra’s piece is a contribution to that effort as she tries to help us understand
what it is like to live the life of an exile.

My own thoughts are that our treatment of (foreign) strangers is intimately tied to our frequent
habit of treating of fellow Malaysians as strangers. Our (mis)treatment of refugees often rests upon
the same attitudes and instruments we apply to divide Malaysia into apparently opposed camps.
Foreigner :: Local. Native :: Pendatang. Compliant :: Troublemaker. Us :: Them. Do we not all
bleed the same blood, breathe the same air, sweat under the same sun?

We are a nation of travellers; old, new and ancient. Exile is a form of arrival to our shores that is
by no means new, but the values of our more civilised world now demand that we approach it with
greater humanity and compassion. Malaysia is a land of plenty, but debate still rages over who de-
serves to enjoy it, and to what degree.

Fear, mistrust and force have been frequent responses, but they need not be the only ones. Open-
ness, fairness, and compassion may lead to new, previously unimagined states of harmony and
prosperity. Rather than dismissing any attempt at such out of turn, should we not perhaps try? Are
we not more confident and capable now after 47 years?

So, there you have it. From the city streets to the kampung, from pop culture to the galleries, from
democracy to the detention camp, five slices of Malaysia past and present rendered in word and
text, by Malaysians, for Malaysia and the world. Enjoy this journey into a Malaysia that you may
have thought familiar, I hope you will leave having found something new.

Acknowledgements
Thanks go to the prolific Amir Muhammad for entrusting the third volume of New Malaysian Es-
says to my care. Thanks also to the writers for taking time out of their busy schedules to contribute
their pieces, and to artist Mun Kao for the cover art, “Goldfish.” The pictures in Wong Chin-Huat’s
article are courtesy of Tan Hui Chun, and those from Sumitra Visvanathan’s are from UN Photos.

Along the way, various friends and colleagues brainstormed content and possible directions with
me. I would like to thank Nandita Solomon, Bernice Chauly, Yee I-Lann, Eva McGovern, and
Snow Ng for all their advice and help.

Yin Shao Loong

September 2010
8

H
OW TO DEMONSTRATE CREATIVELY:
A MANUAL OF INNOVATIVE CIVIL
DISOBEDIENCE IN MALAYSIA
Wong Chin Huat

A What is a Demonstration?
Most Malaysians have a fixed idea of demonstration, that it must be a gathering at a specific loca-
tion at a specific time. Such a perception has a few important implications.

Firstly, people have to attend the gathering. Secondly, if the people can be stopped from attend-
ing the gathering either through roadblocks or arrest of organisers, a demonstration can then be
stopped by the police. Thirdly, if the demonstration fails to be stopped at the start, the police can
still end it by dispersing the demonstrators with physical force. Fourthly, because such a demon-
stration is often a contest to control a particular site at a particular time, the site becomes effectively
a battleground and often ends in some violent conflicts. Fifthly, because the site for such a dem-
onstration is inevitably a strategic place with intensive human activities, many – individuals and
businesses – become to different degrees the collateral damage in the conflicts following or related
to the demonstration. Sixthly and most importantly, as the government-controlled media frame the
demonstration as a threat to peace and public order, even when successful, such a demonstration
often loses its legitimacy and may do a disservice to its cause.

But, why must demonstrations be confined to a particular place and a particular time and those
who can be there? Why can’t we break some or all of these constraints – why can’t it be held at
everywhere at a particular time? Why can’t it be held at a given place at all times, or on an on-
going basis? If either the time or the space constraints can be broken, then the attendants can
be much larger and it might be technically impossible for the police or the authorities to stop a
demonstration.
9

A demonstration should therefore be defined not by its means and forms, but by its intention and
effect. As long as you are expressing yourself and conveying your message to an audience, beyond
making a plain statement, you are demonstrating. The baby boy is demonstrating when he cries to
draw attention of his mom. The old newspaper collector is demonstrating when she announces her
arrival through loudspeaker in her van. The romantic guy was demonstrating when he proposed to
his girlfriend with a diamond ring on the bill board by the LDP highway.

You mean, demonstrating is like advertising?

Absolutely! If we want to limit demonstration to those events related to politics, you may call dem-
onstrating a form of political advertisement campaign. It differs from conventional political adver-
tisement in a few major ways. Firstly, it does not involve media or advertising professionals and can
instead be staged by ordinary people who believe in the cause. Secondly, it is therefore cheaper and
can even be free. Thirdly, it can be staged anywhere and therefore not crippled by structural con-
straints like media monopoly or bill board permits. Fourthly, it tends to tremendously affect people
– both the participants and the onlookers, in a way that is unmatchable by political advertisement
on television or newspapers. In short, political demonstration can be the political advertisement for
the newcomers in politics – people who have limited resources, networking or experience to start a
new political campaign. Of course, there is no reason why established political forces cannot resort
to demonstration too.

B Why Demonstrate?
Suppressing the freedom to demonstrate essentially acts to curb political competition. Even in
countries where political parties or NGOs can advertise freely, this would limit the contestation of
ideas to those who can afford the expensive cost of television, radio, newspaper or billboard ad-
vertisement. Since gathering is the most common form of demonstration, freedom of assembly can
therefore be seen as a specific form and an extension of free speech.

Now, you may protest: not all demonstrations are meant to persuade, some are rather meant to
intimidate or blackmail. True, demonstrations may turn ugly if the organisers or participants are
actually threatening violence. In such case, intimidation should be punished by law, but not the
expression itself. In other words, we can exclude in our discussions here violence-inclined demon-
strations.

Now, what if you are threatening the authorities or the society not by violence, but by peaceful
resistance or civil disobedience? In history, individuals – sometimes alone, sometimes collectively
– have chosen to go to jail for refusing to pay tax, for rejecting military conscription, for opposing
colonial rule or defying legal discrimination; are those not a form of blackmail? Indeed they are, but
such blackmail is legitimate and it contests with law for legitimacy.

After all, law and order work on the principles of coercion and legitimacy, which are substitutes
to each other to some extent. If a law is not backed up by credible threat of penalties - carried out
by the use of state violence when necessary - then even a highly legitimate one – like a speed limit
- may be broken by free-riders. On the other hand, if a law is not legitimate in the eyes of the popu-
lation, then its compliance will require a huge dose of coercion. And by willingly choosing penalty
10

over compliance, civil disobedience is effectively stripping legitimacy off the law, leaving it nakedly
backed by only state violence. Hence, when a citizen is tried in a court of law for principally defying a
law, the law is at the same time tried in the court of public opinion. And if the public backlash is strong
enough, the law will ultimately have to be done away or amended, or the state will risk having to
try hundreds or thousands of offenders.

When the freedom to demonstrate is curbed and articulation of certain issues silenced, creative dem-
onstration in the spirit of civil disobedience becomes all the more important. As a matter of fact, those
planning or participating in such creative reform should ask themselves hard if the protest can strip
the legitimacy of the authorities. If you get arrested for such a protest but the protest fails to get others
questioning the legitimacy of the authorities or the status quo with regards to your cause, you fail. On
the other hand, if you return home safely after robbing the authorities, or whichever the parties you
are protesting against, of their legitimacy, you succeed! In other words, martyrdom is not the meas-
ure for success in the creative protests we will discuss here. The measure is winning legitimacy from
your opponents.

C Five Rules for Creative Demonstrations in Malaysia

Rule 1: Everyone can demonstrate
Demonstration is very much a numbers game. Ceteris paribus, more demonstrators are better than
less. So, the protest must be simple, low-risk, easy to organise and if possible, fun.
Why? For decades, Malaysians have been taught to stay away from politics because it is dangerous
and dirty. Demonstrations are seen as dangerous stunts for the few opposition or NGO heroes, not
a tool of expression for average Joe and Jane. Simplicity and low risk would take away citizens’
excuse not to participate. Ease in organization and mobilization then eliminates the need for com-
plex networking. Hence, the police cannot crack down by arresting ring readers. And in times of
emergency, people can always duplicate such acts as a ritual of protest. Lastly, if demonstrations
can be associated with fun, more would be attracted than if it is associated with sacrifice.

Rule 2: Politics is an inseparable part of everyday life

The existing laws that suppress freedom of assembly like the Penal Code and Police Act operate on
the basis that politics can be separated from other parts of life, so political activism can be curbed
without disrupting other activities. Traditional demonstrations can be curtailed or quarantined sur-
gically because they are distinctive from other activities. So, the challenge here is to blend politics
into your daily life as much as possible that political activism cannot be singled out for suppression.
Another benefit of immersing politics into daily life is that it helps to break the official indoctrina-
tion that politics is just for politicians, and it may induce others to follow in your footsteps, perhaps
in some mild way.

Rule 3: Peace speaks louder than violence

Demonstrating will lose legitimacy when it is associated with violence and chaos. Never hit back
or get into physical struggle even when attacked, whether physically or verbally. Your best weapon
should be cameras or voice recorders. Areas frequented by foreign tourists would be ideal because
they will likely spread your story to the rest of the world in real time. Practice silence if necessary
and appropriate as noise may be easily associated with chaos and violence. Another option is sing-
11

ing the national anthem or spiritual or cultural songs that ordinary persons on the street may iden-
tify with and therefore enhance the legitimacy of demonstration.

Rule 4: Demonstrate because you are mainstream

Never let the powers-that-be paint you as fringe or radicals. Otherwise, you are conceding the
majority to your opponent and defeat the purpose of winning people over. You must instead sig-
nal your mainstreamness. There must be something in your demonstration that ordinary people
may identify with. Even if you do not look mainstream now, you must position yourself as the
mainstream for tomorrow. Remember, perceptions can be self-fulfilling. If you believe that you are
mainstream, and you talk like as if you are, you have a good chance of defining what mainstream is.

Rule 5: Begin with the news headlines in mind

Always remember your ultimate audience is not the few hundred or thousand bystanders or on-
lookers who are there to see you in action. It is the millions who are not there that you want to win
over. According to Steven Covey, one of the habits of highly effective people is “to begin with the
end in mind”. In creative demonstration, you begin with the news headlines in mind. So, put on
your journalist/editor thinking cap. Eventually, you are fighting a battle of legitimacy in the media
with the authorities or your opponents. If they are smart, they will pay attention to news headlines
too. While the authorities have their spin doctors in the mainstream media to set agenda and do
gate-keeping, they don’t have control over the foreign media and citizen journalists. To defeat the
colossal propaganda machine, all you really need sometimes is a simple message. Remember the
man who stopped the tanks in Tiananmen?

D Ten Examples of /Suggestions for Creative Demonstra-

tions in Malaysia
1. Colour demonstration
Colours are always political. And if you can get thousands of people to wear a singular colour, then
you are organizing a huge demonstration whether or not they gather in one place. That’s how the
red-shirts and yellow-shirts in Thailand do their politics. Further from home, you have the success
of Rose Revolution in Georgia (2003), the Orange Revolution in Ukraine (2004), Tulip Revolution
(2005) and Cedar Revolution in Lebanon (2005). And of course, you also have brutal crackdowns
of the Saffron Revolution in Burma (2007) and Green Revolution in Iran (2009).

Back at home, UMNO was perhaps the pioneer of colour demonstrations. In 1946, the nascent
nationalist party mobilised the Malays to wear a white band on their songkok as a part of the
larger civil disobedience campaign against the Malayan Union proposal. In 2007, colour became
important in Malaysian politics as yellow was identified as the colour of BERSIH (the Coalition for
Clean and Fair Elections) while saffron the colour of HINDRAF (the Hindu Rights Action Force).
After the rallies, Yellow Saturdays and Saffron Sundays were organised to retain public memory
and keep the momentum, although the success was limited.

In February 2009, as an immediate response to the palace coup in Perak, some of us began wearing
black to mourn the death of democracy. When the Barisan Nasional coup regime decided to further
12

remove the legislative speaker Sivakumar on May 7 (Thursday), BERSIH held a press conference
to call upon all Malaysians to wear black on that day as a sign of protest. Amongst other things,
it says:
Najib’s slogan: “1Malaysia, people first, performance now” is now a cruel
joke on Malaysians. Is this the old “1Authoritarian-and-Corrupt Malay-
sia” getting worse? What “people first” when people are forced to be blind,
deaf, mute and immobile with the media curfew and city lockdown? What
“performance now” when the “performance” in law-breaking may never be
known?

In response to all these, we urge all Malaysians to wear black on May 7th.
Let’s show the world Najib Razak’s true colour, that the1Malaysia under
Najib Razak is “1BLACKMalaysia” living in darkness. Let’s paint every state
and territory, every town and village black with our clothes, hats, ribbons
and stickers on that day. He may hijack our unelected institutions like the
judiciary, civil service, police and Election Commission, but he will never
win our heart and mind. He is no reformist until he dares to face elections in
Perak.

Let’s show the world that Malaysians will stand up against any invasion of
democracy, freedom and peace by unscrupulous politicians. We will not al-
low coup[s to] be the way to power in Perak, or anywhere in Malaysia. No
one shall take away our democracy, freedom and peace.

I was arrested immediately in the same evening. The police later went hysterical by banning the col-
our black. In the following days and weeks, more than 160 people including lawmakers and lawyers
were arrested for gathering near the state legislature building, lighting candles in vigil, providing
legal assistance, staging a hunger strike and indeed, even simply wearing black. This however back-
fired as many Malaysians felt that the police had gone too far and looked stupid. They wore black
in protest of the arrests. For many, that was the first act of defiance in their life and they felt good
about doing it. This dismantled their long-held fear of getting involved in politics.

Wearing black has since then become a sign of protest in Malaysia. A campaign “Wear BLACK
on Merdeka Day” was launched in the cyberspace and participated by many who were angry with
the death of Selangor Government officer Teoh Beng Hock and the Shah Alam cow-head protest
amongst other developments. The success of the black message is perhaps best illustrated by a
protest on November 19, held by some MCA young members and supporters against their party
president Ong Tee Keat amidst the party’s bitter infighting.

Evaluation:
Rule 1: it is simple, low-risk and easy to organise.
Rule 2: literally wear your heart on your sleeve.
Rule 3: it is definitely peaceful.
Rule 4: black is a popular colour in any way.
Rule 5: it is catchy, reminiscent of colour revolutions and eventually induces the police to over-react.
13

2. Singing the National Anthem

The point here is to utilise state symbols and to drive home the point that we demonstrate because
of patriotism. Never let the state demonise you as unpatriotic troublemakers.

As compared to bringing national flags or wearing national flowers, singing the national anthem is
so easy to do and can be done anytime anywhere. You can do that to make the point before you get
arrested by police. They would have to stand still to show respect while you sing.
If the police are stupid enough to attack you when you are singing national anthem, then they get
themselves into a public-relations disaster. That indeed happened on the eve of 1st anniversary of
the BERSIH rally (November 9, 2008) in Petaling Jaya. A bunch of police charged into a group
of citizens who were singing the national anthem at the end of their anti-Internal Security Act rally.
A few were injured.

Civil society groups gave the Selangor police a good lecture on patriotism:
“…..it is every Malaysians’ birth right to peaceful assembly, as enshrined
in Article 10 of the Federal Constitution. The police dispersal of citizens’
peaceful gathering is unwarranted and an act of contempt against the
Constitution.

While Malaysians are taught from young to stand to attention when the
national anthem is being played or sung, the behaviour of the police was
such that they felt they had to stop the peaceful crowd from finishing the
song and then proceeded to punish them violently.”

They urged then Home Minister Datuk Seri Syed Hamid Syed Albar to immediately apologise to
Malaysians and demanded that the Selangor Chief of Police, Deputy Commissioner Datuk Khalid
Abu Bakar take responsibility for his part in this fiasco and resign.
Selangor Chief Police Officer Khalid Abu Bakar was silly enough to deny that the citizens were
singing national anthem as if video cameras did not exist. Of course his lie was exposed squarely by
citizen journalists equipped with modern technology.

Khalid Abu Bakar got himself in hotter soup when he tried to compare the
demonstrators with criminals: “What would happen if every criminal that we
confront starts singing the national anthem?” BERSIH described his com-
parison of patriotic citizens with criminals as “obscene, outrageous and les
majeste”. The coalition said:

“The citizens were singing Negaraku to show their love to the Nation and the
King. They did not disturb peace or cause harm to anyone. Only a colonial
government or an occupying force will find the singing of a country’s na-
tional anthem criminal.

Datuk Khalid Abu Bakar’s Freudian slip shows the skewed mentality of
some police officers who subconsciously see themselves as the supreme ruler
or the colonial master of Malaysians. If the police’s intention was only to ar-
rest the gathering citizens, they could arrest them peacefully after the singing
has been completed.
14

BERSIH demands the Home Minister Syed Hamid Syed Albar to apologise
to the King, the Sultan and the people and take immediate action on Datuk
Khalid Abu Bakar to show that his action is not instructed or consented to
by the Federal Government.

By first instructing policemen to charge a group of citizens singing the na-
tional anthem, then lying to the public by denying such an act took place, and
now implying that singing national anthem without police permit is criminal,
his position is absolutely untenable.”

While Khalid Abu Bakar of course kept his job, he has lost badly in the battle of legitimacy.

Evaluation:
Rule 1: it is simple, low-risk and easy to organise.
Rule 2: the innocent act of singing the national anthem becomes a political statement.
Rule 3: singing is definitely peaceful
Rule 4: what can be more mainstream than singing the national anthem?
Rule 5: If you get arrested when singing national anthem, you virtually get arrested for singing na-
tional anthem! Who’s the public enemy here?

3. Restaurant protests
Who say restaurants are only for dining? Modern human beings are multitasking all the time. We
go to restaurants for business negotiation, socializing and courtship, why can’t we go to them for
demonstrations? When people turn up in a particular restaurant performing the same ritual, they
are demonstrating. To have a nationwide protest, all you need then is a restaurant chain. The good
thing about demonstrating in restaurant is that police would have to disrupt the business of food
and beverage industry to stop the protest.

The idea came from a private party titled 1BLACKDinner organised by myself for friends and
comrades after my release. We made fun of the police’s anti-BLACK attitude by coming out with a
menu that was completely black. (See picture)

The idea of having public protest was put into test in June 4, 2009 by the 1BLACKMalaysia cam-
paign. We designed a four-element protest ritual: 1. Thursday evening (time); 2. Old Town White
Coffee (location); 3. wearing black (dress code); and 4. ordering kopi-o (black coffee) (behaviour).
The ritual was purposely made simple so that anyone can do it when there is such a need to protest.
Some questioned why we chose Old Town and not simply any coffee shop or mamak store. The
key point is that if the meeting venue is too widespread, then the protesters to be too scattered to be
noticed. Fixing on a specific restaurant not only helps would-be protestors to find the place, it also
helps the media to follow the story. And Old Town White Coffee was picked because it has more
than 100 outlets nationwide. That Old Town was from Perak was the pleasant coincidence, not the
determinant of this choice.
15

While many thought that idea was too comical to be threatening, the five Old Town outlets chosen
by us on Facebook were mysteriously closed down on that day. We never know if the police had a
hand in this, but it was clear that the idea of blending food and politics had hit the right pressure
point for some.
The kopi-o session did not gain momentum and eventually stopped by the end of the year after
spreading to Bukit Mertajam and Klang for a while. Why? My reading is that members of public
do not see a need to have weekly protests. Had the police continued its crackdown, drinking black
coffee might become politically popular like wearing black.

Evaluation:
Rule 1: Everyone eats – just choose your menu of protest!
Rule 2: When eating and drinking becomes political, crackdown would have the restaurant indus-
try as collateral damage.
Rule 3: How can you look violent when eating or drinking?
Rule 4: Of course we are mainstream – eating is our national sport!
Rule 5: Crackdown on a restaurant is surely odd and unusual for the entire world.

4. Fasting
If eating can be a vehicle of protest, so can fasting. Traditionally, fasting is an act of restraint and is
therefore the best response to violence. Hence, when the cow-head gang in Shah Alam put up their
ugly protest against the plan to relocate a Hindu temple, some Malaysians of all religious and cul-
tural backgrounds who are angered by such intimidation and bigotry organised what was perhaps
the nation’s first multi-faith fasting activity: “Fast for the nation, peace for Malaysia”.

The day chosen was Malaysia Day, which happened to fall in the month of Ramadhan. In the past,
this month was a time where you find two Malaysias – one fasting, one not fasting. On September
16 2009, hundreds of Malaysians- Muslim, Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Sikh, Taoist, Atheist - had
decided to fast together.

Their statement said it all about how you may protest in peace against violence, even though the
word protest is not mentioned at all:
“Malaysia is a peaceful country and it should remain that way forever. Acts
of Violence and inciting hatred must have no place in our public life.

Unfortunately, too many cruelties and injustices have happened since the
nation’s last birthday.

It is tempting to slip into despair or become revengeful. Let us turn our

anger and sadness into a positive force for change.

This September 16, let us all combine our efforts to present a meaningful
gift for Malaysia on her 46th birthday.
16

Let us be united in one single action. Let us all fast from dawn to dusk for
peace in this blessed land. Let the Muslims amongst us fast with a specific
prayer for peace for the nation. Let the Bahais, Buddhists, Christians,
Hindus, Sikhs, Taoists, followers of other spiritual traditions and atheists
amongst us fast in solidarity and the same determination for peace.

Let our common experience of hunger and human weakness humble,

strengthen and unite us.

Let us offer a hospitable smile to people we know and especially to those

we don’t.

Let us perform one extra act of kindness while fasting on this Malaysia day.

Let us show our love and compassion for each other.

Let Malaysia be a better country on her 46th birthday and every day after.

Let Malaysia be truly happy and peaceful this September 16.

And so we fast.
. . . . . . to make room for justice and peace!”

The success of this fasting exercise was a sharp contrast to the hunger strike launched by Pakatan Rak-
yat Perak which ended with police arrests. The latter was disadvantaged in a few ways. Firstly, it was
much more high-profile and high-risk, turning away ordinary citizens. Secondly, it was distinctively
partisan political and hence not mainstream enough. Thirdly, the hunger-strike was separated from
the daily activities of ordinary people, making it possible for a surgical crackdown. Fourthly, because
the participants were all politicians, the police managed to frame this as a political conflict and make the
crackdown less illegitimate.

Evaluation:
Rule 1: While it may take a bit determination, everyone can fast.
Rule 2: When fasting is political, how do you separate politics from other aspect of life?
Rule 3: Fasting is a symbol of restraint.
Rule 4: Fasting is found in almost every spiritual tradition. While some religious people may not be
happy, they could not find a legitimate ground to protest.
Rule 5: How can they force you to eat in fasting month?
17

5. Protest By Moving Around

Protest can be merged into your daily activities like walking. All you need to do is carry a striking
message with you, like how sandwich-board men get their message across. The trick is to get the
public’s attention without annoying them. Public transport in this sense becomes an ideal vehicle to
be hijacked for protests.
The 1BLACKMalaysia fellowship tested this idea in protest of the mysterious death of Teoh Beng
Hock. On a Saturday morning, seven of us took the LRT from KL Sentral to Masjid Jamek. From
there we walked through Lebuh Ampang to Jalan Dang Wangi where we took the monorail to
Jalan Imbi. All of us carried a transparent clear holder which contained some A4 papers with mes-
sages related to custody death. Sometime we deliberately flashed them to the curious onlookers,
sometime we just acted as if we were a natural part of the street scenery. Whether walking, taking
LRT and monorail, dining in restaurant or just standing idly at the entrance of LRT/monorail sta-
tion, our A4 placard drew public attention in a way similar to sandwich-board men.
This idea was later tried by media freedom activists in their “read newspapers upside-down” stunts.
They took the LRT from Kelana Jaya at one end to Wangsa Maju at another end and easily cap-
tured public attention.

Evaluation:
Rule 1: Everyone can carry some message when walking or driving. It’s like a human car-sticker.
Rule 2: To stop people from walking or driving with a political message, police would have to stop
pedestrians or vehicles.
Rule 3: Walking and flashing your placards cannot be associated with violence or chaos. In line
with this rule, you should not actively talk to people.
Rule 4: Dressing like a normal office worker may create a stronger connection with the members of
public because you just look like one of them.
Rule 5: Bukit Aman and Putrajaya wont like such a headline in New York Times: ‘Malaysian police
arrest protesting pedestrians’.

6. Protest tourism
Taking the protest-by-moving-around one step further is to organise trips to tourism spots using
public transport: trains or coaches, or even budget airlines. As long as the participants can be eas-
ily identified with either the colour of clothing or some other symbols, it will create newsworthy
scenes from the beginning of the journey all the way to its end. It will also affect others who share
the public transport vehicle or visit the same destination.

It is important not to make this too serious like Gandhi’s Salt March, for few Malaysians are ready
to emulate Gandhi. Instead, make it fun as an escapade or carnival. The more joyful it is, the more -
especially foreign tourists - may just join in. And the more ordinary people are involved, the harder
it will be for the authorities to crack down. If the state is desperate enough to halt public transport
or close down the tourist destinations, you achieve your goals anyway because more people will
know about your cause and the authorities look helpless and silly.
18

This idea has not been tested till now. An ideal plan would be to organise a trip from the northern
and southern ends of Malaysia taking the intercity train to meet in Ipoh and either march or take
chartered bus to the tree of democracy and other tourist destinations.

Evaluation:
Rule 1: Marry vocation with protest. That reduces the seriousness of political activism.
Rule 2: Why cant I protest while supporting Malaysian tourism?
Rule 3: Tourists are not terrorists. You don’t even have to say anything!
Rule 4: Holiday makers are not trouble-makers. Make sure you dress like genuine tourists.
Rule 5: Your best protection from police violence is the annual budget of tourism advertisements.

7. Reading protests
Reading can be a powerful form of silent protest. All you need to do to subvert the normal habit of
reading is to choose the right reading material or change the “method” of reading.

For example, if you want to protest against a book ban, one easy way is to read the banned books in
front of a major book store in shopping centre. Imagine just 50 people reading Karen Armstrong’s
The Battle for God: Fundamentalism in Judaism, Christianity and Islam at the entrance of Kinokuniya
bookstore in KLCC.

What can the state do about it? Arresting 50 people for reading a banned international bestseller?
That would be the worst publicity you want internationally. On the other hand, not doing anything
is basically conceding the absurdity of the ban. Hence, this simple form of civil disobedience im-
mediately illustrates the flaws of the rules and regulations.

The risk can be lowered when the protest focuses on how to read rather than what to read. As a sign
of protest against political intervention and self-censorship in the newsroom, media freedom activ-
ists carried out “reading newspapers upside-down” in parks, at shopping centres and tourism spots,
and on LRT cars in a few cities this year. The flash-mob-style protests carried out in four weekends
from May 2 (the eve of World Press Freedom Day) to May 23 (the last Sunday before the Malam
Tak Nak Potong on May 28) had a catchy but simple message: “when newspapers report news
upside-down, you just have to read them upside-down!”

While the protestors were stopped or questioned by shopping centre or LRT personnel in some
cases, they did not encounter any police intervention. The police’s inaction is self-explanatory:
under which section of Penal Code or Internal Security Act will reading newspapers upside-down
constitute an offense? Clearly seeing the catch, UMNO Youth responded by sending some mem-
bers to read Harakah and Suara Keadilan upside-down alongside the genuine protestors.

Rule 1: It is simple, low-risk and easy to organise. In particular, newspapers protest can be staged
anywhere with news stands.
19

Rule 2: Reading – especially newspapers – is part of daily life even for Malaysians who are sup-
posedly no book lovers. Stopping someone from reading newspapers or books is hard to
execute.
Rule 3: The act of silent reading disturbs nobody. In comparison, the traditional act of burning
newspapers can be easily associated with violence.
Rule 4: Reading is well regarded by the society. It is hard to attack the political element of a reading
protest without crashing into traditional values.
Rule 5: “Malaysians get arrested for reading”? Good. No advertisement in The New York Times can
repair the damage.

8. Shopping Protests
Malaysians like shopping, so why should we forego the great opportunity to get the messages
through? After all, shopping centres are ideal gathering places of audiences – and potential partici-
pants too. Instead of organising a rally on your own and face overcoming police obstruction, you
should just deliver your public interest message to the innocently gathering crowd.
One good thing about marrying shopping and protests is that participants can easily pretend that
they are just normal shoppers and hence reduce the risk of police arrest. A good example is the
shopping protest in Jalan Tunku Abdul Rahman, Kuala Lumpur at the height of the Reformasi
wave in 1998. On Saturday afternoons, some activists would just suddenly go to the middle of the
road and shout “reformasi” and many shoppers would gather and demonstrate. They would dis-
perse in time and go back into normal shopping before the police could make any arrest. It’s like a
flash mob.

You can also do protest shopping in other way. Instead of shouting slogans and risk police arrest
or being escorted out by security guards, you may stage a quiet protest by gathering at a particular
place in a shopping centre or shopping district. All you need to do is to dress in a certain way like
wearing the same colour or wearing a flower, a badge, a headband for your fellow protesters and
the members of public to recognise you. Now, there is nothing in the Penal Code or other laws – to
my best knowledge – that prohibits you from shopping in a uniform way. So, you really do not have
to worry about police arrest as long as you don’t disturb other shoppers. You can instead sue the
police for unlawful arrest if they detain you without reason. The police may of course block suspi-
cious people from entering the shopping centre/district, but this would likely disrupt business ac-
tivities. For this reason, if you choose shopping districts/malls which foreign tourists frequent, you
are likely to get your way. You would unlikely be manhandled because the police officers know they
could not stop the foreigners from taking videos and posting the police’s actions on YouTube later.

Lastly, if your cause has yet to pick up momentum, you may use shopping centres to disseminate in-
formation and raise public awareness in rather innocent ways. In a few weekends in November and
December 2007, a few friends and myself would stand in shopping balls and LRT stations and give
away give bananas to passers-by. If asked why, we would simply tell them that we were celebrating
“Yellow Saturday”. Only if they further ask what “Yellow Saturday” was, we would tell them that
the first Yellow Saturday was November 10, when 40,000 to 50,000 people gathered in downtown
20

Kuala Lumpur to push for electoral reforms and the continued celebration of “Yellow Saturdays” to
come was but a way to raise public consciousness. This act would sooner or later attract the atten-
tion and intervention of security guards, all you need to do is move a bit away from their entrance.
Insofar as you remain orderly and calm, it is not an offence to give away some free bananas or other
small gifts. The police know that.

Rule 1: This is very simple and easy organise as you just need to politicise your normal shopping
activities by giving them a specific recognisable appearance.
Rule 2: By combining shopping and protest, crackdowns on protests would likely cause disrup-
tion to business activities. This may alienate the business community if you play your
card right.
Rule 3: As long as you don’t carry banners or shout slogans within the premise of the shopping
centres, it is hard to accused of disrupting public order.
Rule 4: You should show to fellow shoppers that protest is just as normal and as much a part of
daily life as shopping. In other words, protest while shopping is very mainstream and
trendy.
Rule 5: “Shoppers arrested for making political statements”? Or “Shopping Mall shut down to
avoid protest”? You know well such news headlines are a nightmare for the government.

9. Flower Protests
Flowers are the perfect antithesis of guns and fists. They can therefore be a powerful weapon
against violence.

Remember the HINDRAF’s Rose campaign targeting the Prime Minister on Valentine’s Day?
If you can persuade more people to protest by wearing or holding a flower anywhere they are at a
designated date and time, then the police cannot even crackdown or lock down. They will have to
face a sea of flowers.

Imagine this: in commemoration of all victims of state violence, from Kugan to Teoh Beng Hock to
Amirulrasyid, thousands of Malaysians pledge to lay down a white flower – be it melati, jasmine,
chrysanthemum or lotus – at designated police stations and Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commis-
sion (MACC) offices. How can the police stop them? By threatening arrest if anyone carries a
white flower within 50 meter from a police station or MACC building? If they do nothing, then the
accumulated white flowers – a scene commonly seen in the site of killing or disasters – would move
more people to do so. In other words, the police would find themselves caught between a rock and
a hard place.

Rule 1: Again, this is super easy to organise and participate as flowers are easy to get. Also, people
normally don’t get arrested for holding flowers.
21

Rule 2: Carrying a flower can be part of your daily life, without obstructing other things to do
in life.
Rule 3: Flowers are an embodiment of love and beauty, making it hard to paint you as a terrorist
or criminal.
Rule 4: Flowers are so important in our mainstream cultural life that destroying flowers is offensive
by default. Attacking someone who carries a bouquet of flowers looks barbaric.
Rule 5: Your flower campaign, whether successful or cracked down upon, can easily produce some
internationally newsworthy images.

10. Outdoor Protests

All public spaces are good for protests, parks, fields and beaches included. Remember the
Woodstock festival in the 1960s? Who say you cannot relive history?

Use your imagination. Organise an outing somewhere and get people to come wearing some
common t-shirts, badges, ribbons or any other signs. Now, if 500 families gathered in Taman Tasik
Jaya to picnic under canopies that read “We want our third votes”, is that illegal assembly? You can
also organise a national bicycle tour like the Jaringan Rakyat Tertindas (JERIT) once did.

Like all other forms of creative protests detailed above, you only need to think out of the box,
marrying protest with some usual activities we do and give it a political twist.

Rule 1: Outdoor activities are simple and easy to organise. The risk of getting arrested by police
for organising a cross-country or a mass picnic is next to zero.
Rule 2: You go to parks, fields and beaches anyway, so just bring your politics along.
Rule 3: Picnic, riding, beach games and other outdoor activities are normally associated with fun,
not violence.
Rule 4: Again, outdoor activities are mainstream. You should carry out your protest as naturally as
possible when you do these activities.
Rule 5: No one in the world has got arrested for organising a political picnic yet? Feel like making
a Guinness record?
22
23

A
N EMPTY CANVAS ON WHICH MANY SHADOWS
HAVE ALREADY FALLEN
Simon Soon

Art as Theatre
We need a type of theatre which not only releases feelings,
insights and impulses possible within the particular
historical field of human relations in which the action
takes place, but employs and encourages those thoughts
and feelings which help transform the field itself.
– Bertolt Brecht

We enter our subject by way of time travelling, going back to the first week of August, 1974. In the
Sudut Penulis (Writer’s Corner) of Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka (DBP), our national language and
culture institution, the opening ceremony for an exhibition was taking place.

It was Kuala Lumpur in the 70s, and the race riots of 1969 that closed the preceding decade lingered
in the minds of many. But that would not hinder life from moving on, and for the citizens of this
young country the notion of how we could transform that tragic episode in Malaysian history, and
how we could understand our identity and live with one another would become a pivotal lesson.

For many creative types and intellectuals the city had then promised fertile, stirring and exciting
encounters. It had yet to develop the kind of conservative backlash that, as the decade progressed,
would gradually come to replace an attitude of fervid curiosity, openness and willingness to experi-
ment adopted by members of all stripes within the small yet bustling artistic circle.

Many of the creative luminaries that have since been regarded as a pioneering generation of arts
practitioners were present that day. Krishen Jit, Ismail Zain, Salleh Ben Joned, Faridah Merican,
to name a few.
24

However, they gathered that day for an exhibition that was beyond the norm of the expectations of
cultural taste in that era. Two half drunk coke bottles, a rumpled raincoat, a potted plant, an empty
canvas, ashes from burnt out mosquito coils, a pile of human hair collected from a barber shop,
used tins of paint, a chair, a bird cage. These were some of the objects that comprised the exhibition
Towards a Mystical Reality.

Burnt-out mosquito coils used to keep away mosquitoes on the

night of 25th march 1974. Discarded after the exhibition.
Image source: Piyadasa: An Overview, 1962-2000 by T.K. Sabapathy

Empty Canvas on which

so many shadows have
already fallen, 1974. Artwork
destroyed.
Image source: Piyadasa:
An Overview, 1962-2000
by T.K. Sabapathy

Two half-drunk Coca-cola bottles, 1974. Discarded after

the exhibition.
Image source: Piyadasa: An Overview, 1962-2000
by T.K. Sabapathy

A month before the exhibition, the newly published literary monthly Dewan Sastera included an
interview with the two young artists, Redza Piyadasa and Sulaiman Esa, who had come forward to
present what was described as ‘a documentation of a jointly initiated experience’.

These objects were not sculptures per se, at least in our commonplace understanding of sculpture as
a three dimensional object endowed with aesthetic value, skilfully rendered by an artistic hand and
mind. Instead, they were found objects taken from our environment, collected samples of our eve-
ryday, displaced from the outside world into a gallery setting. They operated within the discourse
of the ready-made and objet trouvé (found object), a unique new innovation of modern art.
25

Needless to say, the Kuala Lumpur audience, more familiar with the gestural palette of the then
vogue-ish local styles of abstract expressionism that were introduced a decade before, were miffed.
What was to be made of these articles? Reactions ranged from incredulity to boredom. Yet in be-
tween the spectrum of responses, the exhibition marked the culmination of a process of rethinking
art that was a response to the cultural direction in which Malaysia was to embark.

A public debate on the Towards A Mystical Reality exhibition held at Sulaiman Esa (left) and Redza Piyadasa (right), 1973.
the Sudut Penulis in Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka. Piyadasa (center) Image source: Piyadasa: An Overview, 1962-2000 by T.K. Sabapathy
and Sulaiman (second from left).
Image source: Piyadasa: An Overview, 1962-2000 by T.K. Sabapathy,
taken from FEMALE magazine, September 1975.

My interest in looking back at this particular moment in the history of art in Malaysia rests on the
many exasperating and at times defeating conversations I had with contemporary artist Sharon
Chin. In 2009, like the rest of our generation who grew up with our life stapled to the virtual world,
we wanted to initiate a blogging project about art and culture, in the hope of communicating and
building new audiences for a provincial art world that was at best removed from the cultural life
of the country, and at worst, operating under the false pretense that art mattered to the society at
large.

With this endeavour in mind, we began talking about the fractured/fractious relationship within
the art community itself; how artists are divided along the lines of language, race, and therefore to
a large extent, class. The need to communicate across borders became an imperative. We wanted
to look at the broader picture, to understand the sort of cultural landscape of the country and how
that had changed and why it had changed since the founding of Malaysia.

This is where Towards a Mystical Reality comes into the picture. It provided a window into the
cultural life of 70’s Malaysia, shoring against its discarded raincoats and empty coke bottles, the
tides of cultural change germinated by creative responses to two historical events that shaped the
cultural direction of the country – the May 13 racial riots of 1969 and the National Cultural Policy
of 1971. It was not because it was entirely unique in its proposition for an alternative Non-Western
approach to art making that interests me here. After all, other artists, swept by the excitement of
building a localised intellectual culture, were similarly excited. It was because it argued for a big-
ger, smarter and more complex understanding of who we were and what we could contribute to
the world. It was the scale and ambition and, perhaps in some respect, the foolishness and sheer
audacity of its idealism that I fall sway to.
26

Because of Piyadasa and Sulaiman’s involvement in both the literary and theatre scenes in the pre-
ceding years, the audiences who attended the exhibition came from all three worlds. Was it art?
Was it sculpture? Was it a great Malaysian novel? Was it drama? None, however, came as close
in providing an insight as did theatre critic and director Krishen Jit when he remarked that the
exhibition interested him primarily as theatre. The director jotted in his foreword that the dramatic
element borne from this initiative exposed ‘us to our everyday reality.’

Krishen’s description resonated with American art historian Michael Freid’s critical dismissal of
minimalism as a form of theatre, polluting the high modernist demands for the purity of painting as
a medium. Writing against the incursion of minimalism’s fetishisation of objecthood, Fried observed
how this had robbed painting of its mystical, transcendental value. By focusing on the materiality
of the paint, or the structural quality of a sculpture, the audience would come to realise his or his
own sense of being and perception in relation to the object within the physical exhibition space. Art
is no longer a window into another abstract or transcendental emotion, or a representation of our
world through the medium paint, it is an event that happens in the here and now. In other words,
the aesthetic moment becomes the live ‘drama’ of the real world.

It seemed like the very movement that had de-centred modernism was also one that connected us to
the everyday reality. This was the natural progression for Piyadasa and Sulaiman, whose previous
works were constructivist in nature, paying more attention to material and objecthood.

In many ways, working across disciplines such as contributing theatre set designs for Uda dan
Dara in 1972, Alang Rentak Seribu in 1974, and The Birds in 1974 provided them the opportunity
to challenge theatre with their visual art cunning and in return, allowed theatre to challenge them.

Because this history is intimately tied to the way we are able to engage with culture, it is theatre in
the most dramatic sense of the word, a parable for how our cultural history shifted through the dec-
ade and the lessons we can learn from this episode through the complexity of its thought, execution
and resolution.

And drama was what Piyadasa and Sulaiman Esa got. The critical reception that resulted from
the exhibition highlighted the ethos and social mores of the artworld at large. There was however,
a much more visceral reaction to the duo’s theatre. Gripped by the feverish spontaneity and irra-
tionality of Zen Buddhist thought illustrated in the personal traits of legendary irascible monastic
abbots, the opening night crowd also saw Salleh Ben Joned, who took to peeing on the 10,000
word manifesto. The latter was later accused of prostituting his dignity. Sadly, try as we may, our
art life has never since been visited by a level of controversy comparable to this act of sacrilege and
transcendence.
27

Vagaries of the Young Turks

The passage from Merdeka (Independence) in 1957
through the cataclysmic events in May 1969 and to
the end of the Seventies is a movement from optimism
and innocence to the realisation that there are dark,
violent, divisive and tragic profiles to mankind.
– TK Sabapathy, Vision and Idea:
Relooking Modern Malaysian Art

70s Malaysia is sepia-tinted. Ask someone from that era about music and an entire decade, or at
least the first half of it, floods back like the uncontrollable rush of an oncoming tide. Then, ask
them about fashion and your Baju Melayu-clad, songkok-wearing uncle would most likely shy
away from the modish sartorial narcissism of tight fitting shirts and bell bottom pants that he once
so fervidly embraced, believing that the following decades had successfully aborted this fashion
mis-step from his memory.

So in writing on the 70s, contemporary artist Wong Hoy Cheong observed, ‘Among artists and
writers, the early 70s represented a period of uncertainty. A lot of questioning and rethinking about
the relationship of art, culture and society took place.’

The idea of the modern had yet to exhaust itself. Artists and writers tirelessly sought to address
this from the peripheral capital (in relation to the world) of Kuala Lumpur. Piyadasa and Sulaiman
returned to Malaysia in the closing years of the 60s as young Turks, ready to take on what was by
now the increasingly stultifying trends of emotive and abstract painting styles that had dominated
the artistic discourse of Malaysia and represented the ethos of that era.

For painterly abstraction that came to embody high modernism had already waned in the West,
supplanted by a host of different artistic movements and strategies that aimed to complicate the
way we understood art – minimalism, pop art, performance art, Op Art1, etc. Hornsey Art College,
which both artists attended in the mid 60s, was a hotbed for all these different approaches to art.
Taught by Maurice de Sausmarez, Bridget Riley and the like, the curriculum stressed intellectual
development through analytical approaches to art making. Sulaiman and Piyadasa met in college,
it wasn’t hard to identify one Malaysian from others in a foreign country. What brought them
together was also a shared interest in art theory. More importantly though, they enjoyed each
others’ company and became sparring partners in the intellectually rigorous environment of
Hornsey Art College.

Returning to Malaysia, little were they aware of the turbulent year ahead as they busied themselves
with establishing careers in different governmental institutions, part of the design of their
scholarship. Piyadasa was initially posted to a secondary school in Terengganu, followed shortly by
a teaching position in the Institut Teknologi Mara (UiTM). Sulaiman spent two years in Dewan
Bahasa and Pustaka (DBP) as an in-house designer before joining Piyadasa in UiTM in 1970.
The camaraderie that developed into their 1974 ‘jointly initiated experience’ was to happen later,
though the New Scene exhibition was where this friendship was renewed despite the absence of
Sulaiman Esa from the participation roster.
1 Op Art = optical art, a style of visual art making use of optical illusions [Editor].
28

Tragically, a few months before the exhibition was to take place, the optimism of a newly independent
nation that drove the less than decade-old Malaysia was shattered by the race riots between Malays
and Chinese on 13 May 1969. A national emergency was declared and the country was effectively
run by a National Operations Council, headed by Tun Abdul Razak under which the social, cultural
and economic makeup of Malaysia was overhauled and redirected through the implementation of
policies that served to augment the political, social and economical role of the Malays.

A standing coffin with its otherwise black

surface painted with fragments of what can be
made out to be the stripes and colours of the
Malaysian flag symbolised a fractured nation
in a 1970 group exhibition titled Manifestasi
Dua Seni. It was controversially elegiac, yet
cogently representative of this crucial period in
Malaysian history. Underneath the coffin was
placed a mirror and one could peer into it, seeing
the reflection multiply this symbol of a collapsed
dream into the abyss. This artwork by Redza
Piyadasa, May 13, 1969, ringing a death knell to
the dream of a multi-cultural Malaysia, would also
come to represent the turning point in which art
would be caught up within the shifting social
landscape at a moment in history where the role
of the artist would be questioned in relation to
nation-building.

But backtracking a little to August 1969, the

New Scene exhibition burst into the local art
world with a clarion call for a new approach
to art making. Its grammar was austere and
principally constructivist, while it could not have
been a response to the times and events, it was
prescient and timely in the manner in which its
appeal to rationality, as well as the analytical and
May 13, 1969, 1970 (Reconstructed replica 2006),
Acrylic on plywood and mirror, 183 x 123 x 123 cm.
Image source: Singapore Art Museum 8

constructive principles of art making that it espoused, were a retort of some sort to the unbridled
emotions of expressionism consonant with the irrational outburst of the racial clash some months
before.

Piyadasa, in writing for the catalogue noted, “Our show aims at reinforcing the concept that works
which are entirely the outcome of the conscious workings of the intellect are an equally valid art
forms.” This celebration of ‘cerebral and impersonal’ art was to continue with two subsequent
group exhibitions, Experiment ’70 and Dokumentasi ’72. The New Scene had its disciples, among
them Tan Teong Eng, Tan Tuck Kang, Choong Kam Kow. Writing on the new scene, art historian
TK Sabapathy noted, ‘[They] sought to investigate into the structural and perceptual properties of
29

art, such as space, colour and the nature of materials… They aimed for an art without metaphorical
significance, stripped of literary, expressive and associative values.’

In many ways, the group turned its back on the visual language of abstract expressionism and
considered it as kitsch. The late Ismail Zain considered the hegemony of abstract expressionism as
‘truly one of the most successful exports to the world; perhaps next to McDonald’s and Coca-cola’.

But the New Scene too was derivative and belated. Abstract landscape artist Jolly Koh who
participated in the first New Scene exhibition but later rejected their aesthetic goals over what
he claimed to be the artificial boundary drawn up between emotion and the intellect, described it
as, ‘nothing new but an imitation of the Hard Edge school, a style of painting that was current in
London at that time.’

This is not entirely surprising. Malaysia, a newly federated multi-cultural nation engineered with
the help and guidance of the British, primarily lacked a cohesive shared cultural tradition. London,
being the capital of ‘Mother England’, was for many back then the epicenter of modern culture.
It was where artists and writers looked to in the absence of a dominant local discourse that was
compelling enough to rival its colonial counterpart.

Kathy Rowland, who wrote on the impact of the National Cultural Congress on Malaysian theatre,
observed, ‘Prior to the May 1969 Riots, the Government was largely absent from the performing
arts and cultural arena. Significantly, there are no provisions for culture in the Constitution,
although religion and language are prominent features. Artists, whatever the genre or language of
practice, were left much to their own devices. The Riots changed this. The reconfigured relationship
between the arts and the State was most vividly symbolised by the National Cultural Congress,
held in 1971.’

So it was towards the end of the emergency rule that a plenary meeting was organised to hammer
out a national direction for culture under the National Cultural Congress, which was held at the
University of Malaya on August 20 1971. Professor Ungku A. Aziz proposed that the pursuit of
lofty aesthetic ideals represented by the pithy phrase ‘art for art’s sake’ should be replaced by an
artistic commitment to nation-building, furthering social causes and issues, on par with economic
and political development then dubbed ‘Art for Society’. The proposal was debated for close to
two hours, after which, Tan Sri Nik Ahmad Kamil, acting as chairman, put the motion to vote. The
majority favoured the motion and the disgruntled lot left in protest.

In this respect, Congress participants also formulated what was to be the guiding document that
has since shaped the cultural landscape of our country, which resulted in The National Cultural
Policy (NCP) and the use of indigenous Malay culture as the focus of all cultural development.
Elements of other cultures are accepted, to reflect the multicultural society that Malaysia is, as
long as they do not contradict with the prevailing values of Malay culture. Islam, being the official
religion of the country, was to be an important component in the molding of national culture.

This made many artists, writers, poets and playwrights rethink their values and search for new
models of expressions. Coming at the tail end of the race riot and the National Cultural Congress,
it rang a death knell for many who imagined a more plural framework that better reflect the multi-
cultural make up of the country.
30

Art historian Nirajan Rajah observes, “Throughout the 1970’s, artists began the difficult, painful
process of rethinking their positions, and recasting their perceptions of culture, language, race,
state/nation and identity. For some, the prospects loomed as intolerable and inhospitable and they
chose to migrate; some retreated into temporary or permanent silence; for everyone else, the stakes
were too important and consequential not to be involved.”

Eventually, most Malay artists found it in spirituality and their Malayness. This gradually shaped
itself in the late 70s, first as Malay and then as Islamic revivalism. But in the early 70s, although the
directions recommended by the National Cultural Policy were prescriptive, the interpretative scope
had not yet achieved the level of dogmatism that would effect a sense of alienation and exclusion for
those who did not subscribe to the ethno-religious ethos.

Absurdist Malay theatre was one of the arenas in which the very values and ideas behind a fixed es-
sential Malay identity was constantly challenged by modernity and existentialism. Moreover, Anak
Alam (Children of Nature), an art collective that wilfully adopted an interdisciplinary approach to
art making, also subscribed to a much more primordial, if not romantic, vision of nature and crea-
tivity. The land and the lure of locality was prioritised over racial and religious identity and values.

Similarly then, under the cloud of mistrust that had come to threaten the social fabric of a multi-
cultural nation that had barely come of age, a friendship developed between two individuals who
hailed from different ethnic and religious backgrounds. When Piyadasa and Sulaiman were as-
signed to teach the foundation course in UiTM, they wasted no time in introducing their investiga-
tive approaches to their students. Sulaiman taught colour studies and Piyadasa taught 3D design.

Their cultural appetite was wider than the visual art world. Having studied overseas and living in
a city, both men developed a cosmopolitan sensibility. They encountered Malay literary writers,
became interested in modern and pre-independence history. They too became actively involved in
Malay theatre as set designers. As pedagogues in a tireless crusade preaching to a larger public un-
accustomed to art, Piyadasa also took to writing a weekly column in The Sunday Times under ‘Art
Scene by Redza’ in 1972.

Experiment ‘70 and Dokumentasi 74’ followed the New Scene exhibition and became a filtering
process, with the rest of the artists gradually dropping out of the Piyadasa and Sulaiman circle.
Sulaiman gave an analogy of this process as survival of the fittest, finding that most of the artists
didn’t quite make the cut when it came to intellectual engagement. They too played the role of pro-
vocateurs, upsetting the lofty etiquette of the art world, challenging other artists on their claims and
understanding of what art was.

If other artists were left behind, it was also because Piyadasa and Sulaiman were heading towards
another direction. It helped that they were teaching in the same college. Sulaiman would recount
in his later years how this friendship would develop over the heady conversations that took place
after work.

‘I would sit with Piya after work. Both of us were avid subscribers to many international art maga-
zines back then and we would bring along anything of interest, to keep each other up to date with
what is happening internationally. Piya would have his beer and, let me tell you, can he drink! I
would have my glasses of orange juice to keep pace. The more he drinks the more he talks. And can
31

Piya talk! You can kind of tell as the evening progresses, six o’clock, seven o’clock, eight o’clock.
Piya is a really fast thinker but careless. And by eleven, he would be talking gibberish.’

It was in a setting such as this that they would come to realise where they needed to take their
art to. After exploring different aspects of the art object in relation to space in their paintings and
sculptures, it dawned on them that the natural development was to use real time and space. Piya-
dasa noted, ‘If you’re going to move in time, then you are going to be involved with and in eve-
rything around you… Ismail Zain used to bring up the idea of alienation in the Makyong theatre
and of course the blurring of boundaries, breaking down of barriers and allowing for continuous
crossover.’

Piyadasa and Sulaiman reached a stumbling block. How do artists address these new problems
about the divide between art and life? They wanted ‘real time, real space’ and the ability to un-
derstand and address this dichotomy between art and life. Then, the conclusion that had eluded
them during their New Scene years became clear. ‘We are in Malaysia and not in USA or Europe,’
reminisced Piyadasa.

In effect, the NCP proposed a direction in which artists and writers should take. Many, such as
Piyadasa and Sulaiman, did so and went through a process of identity searching, but not at the ex-
pense of disengaging themselves from international art dialogue or retreating into the confinement
of one’s own provincial cultural sphere, thus shutting out the bigger world. They sought to enrich
the global intellectual bank from different positions, on different grounds, in different terms, de-
centering the Western hegemony in artistic discourse.

In this fashion, the germination of a need for an artistic language that argued from a position and
process began. Piyadasa and Sulaiman, in responding to the call of the National Cultural Policy,
would come to reject the models of empiricism and rationality that they had keenly adopted for the
New Scene, taking a leap of faith into other investigative models of artmaking, morphing from the
Cartesian Man into the Eastern Mystic.

A Jointly Initiated Experience

“It was collaboration that enabled the artists to escape the
audience’s gaze, for what was presented was art about, and
theoretically available to, something beyond communication:
nonmaterial, nonverbal, pre-rational perception.”
- Charles Green on the collaboration between

Marina Abramovic and Ulay, The Third Hand

Collaboration proposes a new model of authorship, and the revival of collaboration in late 60s
art evinced a conscious process of rethinking amongst the avant-garde about how art was made
and the ways we may experience them. Artists such as Marina Abramovic and Ulay, Gilbert and
George, Christo and Jeanne Claude have all explored collaboration, suggesting plural authorship
in the belief that it opens up potentialities and change the way art is made.
32

In many instances however, authorship is re-asserted rather than erased. Often they take the form
of what Charles Green called ‘the third hand’, the symbolic incarnation of a third supra-identity
that directs and motivates a particular collaborative process.

However in Redza Piyadasa and Sulaiman Esa’s jointly initiated experience, the intention was to
do just the opposite. In their ten thousand-word manifesto, they gave evidence of a region-wide
art tradition where the skilled artisans and creatives remained anonymous, counter-acting how the
individual artistic genius is glorified in Western art. But how did they de-center authorship and
question its meaning?

Cartoonist ’s satirical take on the found object in Berita Harian.

Image source: Piyadasa: An Overview, 1962-2000 by T.K. Sabapathy

Piyadasa and Sulaiman resorted to found objects. They conducted a random sampling of every-
day objects that came to picture the mundane and ordinariness of our reality. In this manner, they
weren’t artists in the conventional sense of the word. They were not creators of art. They merely
compiled a list of objects and displayed them as objects worthy of our attention. Perhaps a precur-
sor to what the term ‘curating’ has come to signify in our contemporary times?

The purpose of the exhibition called for a reconsideration of the philosophical rationale behind art
making for modern artists in Asia. In their manifesto accompanying the exhibition, they hoped to
‘sow the seeds for a thinking process which might someday liberate Malaysian artists from their
dependence on Western influence.’

What is this ‘Western influence’ that they so thoroughly wished to eschew? Piyadasa and Sulaiman
learnt well from their experience as the New Scene Young Turks, who fought a battle against the
dominance of abstract expressionism in Malaysia. They realised that so long as they remained in-
debted to Western-oriented idioms; whether they were the cool analytical Hard-Edge style of the
New Scene, or the expressive splashes of paint by 60s Malaysian expressionists, they would never
make any significant contribution to the international modern art dialogue because, truth be told,
the works, ‘would always remain derivative and second rate’.

However they too became aware that it was impossible to abandon modern art forms and lan-
guages, simply to revert back to traditional art-making of the region. That would simply become
a display of conservatism. Rather, they insisted upon producing works that were in dialogue with
33

global art discourses, albeit from a perspective that was peripheral and distant. If art was to pro-
duce a language or a system of representing how we understood the world, then perhaps there was
another way in which we could think of the world.

Piyadasa and Sulaiman observed a tendency in Western art since the Enlightenment to emphasise
‘the physicality of the tangible forces of nature through form’. They argued that modern ‘Western-
oriented idioms’, which developed out of a specific cultural worldview derived largely from West-
ern empirical and humanistic principles, were not necessarily the only valid way regarding reality.
Traditional art in Asia, however, was more attuned and driven by a desire to represent the occult
and spiritual energies of the invisible world or ‘semangat’. Thereby, they apprehended reality from
a different trajectory. Piyadasa remarked, “Asian artists do not place value on tangible forms as
completed works in itself but as a process that hint that a timeless continuum.”

Inspired by Taoist and Zen apprehensions of reality, this perception would take a non-rational ap-
proach rather than an empirical one as a way to comprehend reality. Art in this instance was not a
window into another reality - whether an abstract gateway towards transcendence or the natural-
istic mirror of our physical reality - instead the objects served as triggers of a collusion in time and
space, between the past and the present.

Take Burnt-out Mosquito Coils Used to Keep Away Mosquitoes On the Night of 25th March 1974
was an example. The title indicates a seemingly banal incident or an event related to a specific time
in the past. From the title, we know that it is a relic or an archive of pastime past and it sat in the
gallery as a document of this seemingly brief period of time which was part of the artists’ experi-
ence. In a similar fashion, Empty Bird-Cage after release of Bird at 2.46PM on Monday 10th June
1974 used the title to stir us into the realisation that the object right in front of us was not ontologi-
cally neutral, it had an existence beyond the gallery space: a past, a history that had extended out
into the world.

These works play out the now familiar idea of institutional critique by deconstructing the ideologi-
cal underpinning of the exhibition space itself. The early decades of Post-War art and the rise of ab-
stract expressionism was synonymous to the emergence of the gallery with white walls, conceived
as a non-interfering neutral space in which the work is isolated from everything that distracts us
from evaluating it on its own ground.

Brian O’Doherty, who wrote his three-part series Inside the White Cube for Artforum magazine
in 1976, remarks, ‘So powerful are the perceptual fields of force within this chamber that, once
outside, art can lapse into secular status. Conversely, things become art in a space where powerful
ideas about art focus on them’

Towards a Mystical Reality is in many ways a visual articulation of O’Doherty’s argument. By

bringing in daily objects into a sanctified space that frames them as art, the exhibition also con-
versely asserted that this space was not as neutral as it seemed, art comes from our outside world,
it is not divorced from it. These objects trigger us to look beyond and consider our way of look-
ing at reality not through scientific reasoning but through an understanding of time as a passage
transacting from one moment (the past) to the next (the present), colluding in what is termed a
‘mystical’ apprehension.
34

What interests me about Piyadasa and Sulaiman’s argument is that this is not a specifically national
phenomenon and they projected this as a shared Asian thinking process. As if shouting into the ears
of anyone who would care to listen to their plea, they exhorted, incited and inculcated in capital
letters, ‘ANY ATTEMPT TO VIEW OUR CONTRIBUTIONS WITHIN A PURELY “MA-
LAYSIAN” CONTEXT CAN ONLY RESULT IN A FAILURE TO REALISE THE IMPLI-
CATIONS OF THE QUESTIONS WE ARE ATTEMPTING TO RAISE. THE PRESENT
EXHIBITION DEALS WITH A KIND OF SITUATION WHICH PREVAILS IN MANY
PARTS OF ASIA WHERE SOME KIND OF MODERN ART INVOLVEMENT EXISTS.’
Malaysia, located in maritime Southeast Asia is, after all, a crossroads. A melting pot of culture,
whose sum cultural tradition is inflected by an amalgamation of Hindu, Buddhist, Chinese and
Islamic elements, followed by Western colonial influences. On top on this, the 19th century brought
large numbers of Chinese and Indian immigrants by the British who stayed on and brought with
them their culture and tradition. Adding to this mix are Sabah and Sarawak’s indigenous cultures.

It is therefore impossible to locate at one instance an enduring cultural singularity that Malaysia
holds. Recognising this multiplicity, the artistic challenge for the vanguard is always to identify the
country within a larger shared regional heritage and understand its essence.

Yet, this is not something entirely new. Latiff Mohidin early on, after his education in Berlin, fan-
cied himself as a pengembara (traveler) and embarked in 1964 on a journey around Southeast Asia
to produce an aesthetic vision of the region through his Pago-pago series. Similarly, Lee Joo For in
1968 proposed in Orientobyzantine a ‘fantasticaly rich images and symbols of the eras for they are
redolent to me of human history, loves and strife.’
But instead of resorting to the reclamation of regional motifs to replicate what was seemingly a
Western art styles such as Latiff Mohidin or Lee Joo For, Towards a Mystical Reality presents
this reality as a document. Downplaying the ‘artifact-oriented’ tendency of artmaking, they instead
considered the displayed objects as props, keys and documents that helped facilitate an ‘experience
of the mind’ in confrontation with reality - Our reality as opposed to Theirs. It was to mark a kind
of critical distance as an exercise to remap our mental geography, so that the ‘here’ is no longer
peripheral to some culturally superior center, but that the center can be anywhere and everywhere.

Not everyone was convinced by this brash display of bravura. Some thought it pretentious and to
have lost the plot. Others were more reactionary, coming out in defence of aesthetics and beauty. It
is perhaps difficult, in our day and age, where we have become so used to, jaded and cynical of the
spectacle of the found object that is the readymade, to appreciate its radicalism and shock-value.
Yet, there it was.

This exhibition came together as an archaeological documentation of our society, sampling the ar-
ticles that make up our daily life. It was not motivated by the reconstruction of a solemn spiritual
form based on traditional architectures of the Southeast Asia of Latiff’s Pago-Pago, nor the intense
emotional landscape of place and time expressed through the singular artistic genius. It did not
seek to reclaim classical motifs of the region by means of asserting an identity. Rather, Towards a
Mystical Reality catalogued the ordinary sediment of our modern society. A discarded raincoat,
half drunk coca-cola bottles, a potted plant, mosquito coils – an expansive poetic litany of objects
belonging to the nameless collective of people that had together come to realise a community.
35

Zen and the Art of Pissing

Piya, you want art, but you’re confused about art; you
want reality but you are confused about reality. Reality?
Remember the stream of my piss – the one that celebrated
the culmination of reality; between refinement and the coarse,
the spiritual and the vulgar, the mystical and the concrete;
it is the consequence of the Zen which you so look highly to.
So Piya, when I took off my pants in that historical exhibition
of yours, I wasn’t prostituting my dignity. In fact, I was
revealing reality.
– Pissing and Art:
Letter from Salleh Ben Joned to Piyadasa

In 2006, at the now defunct artist-run Reka Art Space, Vincent Leong staged a Duchampian as-
sessment of Malaysian art in his first local solo, The Fake Show. Assuming the guise of a curator
featuring a number of artists from thinly disguised references local art pioneers - such as Rizal P.
Dasar (Redza Piyadasa) Chua Li Khor (Jolly Koh)- to fictional collectives (The Anti-Corruption
Avengers), a specific work ‘Piss Take’ draws parallels among the artist, Redza Piyadasa and Duch-
amp. It was a comical ribbing at the kind of Zen/Taoist inflected attitude to art-making and think-
ing that Redza Piyadasa and Sulaman Esa espoused in the Towards A Mystical Reality exhibition,
taking the form, in this instance, of an oriental pissoir.

The spilt-up pissoir, borrowing its visual cue from Piyadasa’s late-70s series of conceptual art and
text propositional sculptures, is a highly apt allusion in more ways than the act of appropriating
Piyadasa’s vocabulary. For on the opening night of the Towards a Mystical Reality exhibition, in
a brash yet brilliant display of one-upmanship in the most inimitably Dadaist fashion, Salleh Ben
Joned, enfant terrible of Malaysian poetry, urinated on Piyadasa and Sulaiman Esa’s manifesto.

Sulaiman was rendered speechless, ‘I didn’t know how to react back then. You have to remember
that we were quite young back then and already staging the exhibition and receiving the kind of
response and feedback from a clueless audience was daunting enough. Then you have Salleh there
taking a piss in a corner’. Piya was, to say the least, pissed off.

The more conservative segment of the art world responded disparagingly. In another discussion
thread between Piyadasa and ‘Anak Alam’ arts collective member Siti Zainon Ismail in the issues
of Dewan Sastera following the exhibition, the latter took a swipe at Salleh Ben Joned, accusing
him of prostituting his dignity (melacur maruah).

In response, Piyadasa dismissed Salleh’s act as irrelevant and beyond the artistic control he was
able to exercise over the exhibition. Therefore, it was only natural that Salleh Ben Joned provided
a rejoinder to clear himself of the charge.

While Salleh expressed sympathy for Piyadasa’s effort to cultivate a polemical discourse in art
and largely agreed that most Malaysian artists are ignorant about origins and ideology behind the
‘modernist idioms’ which they have adopted, he distanced himself from Piyadasa’s exhortation that
all artists need to be able to posture themselves as theorists and polemicists.
36

Salleh went on to comment, ‘The tone and the stance of your exhibition manifesto is too solemn
and pretentious. How often have you repeated and shouted in capital letters (capitalising sentences
and using exclamation mark seems to be a truly Piyadasa style). It seems that you’ve made this into
a voracious reading programme! (oh dear!). But your rhetorical hysteria or verbal amok in your
manifesto might cause doubt in a Zen guru whether or not you have truly grasped the meaning of
mysticism or its spirit.’

Salleh then went on to defend himself by claiming that a crucial aspect to Zen (of the classical va-
riety, not the intellectual fad, he would add in parenthesis) was the element of humour, irony and a
devilish fondness for practical jokes in its teaching. Zen is quick to capture and expose pomposity,
pretension, arrogance as well as ‘abstract thought that forgot reality in the name of Reality (with a
capital R)’ that comes with intellectual posturing and seriousness.

Salleh’s reprimand turned out to be a valuable lesson for both Piyadasa and Sulaiman. Piyadasa
would recall later, ‘He really cut us down to size and punctured our ego!’ and conceded their in-
ability to appreciate the subtler philosophical contexts upon which Salleh based his actions.

However, what would hit home was the insight Salleh Ben Joned offered concerning the relation-
ship between the avant-garde and the institution. Why, he asked, would this direct confronta-
tion with a (mystical) reality require the legitimising of representatives from institutions and the
academia? Why was the representative from the Ministry of Culture who officiated this ‘confronta-
tion with a mystical reality’ allowed to dribble on for half an hour?

A decade and a half later, artist Wong Hoy Cheong would conclude similarly, ‘… the majority of
young artists would find no awkward contradictions between rebellion and a need for the support
of the dominant art institution… You are critical of the power structures and yet you are dependent
on these very powers to legitimise and evaluate the worthiness of your work.’

Was this need for legitimisation the result of a sincere interest to fall in step with the national cul-
tural policy which the artists helped shape and develop in 1971? Wong Hoy Cheong reminded me,
‘You have to remember, there was this sense of optimism back then.’ It was an opportunity to build
a national culture and many were taking it in different direction, interpreting it in the broadest and
most open sense of the word.

It is in this spirit that we can now turn to the broader question of provocation in art. What is
the value of controversy in art? Why, in the conventional understanding of art, do we primarily
consider art as an object of beauty? Why promulgate the notion of anti-aesthetic as Piyadasa and
Sulaiman had done? Why destroy the established criteria and values we have placed in art? Why
fight beauty when the world is ugly enough?

For many of us who derive pleasure from pretty pictures and like our art to just provide this pleas-
ure, it remains hard to fathom the intentions of artists who create works to agitate, provoke, and
challenge this order. But for artists who consider art as the arena in which the sum of our intelli-
gence, culture, creativity and humanity are contested, this need becomes an imperative. It teaches
us to suspect anyone who would come forward and claim that there is a singular definition to what
art is.
37

For Art, with a capital A, a sum tradition of creativity and the imagination, is the thing that disa-
grees with whatever one thinks it is. It contains a plural, dissenting, cacophonous field of creative
motivations that are constantly arguing, sharpening, perfecting and changing the way we think,
demonstrating that the very foundation of a democratic culture is not fostered through consensus,
but dissent. Or at the very least, the ability to be civil when disagreeing.

Peeing on another artist’s manifesto constitutes a breach of civility, which is a matter of debate.
One might argue that it hinges on the cultural context in which it is performed. It is not hard to
imagine how this would be a harder act to pass off today. But this was 70s Malaysia and in its early
days, it would seem that the National Cultural Policy had not been weighed down by the trenchant
inwardness that had come to stifle the possibilities of a much more multi-vocal articulation of its
direction.

For what constitutes the richness of bumiputera culture if not the fluidity, porousness and recep-
tiveness of its identity? I like to look back at Dewan Sastera in the early 70s for clues to how re-
sponses to the NCP can be productive, rich and so much more embracing. Launched in January
1971, the monthly publication, under the editorship of Usman Awang, is worlds apart from the
Dewan Sastera I was made to read in my secondary school years in the late 90s. It had an ambitious
literary agenda. The world was theirs to take, so to speak. The magazine translated poems by Jorge
Luis Borges, Pablo Neruda and many other writers from non-Western countries into the Malay
language. Malay literati wrote back from England or wherever their wanderlust took them, detail-
ing their experiences and new ideas. Ethnic Chinese Malaysian writers shared developments and
new works in modern Chinese literature. But this diversity of material and information was held
up not merely by passive consumption but through rigorous debate. Disagreement ensued. Sure,
but it was a feverish exchange that reflected a reading public who was curious, passionate, hungry
and open. For it was here that they seemed to display a kind of confidence, telling us from a not so
distant past, ‘We are Malaysians, but we too, are citizens of the world.’

Post-Reality: Finding Relevance

A National Culture is not a folklore, nor an abstract
populism that believes it can discover the people’s true
nature. It is not made up of the inert dregs of gratuitous
actions… which are less and less attached to the ever-present
reality of the people. A national culture is the whole body
of efforts made by a people in the sphere of thought to
describe, justify and praise the action through which that
people has created itself and keeps itself in existence.
– Franz Fanon, On National Culture.

Redza Piyadasa passed away in 2007, unmourned by the wider Malaysian public. For the rest of
the country, the relevance of art, let alone the history of art, to their cultural life are almost non-
existent. Three and the half decades that brought us to the present day came and went. What has
happened since the exhibition?
38

There was paucity on the part of Piyadasa and Sulaiman, partly because of need to develop and grow in
new directions and partly because of exhaustion. Piyadasa left the country shortly after the exhibition
to complete his postgraduate studies in Hawaii. There he would be given the opportunity to further
his interest in Asian art history, giving him access to a wealth of knowledge hitherto unobtainable in
Kuala Lumpur.

Sulaiman took a break from art for the next three years as he attempted to wrestle with the conflict-
ing impulses between his training in Western art and his desire to realign himself as an artist with
the principles of Islam, the religion he grew up with. He would later articulate this conflict in a se-
ries of prints, Waiting for Godot, and would later go abroad and return to espouse a contemporary
genre of abstract formalism grounded in Islamic values.

Both artists would continue to influence generations of artists that came after and developed dif-
ferent bodies of work, although their commitment to a local or regional aesthetic based on a non-
Western ‘thinking approach’ that is in dialogue with an international discourse never expire.

The cultural landscape of Malaysia too was changing. It seemed as if stakeholders who had hoped
for a broader and more expansive understanding of what national culture could be was defeated
by a bigger majority who took on a much more literal and parochial interpretation of the National
Cultural Policy. The shaping of a national identity based on indigenous culture turned out to be less
plural and complex as artists and writers working in the early 70s hoped to be. In effect, it empha-
sised its Malaysian-ness as an Other to the extent that it isolated itself from an engagement with the
world at large, turning instead to define national culture along the most narrow of ethno-religious
lens as a reclamation of an identity that was lost during the colonial period.

Yet in many senses, this wasn’t a revival per se. Jennifer Lovell, researching on Malay artists and
the Malaysian National Cultural Congress, argues that Malaysia as a post-colonial nation instead
arrives at ‘a Malay-Islam identity’. The latter is an identity that was not part of the imagination of
Malaysia at its founding in 1963, but something that was molded in the subsequent years, buoyed by
a rhetoric of revivalism, fixing the Malay identity in essentialist terms, synonymous with the values
of modern Islam.

It would take a decade later, around the mid-80s, for the deconstruction of this cultural direction
to gain momentum. The realities of Redza Piyadasa and Sulaiman Esa were far reaching in that it
embodied the kind of balance between internationalism and local engagement that is seldom real-
ised in our desire to polarise ourselves in a mentality of us against them that has narrowly shaped
post-colonial thinking in its crudest and most reductive form.

The art world too has since changed. Nirajan Rajah notes,’ Today the urgent assertion for Malay dom-
inance of the 1970s has given way to a more relaxed multiculturalism at home. However, the forces
of globalisation have usurped the role of national institutions in representing our cultural identity on
the world stage’ This means that artists who work outside the parameters were able to challenge the
systematic prejudices on a global platform, renewing international engagement via the globalised art
biennale circuits. Meanwhile the national institutions continue their downward slide towards irrel-
evance as artists, given the opportunity to show abroad as well as with the gradual growth of the art
market, found other means of patronage and validation, freeing them from the shackles of the National
Cultural Policy.
39

The rapid development that came in the 90s, brought in by foreign direct investment in a growing
industrial sector saw the city transformed in a cosmetic make-over through the relentless pounding
and building of an urban space that is the direct result of the Wawasan 2020 (Vision 2020) slogan of
the Mahathir era. Kuala Lumpur was building itself upwards, but culture, on an official level, was
not compensated in this modernising fever.

A niggling feeling persists amongst artists and writers, now situated at the periphery of this mus-
cular growth, who feel that the importance of art is more relevant in our times of development; as
thinking and feeling space that is independent of the sort of politicised sentiments that have gripped
the public’s imagination.

It dawned upon many artists that perhaps because art cannot do without its audience (was it not
Umberto Eco who wrote that a writer who does not write for a reader is an atheist?), and if we do
not have one - what we have to do is to take matters into our own hand, and build our own.

Does this precipitate a change in the way we write, talk or communicate about art? Does this pre-
cipitate a change in the way we make and distribute art? Early in the 20th century, Walter Benjamin
called for a politicisation of aesthetics, to make the experience of art accessible to the most number
of people and recognise its innate democratising value, in contrast to the aestheticisation of politics,
where specific political agendas (Benjamin was thinking about Fascism’s adoption of futurism) are
made pretty or glorified through art for the purpose of concealing its totalitarian grip on power.

Vanguard artists in Malaysia since the 90s looked into this claim seriously, and began working with
the community, projects aimed at offering the larger public different ways of imagining the world
we live in, different ways of understanding our reality. In short, making available the experience
of art to more and more people. LabDNA, Kampung Medan Art Project, Apa-Apa, Main Dengan
Rakyat, Chowkit Art Festival, Blue Skies Pudu Jail Art Event, Bangun Penang Clan Jetty Art
Festival, to name a few. But this is another story altogether. These are, in some ways, step-children
of Towards A Mystical Reality. When the wall between art and life is broken down, art floods out
into real life.

I thought of leaving the closing remarks to Sulaiman Esa, because I largely feel he is misrepresented
in our current day art historical narrative of reducing the complexity of his thought by largely
situating his practice within the Islamic formalism movement from the early 80s (which by any ac-
counts he has moved beyond in the 90s), forgetting that his practice ultimately comes full circle and
needs to be reconsidered in light of the openness of Malaysian culture that was so enthusiastically
embraced in the first half of the 70s and reflected in the spirit of the jointly initiated experience the
young Sulaiman once offered to a young country.

‘I do what I do because of my background and training. You must remember I belong to a different
era and I’m continuing that sort of training in honour of the tradition through which my practice
acquires significance and meaning. Today it is a different thing. It’s pointless to do what I do or
emulate my style or interest. Artists now need to broaden their understanding of the world and
work with the people. We can no longer live within the safety of our own art community. Young
artists need to engage with the larger public, the bigger world. Do what young people do best, get
your peers involved, listen to your audience, create your own audience, make works in installation,
video, performance, or whatever you want to call it. This is spiritual art too. Art can no longer be
a hermetic pursuit. Only by actively engaging with others will our art acquire meaning and signifi-
cance. Only then will it become relevant.’
40

Q
UEER WAYS: AN UN-STRAIGHT SURVEY OF THE DIRECTION
OF MALAYSIAN POPULAR CULTURE AND FASHION.
Clarissa Lee

30th August 1957, circa 8 pm.

In a modest brick house in Jalan Ampang, in a small, single bedroom overlooking a small garden
full of dahlias, frangipanis and begonias, was a woman wearing a baju kebaya. She wore a sheer
light-blue top with gold thread with trimmings bordering the patterned shells and edges of the
blouse and a batik skirt (kemban). Her hair was already done up as a bun (sanggul), with an orna-
mented opal pin holding it up. At the point at which this story began, she was still working on her
hair, adding smaller pins and a tortoiseshell comb. The finishing touch was added with generous
use of hairspray.

She allowed a few ringlets to drop across her forehead and her cheeks, twisting them with her
finger to accentuate the curls. As she smiled at her reflection in the mirror, pouting her lips, she
whipped up a compact of bright-red creamy substance and used a tiny brush to draw around her
lips, before filling them in.

She then proceeded to rouge her cheeks with orange-pink rouge from Max Factor, which she had
‘picked-up’ from her mother’s dressing table, using the make-up brushes she had procured from a
haberdashery nearby. Her creamy caramel complexion went well with the colour.

Now it was time to tackle the eyes, which she had left to the last because she had only now decided
on what she should do with them; she was going to aim for the 1930s smoky-look which she intend-
ed to effect with an Avon mascara, eyelash extensions, eyeliner and eyebrow pencil, all of which she
had ‘borrowed’ from her sister’s dressing table. Her long and thick lashes were further augmented
through the use of a curler and Chanel mascara she had bought from a departmental store.
41

She took a long look at her own handiwork in front of the bedroom mirror before smirking, a smirk
that she quickly turned into a demure smile. The final touch would be to dust some pinkish powder
she had procured from the same departmental store. Her skins seemed smooth but for some tiny,
but visible and thickish, hair near her cheeks and chin, requiring a slight operation with tweezers.

She looked at the clock. It was about 8:30 now. About time to leave, otherwise, she would be late
for the appointment. Her family had left more than an hour earlier, as she said she would be going
separately with her friends. Taking a last look into the mirror, she turned to pick up a lilac tasselled
shawl she had left draped on a chair. Taking one last look behind, and patting her hair, she slipped
into a pair of brocaded sandals, one which she had to specially order at the shoe shop between Java
Street and Malay Street since her feet were bigger than the sizes carried by the shoe-store.

Closing the gates behind her, she walked to the main street running parallel to her house towards a
row of shophouses. Parked along the sides were a few trishaws, their owners taking a break at some
tables lining the outside of a Chinese coffee-shop. As she approached the trishaw front-most of the
line, one of the men congregating at a table covered with teapots and cups and porcelain bowls of
soup that hinted on a prior meal of noodles, got up and approached her. With minimal ado, she
climbed on board the trishaw and was on her way to the rendezvous…

In another part of town, in Brickfields, a dapper-looking young man in his early-to-mid twenties,
dressed in a white flannel shirt, pin-stripped tie and dark-grey corduroy trousers was doing his
toilette, which consisted in putting pomade in his hair and combing it over, spritzing some cologne
on his collar and adjusting his tie. Prior to that, he had taken extra pain to ensure that his breath
would smell minty fresh; after all, he was about to meet a young woman he had been looking
forward to seeing all week, especially since it had not been easy for them to meet up; she was from
a respectable family and unchaperoned dates were frowned upon. But it was a special day; they
would be meeting by the square near the Selangor Club to celebrate an occasion.

This young man worked as an attorney and solicitor in one of the law firms not too far from the
Selangor Club. He had rented a room in Brickfields with a kindly elderly Punjabi lady living alone
whose husband had passed on and whose children had left home to set up their own homes. She
usually cooked dinner for herself if she was home; she would make sure to cook enough for two so
that he could have a home-cooked meal for dinner. For lunch however, he would usually head out
to the Coliseum, his favourite haunt. On Sundays, he would go there for brunch or tea.

It was on one of those days there that he had met the young woman; she was daintily having tea by
herself, dressed in a yellow strapless sundress with a knee-length flared skirt, stockings and white
mules. She wore one of those flapper-style hats that were popular in the 1920s of matching yellow
(she had later informed him that she had bought it while studying in or visiting London). Her sharp
face, cinnamon-coloured smooth skin, dark lashes and dimpled chin, as well as what was for him a
very sweet smile, had attracted his attention.

He looked at the table clock by his bedside table. It was close to half-past-eight; he would have
to leave soon if he was to make their meeting at nine o’clock near the entrance of the Selangor
Club. He opened the top drawer of the armoire next to the mirror and took out a small and classy
looking paperbag. He dipped inside and extracted a folded white silk scarf that he had found at
an emporium near Masjid Jamek. It looked like it may have been from Chanel, except that it was
42

not. Stroking it lovingly, he carefully put it into the bag, folding the latter’s mouth down slightly.
He picked up his pair of black platform pimp shoes from his wardrobe before exiting through the
side entrance of the house that had been reserved for him just so that he could have the privacy of
moving in and out without disturbing his landlady.

He walked out in the hope of either catching a taxi or trishaw near the shophouses. It might be
difficult since many people would also be heading out in the same direction. It was a warm night
and walking dressed as he was would not have been comfortable; it would be hard to last the entire
night drenched in sweat. As luck would have it, 10 minutes from his house, he saw a passing black
taxi that had just dropped a passenger, which he immediately hailed. Now it would just be a short
ride to the square. Along the way, he saw a large billboard for a Bollywood film to be showing in
one of the cinemas near the Coliseum, publicity for Mother India by Mehboob Khan, set next to an
F&N soft-drink and Tiger Balm advertisement. Such billboards were becoming more prominent
around Kuala Lumpur as the city council was beginning to sell an increasing number of advertising
spaces around town.

9 pm.

The square was filling up rapidly even though it was still about three hours before the official
announcement would be made. One can hear music in the highly-charged air as people were buzzing
around. He made his way to the gate of the Selangor Club. As he was not a member, he could
not enter so he had to wait outside. She wasn’t there yet. He waited expectantly, and somewhat
impatiently. She should be there anytime. Sure enough, five minutes into the wait, he saw her
walking towards him, past throngs of people milling about the place. As she approached, he noticed
the elaborate kebaya she was wearing; it could possibly have been from Kelantan, for she said that
her family was originally from there. She seemed shapely, though her body was svelter than the
other Malay women he had seen, her hips much smaller. But then, hadn’t she told him that she was
of Dutch, Chinese, Thai and Malay extraction? She saw him and smiled. His heart skipped a beat.
She looked like a princess tonight, not unlike the royalty that would be making their appearances
later at the square. As she went near him, he greeted her and after an exchange of pleasantries, gave
her the little paperbag he had been carrying since he left the house. She smiled and thanked him.
She then took his arm and they walked off together towards the square, determined to enjoy each
other’s company and also the celebration that would soon be taking place.

The square was milling with all kinds of people, people that were not mentioned in newspaper
articles of that period, in historical entries on the Declaration of Independence of the Federation
of Malaya or in any reminiscences of that period. There was no mention of the advertisements
around the milieu of the square. That were also almost no mention of the fact that the people
congregating around the square were not merely homogenous forms of Malay, Chinese, Indians,
East Malaysians, Eurasians and other minority groups. There could have been a good mix of those
donning their so-called traditional costumes and those in Western garb. With the number of people
milling about, who would be looking closely at the people behind the clothes?

Why should the officially received Independence Day celebration be seen as a straight celebration,
even though it was held long before the time of the Women’s Liberation movement, let alone other
43

forms of sociological liberation (beyond the abolition of slavery and indentured employment)?
Moreover, the 1957 Independence Day celebration was not a victorious celebration for all, as
some have felt that Independence was compromised by the reification of monarchical and feudal
structures within society.1 If any of the people who had resisted the form of Independence in which
they were given had even turned up to see for themselves a ‘sad’ day, what would they had been
dressed in?

A fashion, cultural and consumption history

of Malaya/Malaysia (1957 – 2009)
The 1950s in Malaysia was a time when national versus ethnic identity was still at a nascent stage.
At that time, even if the community were very much aware of their racial identity, there were other
things of greater concern. Even in the midst of political upheavals, the consumer culture was un-
perturbed and moving ahead strongly due to an increasing number of, albeit still small, affluent and
urban classes who were willing to spend more money on consumer goods and leisure. The Cathay
and Odeon cinema chains were starting up in both big and smaller towns. It was the Golden Age
of cinema.

Even as they received part of their inspiration from Hollywood and European classics, the Bang-
sawan and other forms of Malay theatre also played a role in influencing the Malayan/Malaysian
silver screen as some of the very early actors and actresses were involved as Bangsawan performers
in the early part of their career. The modern local cinema was conservative towards the roles that its
actresses and actors could take up. In other words, actresses were supposed to perform their pre-
defined femininity and actors their predefined masculinity, with little space for ‘difference.’ It was
only very seldom that one may catch an actress in pants while on screen, regardless of what they
may prefer to wear off-screen. Hollywood inspired make-up and dresses were modified with locally
available material and designs. Pop-culture publications of that period did not present any visuals
or narration outside the heteronormative formula, and at that time, most pop-culture journals were
inspired by standards set in the Western world which were also constrained by heteronormative
prescriptions, for they were all about promoting particular modes of thinking that would sell best;
modes of thinking dictated by external representations (and dress) that constituted femininity and
masculinity.

However, even from as early as the 1950s, advertising and branding were very much driven by
cinematic developments and the performing arts (as well as the lifestyles that the screen divas rep-
resented, even if not to the scale that one saw in the later decades). Even though advertising-driven
consumption was still at its infancy at that time, billboards were springing up all over Malaysia,
posters illustrating popular drinks, food and cosmetics of that period could be found in cinemas,
emporiums, restaurants and on the increasing number of billboards found around town. Advertis-
ing agencies were set up in pre-Independent and post-Independent Malaya/Malaysia.

While the cabarets were already in existence since the early part of the twentieth century, their
golden age was in the 1950s, at the time when the local film scene was on the rise. Cabarets became
1  or example, much of the manifestos delivered to the Commission that drafted the first Malayan Constitution were rejected. Moreover,
F
the 1947 draft of the Constitution drafted by parties wanting to see a complete rejection of the old regime and the establishment of a
republic was rejected. The British wanted to maintain the good will of the royalty and nobility, even if that was at the expense of real
democracy, the consequence of which we have to now bear.
44

the discursive site where alternative acts, some considered to be overly rife with sexual nuances
and burlesque, were performed. Drag shows and strip-tease performances were very much part of
the cabaret acts from as early as the 1960s, with the former inhabited by male performers dressing
as women and the latter largely the domain of female performers dressed as come-hither females.
When the film industry underwent a dip in the 1960s, alternative sites of performances such as
cabaret acts grew in popularity amidst the more ‘permissive’ environment of the 1960s and 1970s
in the urban areas (even if such permissiveness did not extend to sexual agency for women or the
breaking of social taboos which were/are still strongly reified within societies). Moreover, even as
early as the 1960s, and though unacknowledged in the mainstream cultural history of Malaysia,
was the fact that some of the beautiful models who were peddling cosmetics, clothes and household
items were female transsexuals.

Perhaps, the lack of acknowledgement accorded to them stemmed from the fact that most did
not realise that these women used to be men. Because of the small size of most South East Asian
men, and the similarity in the bodily structure of South East Asian men and women, savvy use
of make up and dressing would hide any bodily flaws or tell-tale signs that the person is actually
not a natural-born woman. Moreover, many of these transgendered males-to-females (MTFs) per-
formed their feminine roles in accordance with the prevailing prescriptions of femininity. Hence,
while their existence in the heteronormative world of advertising seems an act of transgression, of
audacity, the reality is that none of these transgendered persons attempt to challenge the role that
patriarchy had assigned to women. Instead, they spent most of their time playing up their feminin-
ity in an attempt to stay in business. This of course did not preclude the fact that some of them did
have ‘male’ interests in their former lives as boys and men, but such interests were often subsumed
in the new roles which they played.

Even as early as the 1960s, there was a multiplicity of beauty pageants in which transgendered
MTFs participated in (but this of course were not widely publicised) but such pageants were
banned in the 1990s. These pageants received sponsorship from various commercial brands. As
early as the 1960s, there were many clubs catering to non-heteronormative needs, though they of
course exist outside the consciousness of the so-called respectable society. Even as the world of pop
culture, consumerism and entertainment infiltrated from the US and Britain into the urban world
of Malaya, and later, that of Malaysia, there were very few news articles on the alternative scenes -
drag shows, strip tease and various cabaret acts - even though exploits by performers such as Rose
Chan, the legendary striptease, were sure to make headlines. However, they were less publicised in
mainstream publications than in posters and flyers that were handed around town. Moreover, Rose
Chan was popular enough that people knew where and when she would be performing. While her
strip-tease acts were calculated moves of commerce, they also became a critique of the hypocritical
morality of society. Many traditional dances such as joget and ghazal had female roles taken up by
male dancers. Before the twentieth century, female roles in the Bangsawan were performed by men
since women were prohibited from performing in public spaces.

If we were to return to the mainstream world of higher education, to University Malaya in the
1960s, there were acts of transgression that were taking place as well, though in a more subtle man-
ner. Even though the Women’s Liberation movement failed to make its entry into Malaysia at the
moment of its rebirth in the 1960s (the first time being in the late nineteenth century in Europe),
the peace and anti-war movements garnered much interest among the university students, to such
an extent that the fashion worn by students and protesters in the West, cheesecloth and afghan tops
with bell-bottoms, were adopted.
45

The protests led to growing consciousness of local issues at the ideological and pragmatic level, thus
turning protests over campus-related issues into a form of broader consciousness-raising. Students
were able to raise enough money to run an autonomous union, bringing in international acts such
the musician Jose Feliciano and theatrical acts from Japan such as Katanagara. Experimental
theatre and agit prop were beginning to make their presence felt, particularly between the late
1960s and the 1970s when students saw those as a means of expressing themselves. The students
were also trend-setters in the world of fashion as they aped and modified the trends that were spill-
ing in from the West. Even if the sanctified grounds of academia was far removed from the seedy
and seamy sides of Masjid Jamek and Chow Kit, there were similarities in their aims to counter
the hegemony of prescribed cultures, of cultures legitimised by institutions with particular political
agendas, sometimes at the expense of marginal or less visible cultures, particularly those seen as
transgressive or a threat to present dominant agendas.

Bellbottoms and cheesecloth aside, there were the usual shirts and pants for men and blouse and
mini-skirts for women. What the 1960s and 1970s epitomised was the lack of strict dress-codes, so
much so that there was the occasional blurring of lines between what was constituted as feminine
and masculine dress-codes. In the Malay community for instance, there were no restrictions on
what constituted masculine or feminine tops when it came to Western clothes. However, while the
fluidity of appearances did not draw much reaction from the community, especially before growing
Islamisation from the mid-1980s onwards, practices of sexuality outside heternormative prescrip-
tions drew strong sanctions and castigation from society.

If the larger community in Kuala Lumpur and other urban areas housed cross-dressers of both
sexes, most were very discrete about their preferences, preferring to keep a low profile most of the
time, dressing in clothes considered normative to their sexes and only showing their natural tenden-
cies in places they felt comfortable in (or at least among their own friends). Even as early as the
1950s, Kuala Lumpur had been the mecca of cross-dressers and queers in the same way that San
Francisco was the destination for lesbians/gays/bisexuals/transsexuals (LGBTs) from less friendly
parts of the United States. However, instead of broadcasting their own social and sexual identity,
they tended to keep to themselves or try to assimilate into society. Transgendered models who man-
aged to obtain jobs in the advertising world took every care to ensure that their true identities were
never revealed, at least not involuntarily. In fact, prior to the mid 1990s, every transsexual that had
undergone a sex-change operation was allowed to change the category of their sex on their identity
cards. However, such freedom did not extend to making films that question the very meaning of
gender and sex. These only came about much later with the turn of the twenty-first century, when
daring individuals were more willing to take up a topic perceived as contentious.

If the 1950s to the 1970s were days of great individual freedom and minimal moral policing, espe-
cially in dress codes, Malay women, especially those living urban areas, did not feel the pressure
of donning the hijab or masking their figure. Hence, dressing was also an indirect way of flaunting
their sexuality or their pride in their physicality. It could also have been a form of political expres-
sion or for the purpose of comfort. However, by the 1980s, things were slowly changing.

The inflow of Islamist evangelicals from countries such as Pakistan, the Iranian revolution of 1979,
the establishment of ABIM (Malaysian Islamic Youth Movement), the increasing number of Ma-
laysian students who were sent to study in Egypt and Jordan, and the growing Arabisation of Ma-
lay culture led to mass donning of the closed and tight (as opposed to loose) head scarves as well as
the baju kurung, a form-masking dress with a sack-like top and ankle-length A-line skirt.
46

It was around this period that one could see the increasing visibility of such fashion in fashion
magazines particularly targeted at Malay women, pressuring them subtly on the importance of
guarding their modesty. While girls in primary schools were still allowed to wear shorts for sports
and physical education, they were barred from doing so by the time they reached secondary school
(which is when most enter the age of puberty). Some would even wear the headscarf tightly around
their heads and necks while playing sports, despite the fierce sun beating down on their heads,
while their mothers (if their mothers had attended schools) would have been bare-headed (or wear-
ing a hat) and in shorts. By the 1980s, the once short-skirted and bare-headed (and mostly urban)
Malay female students in the local universities were replaced by a mixture of female students from
more rural areas and other urban areas dressed in hijabs and baju kurungs, and such visibility
climaxed in the 1990s, due to the growing strength of the Islamic student movements fuelled and
encouraged by ABIM and other Islamist organisations.

The 1990s, of course, saw a large influx of students, with Malay students going from being the mi-
nority to being the majority group through the institution of the quota system. By the 1990s, there
were many more rural Malays than urban Malays as many of the latter were sent abroad on gov-
ernment and private scholarships, or by their parents. The same rings true for the parents of other
ethnic groups. In other words, the generation born to those who went to University Malaya in the
1960s and 1970s were sent to study abroad, or to twinning degree programs in private colleges
that were mushrooming around the same time. The fluctuating demographics stemming from the
changing education landscape, growing middle-class and upper-middle class segment and growing
affluence mean that majority of those who attended local universities before the economic crisis of
1997 in South East Asia and East Asia tended to be those of the lower income (with middle-class
and upper-middle class members now constituting the minority instead of the majority such as it
was in the 1960s and most of the 1970s). Even as the years after 1997 saw more parents sending
their children to Malaysian public universities and, for those unable to earn a place there, to private
colleges, the cultural landscape of college-going youths was irrevocably changed.

The 1980s and the 1990s in particular saw a conflict between advocates of ‘eastern’ values and
‘western’ values.2 This coincided with growing Islamic fundamentalism in Malaysia, rising anti-
Semitism that led to strong criticism of the US, and increasing draconian measures taken by the
ruling government to remain in power at all cost. Prior to the 1980s, and as early as 1971, after
the race riots of 1969, there had been an attempt to establish a ‘national’ culture that would place
the Malay and Islamic identity as the main priority and the core, and other minority cultures (read
‘non-Malay’ cultures) as contributing sources as long as they did not challenge the prevailing
interpretation of Islam in Malaysia. The attempt was made through the organisation of the National
Cultural Congress by the Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka, which is a body charged with regulating and
governing the use of Malaysia’s national language, Malay. However, nothing happened beyond the
congress to seriously push the issues since continuous bickering of the ‘culture vultures’ that were
participants and interested observers of the Congress created an impasse. In fact, when the idea of
‘Eastern’ values was given birth to in the 1980s, there was almost no reference to this early attempt
made during the Congress. Moreover, ‘Eastern’ values were not any real solid construction beyond
a reactionary attempt to counter democratic and liberal claims as ‘western’ culture. There was
neither real discourse nor any attempt to define more rigorously the meaning of ‘Eastern’ values.

2 I t was around the 1980s that the “Look East” policy was instituted by the then Prime Minister, Mahathir Mohamad, who at that time
was at odds with British due to the steep hike in student fees instituted by the latter, thus affecting the government scholars who were
sent to study in Great Britain.
47

On the other hand, the Congress was at least willing to debate the issue and maintain a somewhat more
open mind compared to the promoters of “Eastern values” in the 1990s, even if it was mostly limited to

the level of addressing the forms of programming that radio and television could have, which were
at that time fully government-controlled. However, the papers published as a result of the congress
were not averse to borrowing what were considered as good performing practices from the other
cultures. At the very least, the Congress participants had a higher interest in looking at culture as
a dialectical construct rather than as a static object. However, the advocates of ‘Eastern’ values
were unable to come up with much of a concrete framework in which they could frame the very
provenance and philosophy of their ‘values.’

The 1990s, more so than the 1980s, were seen as the age of globalization and clashing cultures, as
folk culture struggling for footholds were ignored or manipulated by government-instituted cultural
policies for the purpose of touristic or propagandistic consumption whilst imported popular cultures
(rather than folk/traditional cultures) from the US and Japan in the form of anime, toys and icons,
video games, music and even styles of dressing took the entire country by storm. Particularly from
the mid 1990s to current times, access to the Internet (which came to Malaysia around the mid
1990s) took access to such popular cultures to a new level and heightened their spread among
youths and those under 30 before it also began to spread to those above that age group.

While all this was happening, the Islamists were also beginning to create their own brand of
popular culture through the establishment of nasyid singing groups in boy-band style, such as
the group Raihan, which were meant to capture the interest of the young. However, there were
not many attempts to bring folk-music and existing traditions into the locally manufactured pop
cultures, with the latter being modifications of pop music from countries such as Indonesia,
Hong Kong, and the US in terms of musical styles. Of course, all the pop music produced in
these countries take on musical forms that originated from Europe (pentatonic scales), with certain
styles particularly popular within particular communities due to their synchronicity with the latter’s
psyches. While recent times have seen the revival of interest in folk-cultures and performances due
to efforts of certain bodies, most of the work done in this area had more to do with preservation and
documentation than development, re-interpretation, and integration, all-important for the survival
and continuous evolution of any art forms.

The 1990s also saw the establishment of the Boom Boom Room in Kuala Lumpur, the place where
all forms of ‘marginal’ stage entertainments such as drag shows were brought into the mainstream
and made more respectable as they opened up comic stand-ups such as the infamous Joanne Kam
Poh Poh. Even then, ‘acceptable’ mainstream drag shows could not challenge the sexual privileging
of heteronormativity but instead provided a comic parody of men trying to play out female roles.
Hence, staging a performance equivalent to M. Butterfly would lead to moral outrage that I believe
as stemming more from discomfort with its subtle implications than portrayal of gendered roles. On
the other hand, the 1990s also saw more concerted efforts from queer (LGBT) groups to organise
themselves and their communities as they faced challenges caused by the spread of HIV among
those in the community. They became concerned with the necessity of non-judgmental sexual
health education which led to the production and direction of Bukak Api in 2000.

Bukak Api was a docu-drama about sex-workers working the infamous seedy red-light district
of Chow Kit (which bears little resemblance to the one in Amsterdam). A large number of the
48

sex-workers are transvestites who were not able to obtain jobs in the other sectors. The objective
was to educate the public and sex-workers on the importance of safe-sex for disease prevention,
not merely to prevent unwanted pregnancies. Moreover, the docu-drama tried to empower sex-
workers to insist on the use of condoms by their clients and demonstrating how that could be part
of fore-play.

By the 21st century however, queer groups in Malaysia, even if their numbers are still low, were
coming together and organising events to highlight to society at large (even if society consists mostly
of urbanites) their existence and the struggle of their lives. Organisations such as Pink Triangle
would put on performances which would be constituted as raucous and lewd, due to their ‘wanton’
references to human sexuality, by those who had grown up under the heavy hands of censorship
and did not have the privilege of seeing anything else otherwise. However, these performances
are meant to mirror and sublimate the realities of our everyday world, even the worlds we choose
to be blind about. The bad-press the LGBT community received due to the wanton violation of
ethical journalism by the tabloids in Malaysia gave society, many of whom received their news and
conceive their views mainly from such tabloids, the impression that the groups want to wish their
‘hedonistic’ and ‘lewd’ lifestyles upon others. The very same press then refuses to do any stories
representing the day-to-day realities and lives of the LGBT communities and the people living
in them. Nonetheless, performances, gatherings and defaming publications aside, queer activism
in Malaysia is still in its infancy, as the increasing Islamic radicalisation in Malaysia has led to
discomfort among many Muslim queer-identified folks who find it too risky to come-out for fear of
reprisals, thus leading to suppression, depression and social problems.3 Stringent moral policing
also meant that entertainment outlets could not function without harassment and disruption to their
business. One example is the aforementioned Boom Boom Room that faced the same problem of
harassment, as do other entertainment outlets. Thus, many were not able to function continuously,
but would open and close for periods of time as part of their business model, so as to adjust
themselves to the social conditions under which they were operating.

In the turn of the 21st century, there is a blurring of boundaries between what is ‘theirs’ and ‘ours’
as popular culture is instantly franchised, spreading like memes that grip nations with evolved
entertainment channels and consumer systems. An example is American Idol that began in the US
and had since spread to many parts of the world, including Malaysia, each with its own seasons.
Later, Malaysia created its own brand of reality TV show in the form of Akademi Fantasia, a
televised academy that is aimed at grooming future pop-stars, dancers and pop-art performers. It
was the third season of this reality TV in 2005 that gave us the infamous pop icon, Mawi, who had
continuously made headlines for a number of years as the ‘Islamic’ answer to the pop-music world
before also disappearing under the sea of new acts (or, newspapers stopped writing as much about
him compared to the early years). While other forms of reality TV that were to later dominate the
prime time channels of US cable TV did not evolve into Malaysian versions, they were eagerly
followed by subscribers of Astro, Malaysia’s first satellite TV service and also through the private
channels that have slowly increased in number since the late 1990s, even though the numbers are
still kept very low due to stringent regulations.

As the publishing industry (or at least the magazine publishing industry in Malaysia) was
undergoing a maturing process between the 1950s and now, with the inflation of prices of overseas
publications, the Malaysian public was turning to local publications to inform them of the newest
3 Which is always what happens when a person is not true to him/herself, leading to less than honest behaviour.
49

and latest in trends and of products available. The magazines published in Malaysia are mostly on
lifestyles/fashion in the most general way possible and are firm advocates of social advancement.
There are a few trade journals dedicated to hobbies, gadgets, business, IT and education but these
only occupy a small percentage of the publication output.

The two biggest magazine publishing houses, Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka (DBP) and Karangkraf
together have a strong grip on the school-going market with magazines, academic or general
interest, targeting populations from primary school through college. DBP also puts out a magazine
centering on literature, called Dewan Sastera, and is about the only literary magazine published in
Malaysia, if one does not count short-lived attempts or non-mainstream publications. Karangkraf
also publishes comics in the Malay language and entertainment magazines with a focus on the local
entertainment scenes. There were of course, here and there, Malay and Chinese magazine tabloids
or magazines devoted to formulaic short stories and ‘true stories’ not unlike that found in the West.

Political parties such as PAS (Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party) publish their own magazine on
general interest and political issues, Siasah. There are some online webzines and pullouts from
weeklies and dailies that publish articles relating to current and not-so-current issues on culture,
politics and literature. However, that said, there are no journals featuring world issues or attempts
to make academic subjects (such as philosophy, anthropology, history, astronomy and psychology)
accessible to the general public. There were attempts to publish general science magazines, but with
the exception of Popular Science that seems to concentrate more on gadgets and technology than
on interrogating issues relating to scientific disciplines, most did not last long in the market due to
poor publicity and general lack of availability in most outlets selling magazines and newspapers.

One need not even think about feminist publications of any sort, or publications catering to people
with alternate lifestyles or niche preferences (including less common hobbies and interests). When
asked, most publishers would point to lack of interest and that such magazines do not sell well. There
has always been an assumption that the general readership is unable to digest anything heavier than
practical tips on childcare, romances, true-stories, everyday psychology and alternative medical
treatments. This is ironic seeing that the price of many of these magazines would put them out of the
reach of the lower income group, thus making much of the readership comprise many of those who
had reached a certain level of educational attainment that would include the digestion of technical
materials. It is a wonder how the glut of these lifestyle magazines talking about almost the same
issues would not also make such a ‘safe’ model unsustainable, especially at a time when much of
the same information could also be obtained online. As a writer and contributor to such magazines
for many years, I have seen such magazines come and go, some lasting not more than a year due
to financial difficulties. Some had to undergo much revamping, which means the inclusion of more
advertorial material than ever rather than the improvement of content. Much of the attraction of
these magazines come more from the visuals they provide (which are costly to produce) and the
semi-gossipy columns featuring advice or personal dirt. However, much of the issues discussed stay
within safe boundaries and do not transgress current social superstructures for fear of losing their
‘imaginary’ readership.

Despite the multiplicity of languages in which these magazines are published (mostly in Malay,
English or Chinese), much of the content is pretty similar across the board and even repetitious,
with some slight modification according to the perceived profile of the readership.
50

What I would like to do here is to provide a brief analysis of some of these lifestyle magazines
containing a more specific fashion focus. I have decided to limit my analysis to a selection of Malay-
language magazines, with a gesture towards a small sampling of magazines targeted at the Chinese-
reading public and English-language magazines targeted at the Indian community. My reason for
selecting Malay-language lifestyle magazines as my main focus is due to the sizeable readership
which they have, as a large proportion of the Malaysia population is Malay-speaking and reads
mainly in Malay. Moreover, these magazines are most indicative of the social climate/developments
in Malaysia and the preoccupations of a readership constituting a majority of the population. Even
though the more upmarket of these magazines are pretty similar to their Western predecessors,
there is a greater preoccupation with cultural differences and religious particularities (such as
hijab-based fashion). An example is Nona.

This magazine targets the professional and socially mobile (particularly from the upper-middle
class on) by showcasing in its pages examples of women ranging from the well-groomed and hyper-
feminine datin to the business-suit-and-pants corporate types. Mostly targeted at the married,
soon-to-be-married, or any woman aspiring towards domestic bliss, even though there is certainly
an emphasis on combining career with domesticity (this is always an integral part of the selected
profiles). Everyone is happily married (at least they have achieved a level of happiness with the nth
marriage, even if not the first) and everyone seems a contented heterosexual. ‘Masculine’ clothing
worn by the go-getter woman is softened by the use of lighting, styling and make-up, or in the way
she is asked to discuss her femininity (family or other feminine pursuits). Most of the women are
corporate leaders, but not necessarily revolutionary, innovative nor inventive in their work (though
there are elements of creative flair in working within an existing system); they do not necessarily try
to turn the wheel in a different direction. However, they are all portrayed as having self-motivation
to succeed in their chosen path.

The women portrayed range from upper-middle to upper class (one sees many New Malays (Melayu
Baru) and their progeny among the pages). The December 2009 issue particularly, portrays the
ceremony surrounding the ascension of the new Malay King. It is interesting that throughout the
magazine, the marital statuses of the women, and even the occasional men interviewed (usually
experts in particular specialities considered of interest to women) are emphasised (almost all of
them are married with kids). Of course, it goes without saying that all the women are Malay (except
for the models) and the very culture (especially in weddings or traditional ceremonies) which they
inhabit is subtly emphasised, but ‘updated’ against a modern consumer culture.

Nona portrays a mix of aurat (modesty)-covering clothing and ‘recent traditional’ dresses in the
form of baju kurung; some more body-hugging (shaped around the body) and some more loose-
fitting. Then, there are different ways of wearing head scarves and the usual designer wear and
contemporary designs you would see in any other magazines. It is interesting that clothes such as
the baju kurung, which are supposed to detract from the allure of the woman, become an object of
sartorial fetishism, a magnification of the very allure its intention is suppose to de-emphasise. This
is done through textual and pictorial demonstrations of how women enhance their attractiveness by
wearing the right colours, patterns and fabric, as one would do with the ‘sexy’ dresses. If the body
of the woman is hidden and camouflaged by these clothes, the clothes become the ‘new body’ of
the woman, the titillating screen or ‘third term’ that increases the desirousness of the ‘hidden’ body.
At the same time, the chameleonic possibilities highlighted by such clothes also represent a form of
agency for women so they need not feel impeded by the mores of religion. However, these clothes,
51
52

as do the clothes throughout the magazine, emphasise rather than take away from the focus on the
womanly form, since their presentation in the magazine is about putting them on par with the other
‘regular’ designer wear, and thus desirable to women who may be hesitant about donning such
clothes for fear of fashion monotonousness.

Eh, on the other hand, is geared towards 20-something women, particularly students and those
still at the start of their careers. It is the Malay-language version of Cleo. The clothes are a mix of
prêt-a porter, high street, with the occasional bow to celebrity haute-couture. There is a remarkable
absence of hijab-wearing models and baju kurungs. Fashions from the Middle East, such as that
from Iran, are also showcased, thus heralding the growing dominance of these cultures in Malaysia.
A number of these clothes fall under the province of high fashion rather than religious garbs.
Wanita is the Malay version of Female. It is targeted at the Malay middle-class or those aspiring
towards middle-class respectability. However, unlike the first two magazines, there is greater
visibility of non-Malay people covered. There is much emphasis given to lifestyle issues and articles
that are generic in some ways but also culturally specific in other ways, since religion is always
hovering in the background, and comes up many times in many question-and-answer segments. Like
Nona, there is also an emphasis on heterosexual relationships and domesticity. In the December
2009 issue, there was an entire spread on Islamic fashion.

Glam tries to approximate Glamour in all its content, down to the kinds of clothes modelled. There is
certainly an aspiration towards high-society, and greater hedonism implied (one can consider Glam
as the more hedonistic version of Nona). The religious element is less strong. Designer clothes and
accessories are aplenty, with many of the clothes plucked off international runways and catwalks.
There is barely a hijabed woman in sight. Of course, the role models interviewed are still Malay
women, particularly those who have achieved success in the world of business. Femininity and
heterosexuality is obviously emphasised. Glam is more unapologetic about the business of beauty
and glamour than the other magazines discussed above.

Nur4* is very explicitly targeted at Muslims, especially Malay Muslim women. Almost all the
women in the magazine are hijabed, and for the magazine, that is considered the highest order of
virtue. The December 2009 issue features an article of a businesswoman who specialises in clothing
for Muslim women and how that becomes her way of evangelising and preaching to those yet
unconverted to such forms of dressing. In a way, it is also a critique of the way in which hijabs and
Islamic clothing had been glamorised by other women/fashion magazines instead of functioning as
intended, to cover the modesty of a woman, and act as a counterweight to all the other magazines.
There are also pages dedicated to teaching women the best way to don the headscarf.

As a counterpoint to the women’s magazines we have been looking at, I would like to turn our
attention to the fast-growing segment of lifestyle/fashion magazines targeted at men, whether
the new metrosexuals or merely just men who care a little about their image. I have decided to
look at two English-language lifestyle/fashion magazines dedicated to men, M2 and August, and
a Chinese-language men’s magazine, New Icon5. M2 is decidedly targeted at the gentleman, or
at least someone aspiring to become one. There is less emphasis on male machismo compared to
magazines such as FHM or Maskulin. This magazine is perhaps a magazine for the intelligent man
4*  rabic for ‘light’, likely a reference to the 24th surah, chapter, of the Qur’an which discusses matters of family, sexuality, testimony,
A
adultery, privacy and modesty. It contains lines interpreters have used to argue for the hijab [Editor’s note].
5 It is interesting that in Malaysia, the only available vernacular magazine, besides the Malay-language Maskulin, specifically looking at
men’s lifestyles or fashion needs is in Chinese. This speaks for the social structuration of the Malaysian society.
53
54

who seemingly favours brains over brawn (even though there is nothing outstanding about that).
It contains a hodge-podge of articles featuring Malaysian and international (Western) content.
This is unsurprising since the original magazine is from New Zealand. However, this being a man’s
magazine, there are still the requisite gadgets associated with males; cars, big-bikes, electronic
gadgets, the works. Today’s men are also more health and image conscious, so there are the parallel
articles in health, grooming and fashion, and accessories. Clothes displayed in the pages range from
casual to funky, rugged and corporate.

August, on the other hand, is the GQ of Malaysia. There is a strong emphasis on designer-wear.
It is more European-centric than M2 and targeted at men with social standing. It is interesting
that a majority of the models in the December 2009 have very androgynous looks, and thus give
a slight ‘feminine’ edge to the ‘masculine’ clothes that they are modelling (you can almost imagine
an androgynous woman wearing these clothes). However, the male icons interviewed for the
magazine are local icons of masculinity, dressed up in power-suits, even if their personalities and
demeanours are more on the level of androgyny or quirkiness. August, even more than M2, is a
mix of culture and brawn, creativity and subtle masculinity. The fashion spread creates the aura of
the aforementioned binaries. In an unspoken way, August seems to be representing a man assured
enough in his masculinity not to have to justify it through wanton display. It is interesting to note
that there is less discussion of gender roles and men’s position in the world of men’s magazines,
perhaps arriving from the assumption that men are assured in their roles in this world, whereas
women are expected to have enough political savvy to negotiate through the restrictions and
limitations they are experiencing.

A Weekend in the Life of Twenty-Something Female Yuppie,

circa 2009
Jessica M is of Peranakan-Eurasian extraction. She lives in Kuala Lumpur with her parents,
younger sister and brother. Like a number of upper-middle class families, she was sent abroad
to study by her parents and had pursued a degree in PPE (politics, philosophy and economics)
in Oxford and had worked for about three years in London’s City before returning to Malay-
sia to work for a governmental research arm as an economic policy analyst due to a desire to
contribute to the country. As her job keeps her busy during the weekdays, she only has time
in the evenings to go to the gym or for her belly-dancing class, a hobby she had recently tak-
en up. Sometimes, she would write short stories which she currently kept stashed up in her
Moleskine notebook or hard-drive. Occasionally, she would meet her friends for lunch or din-
ner, or attend a function or dinner-parties in the evenings. But most of her activities are re-
served for the weekends. Due to the nature of her work, she is dressed mostly in blouse and
pants, and occasionally, she would be wearing a knee-length skirt with platforms, stilettos or
court shoes.

On Fridays, she tries to leave work earlier just so as to be able to have an early start. As she works
sometimes either at Putrajaya and or in Kuala Lumpur, she would sometimes be stuck in major
congestion. This is when she will attempt some meditation while at the wheel, or listen to one of her
audio books on her iPod. How she spends her Friday nights differ by the week, though occasion-
ally, she has to work late. Some weekends, she might even have to travel out of town for work but
the weekends she did not have to travel are spend on very many different activities. As a student
55

she was an activist interested in women’s rights and environmental issues. As a working person,
she found that she had less time than before but decided to spend some weekends volunteering at
an animal shelter or the zoo. Sometimes, she would arrange with like-minded friends to visit an
old-folks home or an orphanage. Some weekends, she would also attend gigs, spend time with her
family (including her extended family), catch up with more friends or lounge about.

However, for this Friday, Jessica was able to get off work early. Traffic was not so bad so she was
able to get home early, at about 6:30 pm rather than the usual 7 or 7:30 pm. Since her parents are
not home yet, and her brother and sister are both out and about, she decided to use that extra time
to go for a jog at the park about two blocks away from her home, listening to Evanescence to get
her into the mood. She wears the pink Elle seersucker jacket and sweatpants she received from her
aunt as a birthday present. After an hour of running and stretching at the park, she headed home
to shower and prepared for dinner with her family. The family maid was just about bringing out
the dishes when her parents arrived home at just about 8 pm. Her brother is away camping that
weekend and her college-going sister has gone out for dinner and a movie with her friends.
Dinner is the time that Jessica uses to catch up with her parents on their day-to-day. They both run
a factory and shop selling home fittings and work more than an hour away from the family home.
After dinner, the entire family decided to chill out and watch some sitcoms. Jessica received a text
message on her iPhone from a friend asking her if she would like to join some people for drinks.
Deciding that she would rather read a new novel she had not had the time to start on, she declined
the offer. She would be meeting up with this friend, and a few other girlfriends, for a shopping trip
tomorrow afternoon. Changing out of her shorts and baby tees, she puts on a kaftan which she likes
sleeping in and reads until midnight before calling it a night.

She wakes up at about 10 am that Saturday, and prepares to go for her belly-dancing class that
starts at about 11am and goes on for an hour and a quarter. Her belly-dancing class runs twice a
week, on a Wednesday and Saturday. After the class, she went home for a quick shower and lunch
that the family maid has prepared. She dresses up in a thick-strap sleeveless white blouse with tiny
periwinkles and a pair of stonewashed jeans she had picked up during a trip to the California a year
back. Slipping into a pair of low-heel sandals with rope-like straps and carrying a sling bag, she
drove out to pick up one of her friends.

Their favourite shopping haunts in PJ tend to be 1Utama but today, they decided to go to the Pa-
vilion as they wanted to look for some designer brands that were on sale that day, especially as they
were looking for dresses to wear at a mutual friend’s upcoming wedding reception. After about 3
hours, they manage to pick up most of the clothes they wanted, and a pair of shoes to go with the
clothes. Of course, along the way, they have picked up various things that they had found interest-
ing or would like to have: skincare products, a cosmetic product here and there, accessories, snacks
and little tokens. Most of them bought from local designers such as Sonny San, Eclipse, Tom Abang
Saufi, Melinda Looi and Khoon Hooi. They go on to the foodcourt for refreshments, famished after
the hours spent walking about. While her friends are thinking about catching a movie before going
home, Jessica wants to head straight home as she is planning to attend a gig and poetry session later
in the evening where some of her friends would be performing.

Beating the congestion of a Saturday evening in Kuala Lumpur, she arrives home just around
6:30 pm and relaxed awhile by the couch, watching Bloomsbury news while waiting for dinner
to be served and her parents to return from their workplace. After dinner, she takes a shower and
56

changes into a yellow summer dress with pink primrose motifs and flowery sleeves, as well as a
waist tuck from which the ankle-length flare skirt. The dress is made of cotton but layered over by
silk organza. Carrying a tote made of straw that she had purchased on a trip to Bali recently and
wearing a pair of peep-toe heels, she is ready for the night. There are all kinds of dress-styles found
that night at the venue where the performances are taking place, ranging from the extreme casual
to those who look like they may be going clubbing right after. After the event, Jessica goes off for
drinks at one of the ubiquitous mamak stalls near the Bukit Bintang area.

Sunday, Jessica decides to spend it lazing about and finishing up the novel she had begun on Fri-
day, at least as many pages as she could get through. As today is when her brother comes home, she
spent part of the afternoon talking to him and with her sister who was also staying home to finish
up some assignments. Her parents are not working today and her dad decides to spend some time
at the garden, pruning and checking on the health of his prized bougainvilleas, hibiscus, begonias
and dahlias. Her mother is spending the morning baking in the kitchen and the afternoon painting
miniatures, the latter a recent hobby she had picked up from none other than her son, except that
the miniatures she is painting are miniatures of a little traditional house she is making for an exhibi-
tion rather than cars.

Jessica helps her father out in the garden for a bit before deciding to give herself a treat by soaking
in the bath salts she had bought from a specialty retailer at the Pavilion. Lighting aromatic candles
around the bath, she soaked herself while continuing her reading of the novel. As the afternoon
continues, she suddenly remembers that she needs to look through a work-related report in prepa-
ration for a meeting on Monday afternoon. By the evening, she sat down with her family as they
were having their evening meals, watching the news and discussing current events. After dinner
and during dessert, the family sits together and watches Talentime by Yasmin Ahmad, a story about
mixed-race love between a Malay girl and an Indian boy, though Jessica’s sister has to excuse her-
self half-way through the film as she has to complete her assignments that night.

A Weekend in the Life of a Twenty-Something man, circa 2009

Zolkiflee is of Malay-Chinese and Eurasian-Pakistani descent in his late twenties and is single. As
his family lives in Penang, he lives alone in a condominium near one of the upmarket areas in Kuala
Lumpur. He works in the advertising and brand design industry as a creative director for one of the
smaller advertising houses. He had been working at his career for the last eight years, beginning as
a junior graphic designer when in his early twenties after having graduated from a design school
in London. As he works long hours on most weeks, and sometimes even on weekends, he tries to
spend his free time catching up on sleep, meeting up with friends or racing on his newly purchased
Harley Davidson. He drives a five-year old Proton Iswara and prefers to spend his money on his
bike. Sometimes, he would try to attend an art exhibition or a concert performance. On Sundays,
which he need not work, he would spend it on playing futsal with his friends. Working in the
creative industry means that he could wear whatever he wants to work. An impeccable dresser, he
prefers to wear plain cotton long-sleeves with colourful ties and pressed corduroy trousers to work
everyday, though on weekends, he may concede to wearing a T-shirt (not any T-shirt but one of the
collectors’ variety he had amassed during his years as a student in London and during his travels)
and jeans to work.
57

On this particular Friday in which we are following Zolkiflee, he has to work late on Friday but
was able to get a weekend off as he had just met the final deadline for a major project. Leaving the
office just after midnight, he decides to hit the gym a block away from his office to de-stress from
the week’s work, running on the treadmill and lifting some weights while listening to his favour-
ite band. After a shower, he goes to one of those 24-hour eating stores ubiquitous around Kuala
Lumpur and has a plate of roti canai with egg. By 2 am, he is home and ready to call it a day, reading
a design magazine until he is ready to fall asleep.

Waking up just before noon on Saturday, he washes himself and changes into a checkered shirt, a
pair slacks and then put on a pair of sneakers before going out. Of course, he puts a little of parfum
pour l’homme before doing so. He has a lunch date today, with a single young woman named
Miranda whom he had met while out for drinks with friends a week ago. They are going to meet in
a restaurant-café in Bangsar, which is the favourite hangout place for many of the middle to upper-
income groups. She works as a sales manager for a large French cosmetics firm. Dressed in a front-
buttoned lilac-coloured off-shoulder blouse and sleek, black ankle-length skirt and pumps, she
looks relaxed and worry-free that day. They’ve decided to have lunch at a restaurant specialising
in Peranakan food. While talking, they find that they are both into beer-tasting and are members
of an environmental adventure club, except that Zolkiflee has never attended any of the activities
since he joined six months back due to his uncertain work schedule.

After the pleasant lunch, they promised to meet up again soon before going their respective ways.
Zol decides today to hit the race circuit in Sepang, since it is not often that he has an entire afternoon
off. Calling up his racing buddies, they decide to meet in Sepang in about an hour from that time.
Dressed in gear he had custom-imported from Italy, he and his buddies are on and about the track
for about 2 hours as each attempts to improve his time. They take a 10 minute break between each
hour to catch up a little on the latest news on the racing and big bikes as well as to pack in some
100Plus, seeing that it was a really hot day today.

By the time Zol reaches home, it is close to 6 pm. After a quick shower, he decides that it is time
to put out fresh food for his cat and change the litter box. Thinking that it might be nice to make
himself a meal tonight rather than eat out all the time, he decides it would be detoxifying to have
salad and tofu for dinner and some fruit juice. But as there’s no substantial food left in the house
that could fulfil his purpose, he has to go out to get some. As he is about to grab his car keys, his
friend who has just returned from abroad calls and asks him out for dinner with a bunch of other
friends. They are planning to meet up at Sri Hartamas at the infamous nasi lemak place for dinner
before going to one of the very few jazz clubs in town. So much for having a healthy dinner at home
and quiet night in. Changing out of his ‘lounging’ clothes of khakis and short-sleeved striped shirt,
he pulled on a body-hugging sleeveless shirt before wearing an unbuttoned white shirt with blue
lines and squares, and a pair of lincoln green slacks.

On Sunday, he decides to take things easy and spend his time lounging about and drawing cartoon
strips, a passion which he has had since he knew how to draw. However, it was only in the past two
years that he has been taking up the hobby seriously and created a series of strips which he hopes
would eventually turn into a graphic novel. A perfectionist, he has been drawing and redrawing
some of the scenes. He has now moved beyond the story board and is bent on producing an actual
prototype. He has had an all-consuming interest on history and heritage issues, particularly due
to his familial heritage, and he hopes to create an alternative graphic history of Malaysia, a history
58

that will include all the riff-raff and ‘unacceptable’ elements of society. He has punctuated his
artistic endeavours with research and readings, though his recent promotion as creative director
eight months ago has taken away even his very limited free time. He is also interested in looking at
how religion and religious institutions have played a role in shaping the Malaysian landscape. Late
in the afternoon, he receives a call from his sister, Min, who is living in Australia with her partner,
Marianne. She is planning a visit to Kuala Lumpur for a work project and wonders if she could stay
with him so that they could spend some time catching up.

Min is an architect by profession and her firm has been hired to work on a construction project
on the outskirts of Kuala Lumpur. Zol was happy to oblige as he has not seen his sister physically
(Skype video conferencing not included) in over three years, as he had not been to Australia in
that time period, nor has she been visiting home. He has kept her informed on his graphic novel
venture and she has been interested in its progress, and had offered to help him with contacts who
can enlighten him on the un-straightforward ‘queer history,’ a section which he particularly wants
to work on as a tribute to his sister, and also his best friend, Merwin, who was homosexual and had
died in a car accident.

He manages to go out in the early evening to do the badly needed grocery shopping, obtaining
the salad, tofu and fruit juices that he needs, and of course, some nice healthy muesli bars, berried
cereals, high-grained bread and fat-free milk. That evening, dressed in his pyjamas, a bowl of cereal
in hand, he watches three episodes of Dollhouse.

31st August 1957, circa 1:00 am.

She had just returned home and is in her room. The rest of the family is not back yet but she had
wanted to get in before they did. She stood in front of the bathroom mirror and diligently stripped
of all the makeup, removed the lash extensions and undid her bun. Removing the wig from her
head, she dunked it in a pail of warm water to remove the hair gel she had layered on generously
earlier. Taking off her kebaya carefully and laying them out on the bed, she stripped herself off her
under-things and put on a cotton shirt and sarung. Folding up the kebaya suit, she put it back into a
paper bag she had stowed at the back of her wardrobe. She would take it to the dobi later. She took
the scarf that was given to her by the young man, caressing it lovingly before stowing it, together
with the bag which holds it, into the drawer of her desk. She was just about to completed her
transformation when her little sister, who had just returned home with the family, came knocking
at her door. She heard the muffled sweet voice asking, “Abang, dah balik ke?”
59
U O
wang Asli Moden
Maeh tek bila de tanyak sapak Uwang Asli,
uwang lua ingat kitak nin bangse yang ting-
gal deket dalam hutan. Didik kaba yang
uwang kitak nin kejak nyak membu’uk na-
tang, cayau petai dan lain-lain kejak lagik
deket dalam hutan. Tapik kinin pasal banyak
kesedaran uwang kitak untuk bejaye dengan
banyak kampung-kampung uwang kitak yang
dah betuka menjadik banda, uwang kitak pun
te’pakse menukar ca’ak hidup didik. Sebe-
lum akuk citak dengan lebih lanjut tentang
Uwang Asli akuk nak bagi seken info pasal
Uwang Asli kitak nin tai. Uwang Asli nin tedi’ik
daipadak 18 suku deket semenanjung Malay-
sia. Uwang Asli de bahagi kepadak tigak suku
kaum utamak iaituk Negrito , Senoi dan Jobok
Asli. Uwang kitak daik sukuk kaum Negrito
tedi’ik daikpadak suku Kensiu, Kintak, Lanoh,
Jahai, Mendriq dan Bateq. Daikpadak sukuk
kaum Senoi pulak ialah sukuk Temiar, Semai,
Semoq Beri, Che Wong, Jah Hut dan Mah
Meri. Manakalak daik sukuk Jobok Asli pulak
rang Asli Moden
Mor Ajani
Jikalau dahulu bila kita sebut sahaja Orang
Asli mesti kita akan terbayang bahawa Orang
Asli ialah satu puak minoriti yang tinggal di
dalam hutan dan mereka ini menjalankan sis-
tem ekonomi sara diri seperti bercucuk tanam,
memburu binatang dan sebagainya. Pada za-
man era moden ini kebanyakan Orang Asli tid-
ak lagi hidup seperti dahulukala. Mereka telah
hidup mereka sama seperti kehidupan kaum di
Malaysia yang lain. Sebelum pergi lebih lanjut
lagi tentang Orang Asli moden, terlebih dahulu
diterangkan sedikit sebanyak mengenai Orang
Asli.
Orang Asli adalah penduduk asal atau pen-
duduk peribumi di Semenanjung Malaysia.
Terdapat 18 suku kaum Orang Asli di Seme-
nanjung Malaysia. Mereka dibahagikan kepada
tiga suku kaum utama iaitu Negrito, Senoi dan
Melayu Asli. Orang Asli dari suku kaum Negri-
to terdiri daripada suku Kensiu, Kintak, Lanoh,
Jahai, Mendriq dan Bateq. Orang Asli suku
kaum Senoi pula terdiri daripada suku Temiar,
Semai, Semoq Beri, Che Wong, Jah Hut dan
60
iaklah da’ik sukuk Temuan, Semelai, Jakun,
Orang Kanaq, Orang Seletar dan Orang Kuala.
Padak tahun 2000, Uwang Asli kitak cumak
membentuk 0.5% hajak da’ikpadak semuhak
penduduk deket Malaysia. Bilangan jumlah
Uwang Asli kitak kinin dalam anggaran 148,000
uwang hajak. Uwang Asli de bahagi kepadak
tigak suku kaum utamak iaituk Negrito , Senoi
dan Jobok Asli. Group Uwang Asli kitak yang
terbesar adaklah da’ik group Senoi iak ituk
54% da’ikpadak kemuhak jumlah uwang kitak.
Manak kalak group Jobok Asli pulak adak-
lah 43 % dan group Negrito 3%. Kemiskinan
dalam komuniti Uwang Asli kitak mencapai
76.9%. Jabatan Statistik Malaysia adak kaba
yang 35.2% Uwang Asli kitak betul-betul hidup
dalam miskin dan papak. Kebanyakan Uwang
Asli kitak tinggal deket nuak pendalaman, man-
akalak adak sejumlah kecen hajak uwang kitak
yang tinggal deket nuak banda. Bahase Uwang
Asli kitak de bagih kepadak tigak kategori iak
ituk bahase Austro-Asiatic, bahase Austro-
nesian dan bahase Aslian. Bahase suku kaum
Uwang Asli kitak Semelai adaklah da’ikpadak
kategori Austro-Asiatic, manak kalak bahase
suku kaum Temuan pulak adaklah da’ikpadak
kategori Austronesian. Manakalak kebanyakan
kategori Uwang Asli bebual bahase yang dikate-
gorikan sebagai bahase Aslian. Selain menggu-
nakan bahase uwang kitak. Uwang kitak juga
mahir dalam bahase Jobok.
Kebanyakan Uwang Asli kitak tinggal be’dalai
deket negeik Selangor, Perak, Pahang, Negeik
Sembilan, Joho dan Kelantan. Adak satuk
Muzium Uwang Asli kitak deket Gombak 25
kilometer da’ikpadak Kualak Lumpu. Muzium
nin menyimpan banyak koleksi sejarah Uwang
Asli kitak contohnya gambar-gambar lamak
untuhik kitah maeh, alatan yang digunakan
ulih uwang kitak, sejarah Senoi Praaq (pasu-
kan khas pulis hutan Uwang Asli) dan patung
muyang Uwang Asli kita da’ik sukuk Mah Meri
dan bermacam-macam lagik ba’ang kebudayaan
Uwang Asli kitak. Adak sepa’uh uwang kitak
seka’ang nyap lagik kejak macam untuhik kitak
maeh tapik didik dah mulak kejak makan gajik
Mah Meri. Manakala Orang Asli daripada suku
kaum Melayu Asli pula terdiri daripada suku
Temuan, Semelai, Jakun, Orag Kanaq, Orang
Seletar dan Orang Kuala.
Menurut kajian pada tahun 2000, kaum Orang
Asli membentuki 0.5% daripada semua pen-
duduk Malaysia. Kini bilangan Orang Asli
dianggaran sebanyak 148,000 orang. Kumpu-
lan suku kaum Orang Asli yang terbesar ialah
dari suku kaum Senoi yang merangkumi 43%
diikuti suku kaum Melayu Asli sebanyak 43%
dan suku kaum Negrito sebanyak 3%. Menu-
rut statistik kajian jumlah kemiskinan berlaku
di dalam komuniti Orang Asli adalah mencapai
angka 76.9%. Mengikut kajian Jabatan Sta-
tistik Malaysia pula 35.2% masyarakat Orang
Asli betul-betul hidup dalam kemiskinan tegar.
Kebanyakan kaum Orang Asli tinggal jauh di
dalam pendalaman, manakala cuma sejumlah
kecil sahaja kaum Orang Asli menetap di ka-
wasan bandar. Bahasa Orang Asli dikategori ke-
pada tiga kategori iaitu bahasa Austro-Asiatic,
bahasa Austronesian dan bahasa Aslian. Suku
kaum Orang Asli yang menggunakan bahasa
Austro-Asiatic adalah suku kaum Semelai. Ba-
hasa Orang Asli dari suku kaum Temuan pula
dikategorikan sebagai bahasa Austronesian.
Manakala kebanyakan suku kaum Orang Asli
yang lain menunggakan bahasa yang dikate-
gorikan sebagai bahasa Aslian. Selain meng-
gunakan bahasa yang pelbagai daripada suku
kaum masing-masing, Orang Asli juga fasih
berbahasa Melayu.
Kebanyakan Orang Asli tinggal merata-rata
tempat di semenanjung Malaysia. Contoh neg-
eri yang ramai Orang Asli ialah negeri Selan-
gor, Perak, Pahang, Negeri Sembilan, Johor
dan Kelantan. Terdapat satu muzium khas un-
tuk Orang Asli di Gombak iaitu yang terletak
25 kilometer daripada Kuala Lumpur. Muzium
Orang Asli ini banyak menyimpan koleksi seja-
rah kaum Orang Asli semenanjung seperti gam-
bar-gambar Orang Asli yang diambil pada ta-
hun sebelum kemerdekaan Malaysia iaitu pada
zaman pemerintahan British, alatan ayaman
61
sama adak da’ik sektor gomen ataupun swasta.
Ada jugak uwang kitak masih lagi buat kejak
kampung macam motong getah, usahe ladang
kebali dan bagai. Gamai jugak uwang kitak
dah bejaye deket lua nun. Adak yang dah jadik
dokto, lawyer, bisnesman dan lain-lain lagik ke-
jayak moden. Contoh Uwang Asli yang bejaye
iaklah Yoap (Yayasan Orang Asli Perak), Kop-
erasi orang Asli Selangor dan lain-lain lagi.
Kelahiran
Kalau maen tek banyak bebodok kecen atau met
lahir deket umah didik sendi’ik. Biasak nyak
bodok yang bahauk lahir tuk de sambut ulih
genui-genui atau tahak-tahak bidan yang adak
pengalaman. Tapik seka’ang ja’ang jugak bebo-
dok Uwang Asli kitak yang lahir deket umah.
Pasal gamai uwang kitak yang beanak deket
hospital. Faktok utamak nyak iak lah uwang
kitak gelik kalau bodok yang bahauk lahir dis-
ambut ulih bidan tuk matik. Didik asak nyap
selamat kalau bidan yang menyambut anak
didik yang bahauk lahir pasal niak gerenti yang
bidan tek dapat menjamin keselamatan bodok
yang bahauk lahir tek. Uwang kitak seka’ang
lebih pecaye deket dokto yang nenala dapat
menyambut kelahiran bodok dengan selamat.
Faktor keduak pulak iak lah keku’angan bidan.
Kenapak bulih keku’ang bidan dalam komuniti
Uwang Asli kitak? Salah satuk sebab nyak iak-
lah uwang kitak nyap payah gunak bidan dah
bilak nak melahirkan anak pasal dah adak hos-
pital. Sebab tuk gamai yang ngan jadik bidan.
Lain-lain sebab pulak anak mude ngan belaja
ilmu bidan pasal nyap minat. Tapik khidmat
bidan adak jugak digunakan walaupun ja’ang.
Contohnya uwang kitak yang tinggal deket hu-
Orang Asli, artikel-artikel tentang Orang Asli,
ruang khas Senoi Praaq (pasukan polis hutan
Orang Asli yang pernah berkhidmat untuk
menentang komunis pada zaman dulu), ukiran
patung-patung moyang daripada suku kaum
Mah Meri dan bermacam-macam lagi barangan
kebudayaan Orang Asli. Pada zaman yang
serba moden ini kebanyakan Orang Asli pada
tidak lagi mengamalkan sistem ekonomi sara
diri. Ramai Orang Asli lebih suka bekerja den-
gan pihak kerajaan atau denagn pihak swasta
dan ramai juga Orang Asli memiliki perniagaan
mereka sendiri. Contoh dua syrikat Orang Asli
yang berjaya adalah Koperasi Orang Asli Se-
langor dan YOAP (Yayasan Orang Asli Perak).
Ramai juga Orang Asli yang bekerja sebagai
jurutera, doktor, peguam dan lain-lain kerjaya
moden.
Kelahiran
Pada masa dulu sebelum adanya kemudahan
hospital berhampiran dengan kawasan penem-
patan Orang Asli ramai Orang Asli menggu-
nakan khidmat bidan semasa proses kelahiran
bayi. Mereka bergantung semata-mata kepada
bidan kerana kemudahan hospital pada ketika
itu terletak berjauhan daripada kawasan tem-
pat tinggal mereka. Pada zaman sekarang yang
serba moden kebanyakan Orang Asli lebih ge-
mar menunggu kelahiran bayi mereka di hospi-
tal. Faktor keselamatan merupakan salah satu
sebab utama mengapa ramai Orang Asli lebih
gemar menunggu kelahiran bayi mereka di hos-
pital. Ada juga terdapat bebarapa kes di mana
para bidan yang menyambut bayi gagal dalam
tugasan mereka dan menyebabkan kematian
pada bayi atau pada ibu mengandung. Mung-
kin kerana bidan tersebut kurang pengala-
man atau bidan tersebut tidak mengamalkan
kebersihan hinggakan menyebabkan kuman
terhadap anak dan ibu mengandung. Kejadian
seperti itu jarang sekali berlaku di hospital ker-
ana doktor di hospital memang berpengalaman
menyambut kelahiran bayi dan mereka sentiasa
mengamalkan kebersihan supaya kuman tidak
merebak semasa mereka menyambut kelahiran
62
tan. Didik payah nak pegik deket hospital nuak
banda jadik didik terpakse gunakan khidmat
bidan untuk melahirkan bodok. Yak lah nyap
semuhak Uwang Asli kitak tinggal deket nuak
banda, adak jugak yang masih lagik tinggal jauh
da’ik banda.
Pe’ubatan
Macam kelahiran jugak, Uwang Asli kitak suka
pegik hospital untuk beubat bilak didik sakit.
Gamai uwang kitak yang pegik ke hospital un-
tuk mendapatkan rawatan. Ku’ang dah uwang
kitak yang ca’ik bomoh untuk nangkal. Walau-
pun macam tuk uwang kitak masih adak lagik
bomoh tapik gamai customer bomoh tek adak-
lah uwang lua yang biasak nyak nak mintak
tangkal minyak pengasih, pelaris perniagaan
dan lain-lain lagik. Uwang kitak seka’ang lebih
pecayak deket perubatan moden. Contoh nyak
kalau demam didik mesti pegik deket klinik
untuk be’jumpak dengan dokto. Gamai uwang
kitak dah ku’ang pecayak deket perubatan
tradisional. Faktor lain pulak banyak dipen-
garuhi oleh gomen yang manak gomen banyak
hantar ubat-ubatan ke perkampungan uwang
kitak yang jauh da’ik banda. Tapik kalau tempat
kampung-kampung kitak yang jauh da’ik banda
dan deket dalam hutan. Ddik terpakse gunak
perubatan tradisional pasal payah nak pegik
klinik atau ke hospital. Sesetengah Uwang Asli
kitak jugak dah memeluk agame. Contoh nyak
adak uwang kitak yang memeluk itu agama
Kristian, Islam dan lain-lain. Ada ajaran dalam
agame yang menegah uwang kitak pahau meng-
gunakan bomoh lagik pasal bertentangan den-
bayi. Kekurangan bidan juga merupakan satu
lagi faktor kenapa Orang Asli tidak lagi meng-
gunakan khidmat bidan pada masa kini. Ilmu
bidan adalah ilmu yang di turun secara temu-
run dan oleh kerana ramai anak muda Orang
Asli tidak berminat untuk menuntut ilmu bidan
menyebabkan kepupusan ramai pengamal bi-
dan dikalangan masyarakat Orang Asli. Walau-
pun begitu khidmat bidan masih lagi digunakan
di sesetengah tempat di kawasan pendalaman
di mana penempatan Orang Asli terletak jauh
daripada kawasan hospital contohnya di ka-
wasan penempatan Orang Asli yang terletak di
dalam kawasan hutan.
Perubatan
Seperti juga kelahiran, Orang Asli yang tinggal
di zaman moden sekarang lebih suka berkun-
jung ke hospital untuk mendapatkan rawatan.
Semakin kurang jumlah Orang Asli yang men-
gunjungi dukun atau bomoh Orang Asli untuk
mendpatkan rawatan. Ramai pelanggan bomoh
atau dukun Orang Asli terdiri daripada orang
luar di mana mereka ingin mendapatkan tang-
kal pelaris perniagaan, minyak pengasih dan
lain-lain produk lagi daripada bomoh Orang
Asli. Manakala Orang Asli sendiri pula lebih
mempercayai perubatan moden. Contohnya ka-
lau mereka deman, mesti mereka segera menda-
patkan rawatan di klinik atau hospital. Agensi
kerajaan seperti Kementerian Kesihatan Ma-
laysia banyak juga mempengaruhi Orang Asli
kerana mereka sering mengunjungi ke kawas-
an penempatan pendalaman Orang Asli untuk
memberikan rawatan dan bekalan ubat-ubatan.
Agama juga merupakan salah satu faktor di
mana Orang Asli lebih gemar menggunakan
perubatan moden. Ramai juga Orang Asli pada
zaman sekarang yang telah memeluk agama
seperti agama Islam, Kristian dan lain-lain lagi.
Kebanyakan agama-agama ini menegah pengu-
naan perubatan tradisional Orang Asli kerana
bertentang dengan ajaran mereka. Walaupun
63

gan ajaran agame didik. Faktor agame jugak
me’upakan salah satuk sebab kenapak uwang
kitak lebih sukak pegik ke hospital mask didik
sakit atau untuk be’anak.
begitu terdapat juga segelintir kecil Orang Asli
yang masih lagi menggunakan kaedah peru-
batan tradisional kerana faktor lokasi seperti
mereka yang tinggal jauh di pendalaman dan
juga kerana setelah perubatan moden gagal
mengubati penyakit yang mereka hidapi.

Pelajaran
Pelajaran
Untuk bejaye dalam duniak moden nin ki-
Orang Asli sudah sedar bahawa untuk berjaya
tak mestilah anak pelajaran. Kalau kitak hap
dalam hidup yang serba moden ini mereka me-
pelajaran kitak nyap pegik ke manak-manak.
merlukan pelajaran untuk berjaya. Ramai juga
De atas kesedaran tuk lah, gamai anak mude
anak muda Orang Asli telah menjejak kaki
Uwang Asli kitak dah pegik belaja deket uni-
mereka ke universiti awam dan swasta di dalam
versiti gomen atau deket kolej swasta. Adak
mahupun di luar negara. Ramai juga pelajar
Uwang Asli kitak yang dah bejaye jadik dok-
Orang Asli yang telah berjaya menamatkan
to, lawyer, bisnesman dan lain-lain lagik kejak
pengajian mereka dan telah berjaya bekerja
moden. Kalau kitak genung gamai jugak anak
sebagai doktor, peguam, pegawai kerajaan dan
muda kitak yang belaja sampai peringkat yang
lain-lain kerjaya yang setaraf dengan kelulusan
tinggik nyap kiak jantan atau betinak. Pen-
yang mereka perolehi. Pada masa kini bukan
garuh mui bapai adaklah puncak utama yang
sahaja pelajar lelaki Orang Asli yang berjaya
membuatkan anak-anak mude Uwang Asli be-
belajar sampai ke peringkat tertinggi malahan
lajar sampai ke peringkat tinggik. Adak yang
pelajar perempuan Orang Asli juga turut me-
da’ik keluarga yang susah dan didik sedar cu-
jejaki kaki mereka ke peringkat universiti. Ini
mak satuk ca’ak yang didik bulih bantuk kelu-
adalah bertentangan dengan cara hidup Orang
arge didik iak ituk dengan belaja tinggik. Ka-
Asli dahulukala di mana mereka lebih suka
lau dah belaja tinggik, didik senang nak cayau
anak perempuan mereka di duduk di rumah
kejak yang gajik tinggi dan dengan gajik yang
dan menjadi isteri orang. Pengaruh ibubapa
tinggik nin didik dpat bawai keluarge didik ke-
merupakan satu faktor utama yang mendorong
lua daikpadak kemiskinan. Adak jugak yang
anak-anak Orang Asli untuk berjaya dalam bi-
belaja tinggik-tinggik untuk memajukan uwang
dang pelajaran. Ibubapa Orang Asli sedar ba-
kitak. Contohnya suwang pelajar uwang kitak
hawa mereka tidak boleh bergantung semata-
yang belaja dalam bidang pertanian. Diak da-
mata kepada guru sekolah untuk mendorong
pat bawai ilmu tuk dan di praktikan deket kam-
anak mereka supaya berjaya di dalam pelajaran.
pung diak. Mungkin dengan ilmu pertanian
yang diak belajar diak dapat membukak ladang
Ada juga pelajar Orang Asli yang berasal
pertanian yang moden. Nin akan membagihkan
daripada keluarga yang susah dan mereka se-
peluang pekerjaan deket uwang kampung diak
dar cuma satu cara mereka boleh membantu
dan seterusnya membantu Uwang Asli daik
keluarga mereka iaitu dengan berjaya dalam
segi ekonomi.
pelajaran. Mereka tahu bahawa kalau mereka
sudah tamat pengajian mereka, mereka akan
Dengan adak nyak pelajaran lah kitak dapat
mendapat pekerjaan dengan gaji yang lumayan
mempertahankan hak-hak Uwang Asli kitak.
dan dengan ini mereka dapat membawa keluar-
Kelak kitak niak pelajaran hak kitak akan di-
ga mereka keluar daripada dibelenggu kemiski-
nafikan. Contohnya isu tanah adat Uwang Asli
nan. Ada juga pelajar Orang Asli yang belajar
kitak. Kalau kitak niak pelajaran kitak nyap ta-
ke peringkat tinggi untuk memajukan bangsa
64
huk hak tanah adat kitak. Berbeza pulak kalau
kitak adak pelajaran. Kitak bulih tahuk macam
manak ca’ak untuk mempertahankan tanah
adat kitak mengikut channel undang-undang
yang sah. Pelajaran jugak dapat membantuk
kitak berkomunikasi dengan duniak lua yang
serba canggih nin. Kita dapat baca berite sa-
madak dalam atau lua nega’ak. Kita dapat gu-
nak komputer. Cubak kitak bayangkan kalau
kitak niak belajar, dapatkah kitak nak gunak
computer mimanglah susah tai. Kitak jugak
adak Persatuan Siswazah Orang Asli Seme-
nanjung yang meupakan satuk group yang
ditubuhkan ulih pelaja-pelaja uwang kita be-
kas lulusan Universiti gomen dan swasta yang
terdi’ik dai’ikpadak Uwang Asli Semenanjung.
Mulak-mulak Persatuan Siswazah Orang Asli
Semenanjung nin cumaklah sebuah kelab dan
akhir nyak dituka menjadik persatuan pasal
untuk pengembangan supayak persatuan nin
dapat menarik generasi uwang mude.
Gamai jugak bodok-bodok mude Uwang Asli
kitak yang mendaftar deket sinin. Mengekot
rekod ahli persatuan padak 9 september 2009,
lebih daikpadak 80% daikpadak jumlah semu-
hak keseluruhan lulusan Uwang Asli universiti
gomen dengan swasta dah jadi ahli persatuan
Persatuan Siswazah Orang Asli Semenanjung
nin. Persatuan Siswazah Orang Asli Semenan-
jung mempunyak objektif untuk meningkatkan
kesedaran pendidikan di kalangan pelaja
Uwang Asli kitak dan bagih menambah ilmu
pengetahuan dalam masyarakat Uwang Asli
kitak. Persatuan Siswazah Orang Asli Seme-
nanjung jugak mempunyai objektif untuk meg-
apatkan hubungan seda’ak sesamak Uwang
Asli kitak supayak dapat mengasuh golongan
mudak supayak dapat belaja ca’ak jadik pem-
impin persatuan. Selain ituk Persatuan Siswa-
zah Orang Asli Semenanjung jugak berobjek-
tif untuk buat bisnes yang sah supayak didik
dapat kompol duit untuk tabung didik. Persat-
uan Siswazah Orang Asli Semenanjung adak-
lah satuk tempat perjumpaan golongan pelaja
Uwang Asli kitak dan iak nyak jugak untuk
memupuk semangat seda’ak antarak ahli-ahli
Orang Asli. Sebagai contohnya ada seorang
pelajar Orang Asli yang belajar dalam bidang
pertanian. Pelajar ini membawa dan memperak-
tikan ilmu yang beliau belajar di kampung ha-
lamannya. Ilmu yang beliau belajar akan diper-
aktikan dengan cara membuka ladang pertanian
yang moden. Pembukaan ladang pertanian yang
moden ini akan memberikan peluang pekerjaan
kepada penduduk kampung di tempat beliau
dan seterusnya dapat menjana ekonomi di situ.
Pelajaran juga dapat membantu Orang Asli un-
tuk mempertahankan hak-hak asasi mereka.
Contohnya isu tentang hak tanah adat Orang Asli
yang semakin dinafikan. Kalau Orang Asli yang
berpelajaran tinggi mesti dapat menangani ma-
salah Tanah Adat berbanding Orang Asli yang
kurang berpelajaran. Kalau Orang Asli yang ber-
pelajaran tinggi mesti dapat mencari jalan penye-
lesaian berdasarkan saluran undang-undang
yang sah.
Pelajaran juga dapat membantu Orang Asli
berkomunikasi dengan dunia luar seperti peng-
gunaan internet. Internet dapat membantu
Orang Asli untuk menyebarkan informasi ten-
tang berita, sukan dan sebagainya. Penggunaan
internet amatlah popular dikalangan muda-
mudi Orang Asli pada zaman sekarang. Selain
daripada itu Orang Asli juga mempunyai persat-
uan pelajar yang dipanggil Persatuan Siswazah
Orang Asli Semenanjung. Persatuan ini ditu-
buhkan oleh para pelajar Orang Asli daripada
lulusan universiti awam dan swasta. Persatuan
pada mulanya hanya sebuah kelab ini terpaksa
ditukar statusnya daripada kelab kepada per-
satuan kerana untuk mengembangkan kelab ini
dan seterusnya dapat menarik perhatian golon-
gan muda mudi Orang Asli untuk menyertainya.
Ramai juga anak muda-mudi Orang Asli meny-
ertai Persatuan SISWAZAH Orang Asli Seme-
nanjung. Mengikut rekod ahli persatuan pada 9
September 2009 lebih daripada 80% daripada
jumlah keseluruhan Orang Asli daripada uni-
versiti awam dan swasta sudah menjadi ahli
Persatuan Siswazah Orang Asli Semenanjung.
65
nyak. Persatuan Siswazah Orang Asli Seme-
nanjung jugak punyak tanggungjawab untuk
bagih nasihat pendidikan kepadak Uwang Asli
dengan membuat bengkel, korikulum, seminar
konvensen dan lain-lain ca’ak yang sesuai un-
tuk memartabatkan pendidikan Uwang Asli
kitak supayak uwang kitak akan lebih bejaye.
Perkahwinan
Upacare perkahwinan uwang kitak jugak dah
jadik moden. Kalau maen tek untuhik kitak la-
mak pakai kulit bajuk te’ap hajak masak didik
nikah. Tapik seka’ang pakaian Uwang Asli ki-
tak banyak de pengaruh dengan pakaian nikah
Jobok dan perkahwinan umputih. Biasakn-
yak Uwang Asli kitak akan pakai bajuk nikah
Jobok time bersanding aik siang dan pakai
bajuk nikah umputih padak aik gelap. Bajuk
nikah umputih nin meupak’kan sepasang ba-
juk gaun dan baju kot. Daikpadak segi ba’ang
makan padak masak nikah adak uwang kitak
yang masak sendiik dan de tolong ulih semuhak
uwang kampung. Kiaknyak bergotong royong
bilak adak sesapak nikah deket sesuatuk kam-
pung. Adak jugak uwang kitak yang berduit
nyap payah masak ba’ang makan. Didik cumak
ude deket catering lua.
Persatuan Siswazah Orang Asli Semenan-
jung mempunyai objektif untuk meningkatkan
kesedaran di kalanagan pelajar Orang Asli.
Selain daripada itu Persataun Siswazah Orang
Asli adalah satu tempat perjumpaan golongan
pelajar Orang Asli dan ianya juga mempunyai
objektif untuk merapatkan hubungan persau-
daraan sesama Orang Asli supaya dapat men-
gasuh golongan muda mudi supaya mereka
dapat belajar mengenai cara kepimpinan per-
satuan. Persatuan ini juga mempunyai objek-
tif untuk membuat perniagaan secara sambi-
lan supaya mereka dapat duit tabung untuk
membiayai segala aktiviti persatuan. Persatuan
Siswazah Orang Asli Semenanjung juga mem-
punyai tanggungjawab untuk memberi nasihat
dari segi pendidikan kepada anak muda Orang
Asli dengan mengadakan bengkel, kokuriku-
lum, seminar konvensen dan lain-lain cara yang
sesuai untuk memartabatkan pendidikan anak-
anak Orang Asli supaya mereka akan lebih ber-
daya saing dan maju ke depan.
Perkahwinan
Upacara perkahwinan Orang Asli pada masa
kini juga kian berubah. Kalau pada masa da-
hulu baju pengantin pasangan Orang Asli
hanya dibuat daripada kayu kulit pokok terap,
tapi sekarang pakaian pengantin mereka bayak
dipengaruhi oleh pakaian pengantin Melayu
dan pakaian pengantin barat. Pada kebiasaanya
semasa perkahwinan Orang Asli moden mere-
ka akan memakai pakaian pengantin Melayu
pada siang hari dan memakai pakaian pengan-
tin barat yang berupa kot hitam dan gaun pada
malam hari. Makanan pada hari perkahwinan
Orang Asli pula di masak oleh penduduk kam-
pung secara bergotong royong dan dengan cara
ini mereka akan mengeratkan tali persaudaraan
sesama mereka. Walaupun begitu pada masa
kini bagi Orang Asli yang agak berada, mereka
akan memesan perkhidmatan katering untuk
dijamu kepada para hadirin yang menghadiri
ke majlis perkahwinan tersebut.
66
Maen tek untuhik lamak kitak cumak makan
hubik kayuk dan nasik hajak masak didik nikah
tapik seka’ang kuwang kitak dah bulih makan
macam-macam ba’ang makan. Adak upacare
tertentuk deket manak untuhik kitak nyap per-
nah buat iak ituk upacare potong kek. Upacare
potong kek nin adaklah pengaruh de budayak
umputih. Ba’ang hantaran Uwang Asli kitak
padak jaman moden dah jugak bertambah.
Maen tek pengantin jantan uwang kitak cumah
bagih kain putih dengan cincin hajak deket ke-
luarge pengantin betinak tapik seka’ang padak
jaman yang moden nin ba’ang hantaran untuk
masak nikah uwang kitak dah jugak be’tambah.
Sebagai contoh nyak antarak hantaran moden
masak nikah Uwang Asli kitak iaklah alat me-
kap, kasut, minyak wangi, beg tangan, minyak
gambut dan lain-lain hantaran lagik.
Kematik’an
Padak masak maeh uwang kitak nyap gunak
kerande bilak didik nak nanam uwang matik.
Didik Cuma gali lubang untuk nanam uang ma-
tik lepas tek lubang tek de timbus dengan tan-
ah. Tapik seka’ang gaji uwang kitak yang belik
kerande untuk ahli keluargak didik yang matik.
Biasak nyak kerande nin de belik daikpadak
toke cinak. Toke cinaklah lah yang meguruskan
pengangkutan daikpadak umah si matik ke ka-
wasan kubuu uwang kitak dengan gunak van
atau luri mayat. Daik segi hiasan deket batuk
nisan deket kawasan kubuu pulak, ma’eh tek
untuhik kitak cumak gunakan kayu, batuk dan
botol untuk menandakan kubuu uwang kitak
deket sesuatuk tempat. Tapik seka’ang didik
dah letak semen deket kawasan kubuu ahli kelu-
arga didik yang matik. Adak jugak uwang kitak
yang temapah batuk nisan deket uwang Jobok
atau uwang cinak. Gambar dan tulisan namak
uwang matik jugak de letak deket atas batu ne-
san. Nin nyap pernah de buat de untuhik kitak
Juadah yang dihidangkan kepada para hadi-
rin juga bertambah. Jikalau dahulu pada masa
perkahwinan pasangan Orang Asli cuma terda-
pat ubi kayu dan sedikit lauk-pauk sahaja yang
dihidangkan tapi kini di dalam perkahwinan
Orang Asli moden bermacam-macam juadah
yang disediakan. Ada juga satu upacara baru
dalam upacara perkahwinan Orang Asli iaitu
upacara memotong kek. Budaya memotong kek
ini adalah dipengaruhi oleh budaya barat. Bi-
asanya upacara memotong kek akan dilakukan
pada waktu malam. Barangan hantaran untuk
pengantin perempuan juga bertambah. Jika-
lau dahulu pengantin lelaki Orang Asli cuma
memberi kain putih, sebentuk cincin emas dan
sedikit wang kepada ibubapa pengantin wanita
tapi sekarang barangan hantaran semakin ber-
tambah contohnya pada zaman sekarang pihak
pengantin lelaki ada juga menghantar alat me-
kap, minyak wangi, beg tangan, minyak ram-
but dan lain-lain hantaran lagi kepada keluarga
pengantin wanita.
Upacara Kematian
Pada masa dulu kala semasa kematian Orang Asli
tidak menggunakan keranda untuk mengem-
bumikan si mati. Mereka cuma menggali liang
lahat bagi mengembumikan si mati. Berbeza
pula dengan keadaan sekarang di mana Orang
Asli sudah menggunakan keranda semasa upac-
ara pengembumian si mati. Biasanya keranda
ini dibeli daripada kedai pengembumian milik
tauke Cina. Tauke Cina inilah yang akan men-
guruskan pengangkutan si mati dari rumah si
mati hingga ke kawasan perkuburan dengan
menggunakan van atau lori jenazah. Perhiasan
di batu nesan kubur Orang Asli pada zaman
kini juga sudah kian berubah. Jikalau dulu
mereka hanya menggunakan botol-botol minu-
man atau batu sebagai menandakan kawasan
perkuburan milik mereka, tapi sekarang mere-
ka mula menempah batu nesan daripada kedai-
kedai batu nesan. Kedai batu nesan ditempah
pula adalah daripada kedai milik orang Melayu
atau Cina. Pada masa kini pada batu nesan si
67
lamak maen pasal jaman tuk didik nyap adak
pelajaran lagi dan didik jugak hap gambar un-
tuk de letak deket batuk nisan. Seka’ang setiap
Uwang Asli kitak yang matik akan de tulis bi-
lak diak matik dan deletak gambar diak sekalik.
Uwang kitak buat macam tuk supayak senang
didik nak melawat kubuu ahli keluarga didik
yang dah hap dan jugak didik senang nak tahuk
bilah ahli keluarge didik matik. Senanglah didik
nak melawat ahli keluarge didik mengikut aik-
bulan deket atas batuk nisan.
Kejayak’an
Banyak jugak uwang kitak yang telah bejaye
deket lua tek. Nin adaklah dua contoh kompeni
uwang kitak yang telah bejaye membangunkan
dan bagih peluang ekonomi deket uwang ki-
tak supayak Uwang Asli kitak te’us majuk ke
depan. Yayasan Orang Asli Perak dan Koper-
asi Orang Asli Selangor adaklah duak contoh
kompeni uwang kitak yang telah bejaye mem-
bangunkan kaum Uwang Asli kitak. Yayasan
Orang Asli Perak telah ditubuhkan ulih be-
beapak uwang kitak dai’ikpadak nege’ik Perak
pasal didik dah sedar Uwang Asli kitak nin jauh
ketinggalan dalam pembangunan sosio-ekono-
mi. Didik sedar yang Uwang Aslik kitak nyap
payah bergantung deket JHEOA hajak untuk
maju ke depan dan berpendapat bahawak kitak
sendi’iklah kenak usahe send’ik kalau kitak nak
bejaye. Yayasan Orang Asli Perak ditubuhkan
dengan tujuan membantu Uwang Asli kitak
maju dalam segi ekonomi. Penubuhan Yayasan
Orang Asli Perak melambangkan komitmen
untuk membantuk Uwang Asli kitak. Yayasan
Orang Asli Perak adaklah pertubuhan yang
adak lesen kontraktor bertauliah yang ber-
daftar dengan PKK bertaraf bumiputera dan
didik banyak buat kejak-kejak buat umah atau
pembangunan. Didik jugak adak buat pertani-
an kelapa sawit deket nuak Slim River, Perak.
Selain itu Yayasan Orang Asli Perak adak ju-
gak buat kejak bekal ba’ang makanan, perabot,
ba’ang binaan dan lain-lain lagik.
mati milik Orang Asli juga terdapat gambar dan
sedikit catatan seperti tarikh kelahiran si mati,
sebab kematian dan bila si mati meninggal juga
di catatkan di atas batu nisan. Perkara seperti
ini tidak pernah di buat oleh Orang Asli pada
masa dahulu kala kerana mungkin pada masa
itu mereka tidak berpelajaran dan memang
sukar untuk mencatat data di atas batu nesan.
Sekarang dengan gambar dan catatan di atas
batu nesan memudahkan ahli keluarga si mati
untuk melawat si mati kelak.
Kejayaan
Ramai juga Orang Asli telah berjaya membuka
syarikat dan perusahaan sendiri di luar sana.
Yayasan Orang Asli Perak atau YOAP dan
Koperasi Orang Asli Selangor merupakan dua
contoh syarikat atau perusaahan Orang Asli
yang telah berjaya. Kedua-dua syarikat ini te-
lah berjaya membangun dan seterusnya mem-
berikan peluang kepada penjanaan ekonomi
Orang Asli dan seterusnya memajukan sesama
kaum Orang Asli. Yayasan Orang Asli Perak
telah ditubuhkan oleh beberapa individu Orang
Asli yang berasal daripada negeri Perak di atas
kesedaran bahawa masyarakat Orang Asli telah
jauh ketinggalan dalam pembangunan sosio-
ekonomi. Mereka sedar bahawa Orang Asli tid-
ak lagi perlu terlalu bergantung pada Jabatan
Hal Ehwal Orang Asli (JHEOA) untuk maju
ke hadapan dan berpendapat bahawa Orang
Asli sendiri yang perlu membangunkan kaum
mereka sendiri. Yayasan Orang Asli Perak ditu-
buhkan dengan tujuan membantu Orang Asli
untuk maju dalam segi ekonomi dan penubu-
hannya melambangkan komitmen untuk mem-
bantu kaum Orang Asli maju ke hadapan.
Yayasan Orang Asli Perak adalah pertubuhan
yang mempunyai lesen kontraktor bertauliah
yang berdaftar dengan Pusat Khidmat Kon-
traktor (PKK) bertaraf bumiputera dan mereka
banyak membuat kerja-kerja binaan seperti ru-
mah dan bangunan. Selain daripada itu Yayas-
an Orang Asli Perak juga ada membuka ladang
68
Manakalak Koperasi Asli Selangor ditubuhkan
padak 22hb Oktuber 1998 deket Kampung
Uwang Asli Tanjung Sepat, Kuala Langat, Se-
langor. Koperasi Asli Selangor ditubuhkan den-
gan matlamat meningkatkan ekonomi ahli nyak
yang tedi’ik da’ikpadak Uwang Asli kitak. Tu-
juan Koperasi Selangor adaklah untuk mening-
katkan minda ahli nyak dan supayak menjadik
pengge’ak kepadak kemajuan ekonomi Uwang
Asli kitak. Koperasi Uwang Asli Selangor adak
menyediakan pelbagai tabung membantuk
ahli nyak yang tedi’ik da’ikpadak Uwang Asli.
Tabung nin adaklah membantuk pelajar Uwang
Asli dan jugak untuk membasmi kemiskinan te-
gar di kalangan masyratkat Uwang Asli kitak.
Antarak jenis tabung yang diwujudkan iak lah
Khairat Kematian, Rawatan khas, Hilang uapa-
yak, Malak Petakak (gibut), dan jugak Tabung
Pendidikan. Tabung pendidikan nin diwujud-
kan untok bagih minat anak-anak Uwang Asli
bejaye dalam bidang pendidikan di semuhak
peringkat sekulah nyak ki’ak yang belaja deket
sekulah gendah, sekulah menengah dan jugak
ke pe’ingkat universiti. Antarak aktiviti bisnes
yang dijalankan ulih Koperasi Asli Selangor iak
lah pembekalan tanah mi’ah, batuk gravil dan
pasii deket projek-projek gomen dan swasta.
Koperasi Asli Selangor adak jugak buat perta-
nian dan penternakan seca’ak komersial. Selain
itu didik jugak adak buat perkhidmatan kebu-
dayakan, pelancungan dan kraftangan Uwang
Asli. Didik jugak buat pelbagai projek ekonomi
untuk membantu komuniti Uwang Asli kitak.
pertanian kelapa sawit di kawasan Slim River,
Perak dan mereka juga ada membekalkan
barang makanan, perabot, barang binaan dan
lain-lain lagi. Manakala koperasi Orang Asli
Selangor pula ditubuhkan pada 22hb Oktober
1998 di kampung Orang Asli Tanjung Sepat,
Kuala Langat, Selangor. Koperasi Orang Selan-
gor ditubuhkan dengan matlamat meningkatkan
ekonomi ahlinya yang terdiri daripada masyar-
akat Orang Asli. Tujuan Koperasi Orang Asli
Selangor adalah untuk meningkatkan minda
ahlinya dan menjadi pemangkin kepada kema-
juan ekonomi Orang Asli.
Koperasi Orang Asli Selangor ada menyediakan
pelbagai tabung untuk membantu ahlinya yang
terdiri daripada Orang Asli. Tabung ini adalah
ditubuhkan khas untuk membantu para pelajar
Orang Asli dan juga untuk membasmi kemiski-
nan tegar di kalangan masyarakat Orang Asli.
Antara tabung mereka sediakan ialah tabung
Khairat Kematian, Rawatan Khas, Hilang
Upaya, Malapetaka (ribut) dan juga Tabung
Pendidikan. Tabung pendidikan ini diwujudkan
untuk menarik minat anak-anak Orang Asli su-
paya mereka berjaya dalam bidang pendidikan
di semua peringkat dari peringkat rendah,
menengah, sampailah ke peringkat Universiti.
Antara aktiviti perniagaan yang dijalankan oleh
Koperasi Orang Asli Selangor adalah pembeka-
lan tanah merah, batu gravil dan pasir ke pro-
jek-projek pembangunan kerajaan dan swasta.
Koperasi Orang Asli Selangor juga membuat
pertanian dan penternakan secara komersial.
Selain daripada itu Koperasi Orang Asli Se-
langor ada juga membuat perkhidmatan kebu-
dayaan, pelancongan dan kraftangan Orang
Asli. Mereka juga ada membuat berbagai-bagai
lagi projek ekonomi yang lain untuk membantu
menjana ekonomi komuniti Orang Asli.
69
Internet
Lokasi kampung Uwang Asli kitak terletak ber-
jauhan antarak satuk sama yang lain membuat
kitak payah untuk kitak berhubung sesamak
Uwang Asli kitak. Kebanyakan Uwang Asli
suku Temuan adak deket nuak Selangor, suku
Semai pulak adak deket nuak Perak, suku Ja-
kun deket belah nuak Pahang dan nuak Johor
dan sebagainyak. Pasal lokasi kitak yang jauh
nin pasal uwang kitak payah nak berjumpak
dan bergaul sesamak kitak. Kalau kitak nak
pegik da’ik satuk kampung ke satuk satu kam-
pung untuk jumpak kawan-kawan Uwang Asli
kitak akan memakan duit dan masak kitak. Tek
pasallah Uwang Asli kitak gamai yang gunak
internet untuk berkomunikasi sesamak kitak.
Nyap payah lagik kitak jumpak kawan kitak
deket kampung diak. Ulih ituk kitak kenak
gunakan internet untuk berhubung sesamak
uwang kitak. Apa yang kitak perlu buat iaklah
duduk depan komputer lepas tek bukai internet
dan kita dapat jumpak kawan kitak yang ting-
gal jauh daik kita seca’ak virtual. Contohnya
deket Desa Temuan, Bukit Lanjan gamai uwang
kitak da’ik yang kecen sampai uwang tuhik
duduk lepak deket cyber café deket situk un-
tuk gunak internet. Didik nin biasaknya lepak
deket cybercafe tek padak aik gelap pasal ma-
sak yang terluang. Adak yang nak gunak inter-
net untuk buat kejak sekulah. Adak yang bor-
ing duduk umah dan nak cayau kawan deket
Facebook, MySpace dan lain-lain lagik laman
web sosial.
Uwang Asli kitak gamai gunak laman sosial
Facebook pasal deket Facebook kitak dapat
genung banyak persatuan Uwang Asli kitak,
contoh nyak Member Orang Asli Se Facebook,
Rakan Orang Asli Semenanjung dan Anak
Anak oa genen. Gamai bodok-bodok Uwang
Asli kitak daik sekulah gendah , menengah dan
samapai yang tuhik gemar gunak berkomunika-
si laman sosial Facebook. Nin pasal Facebook
memang senang nak layau kawan-kawan ba-
hauk sesamak Uwang Asli kitak. Gamai jugak
uwang kitak yang berkomunikasi dengan meng-
Internet
Lokasi yang berjauhan antara satu sama lain
membuatkan Orang Asli sukar berkomunikasi
sesama mereka. Kebanyakan Orang Asli dari
suku Temuan tinggal di sekitar negeri Selangor
dan Perak, suku Semai pula tinggal di Perak,
suku Jakun di sebelah negeri Pahang dan neg-
eri Johor dan sebagainya. Oleh kerena lokasi
yang berjauhan sesama sendiri menyukarkan
Orang Asli bertemu dan berhubung sesama
sendiri. Kalau mereka ingin berjumpa pun ian-
ya akan mengambil masa dan duit yang banyak
untuk tambang untuk pergi dari satu kampung
ke satu kampung Orang Asli. Sekarang masa-
lah begitu tidak wujud lagi setelah kewujudan
internet. Internet merupakan satu media yang
paling banyak digunakan oleh Orang Asli pada
masa kini selain telefon bimbit dan dengan
menggunakan internet mereka boleh berjumpa
dengan rakan-rakan mereka dari tempat dan
kampung yang berjauhan secara maya. Seka-
rang ini walaupun mereka tinggal berjauhan
namun mereka akan terasa berada amat ber-
dekatan antara satu sama yang lain. Contohnya
di sebuah penempatan Orang Asli yang ber-
nama Desa Temuan yang terletak di Daman-
sara Perdana, Selangor amat menggilai inter-
net dan dari yang kecil sampai yang dewasa
selalu mengunjungi kafe internet yang terletak
di situ semata-mata untuk berkomunikasi ses-
ama rakan-rakan mereka yang berada di tem-
pat yang berjauhan melalui internet. Ada juga
para remaja Orang Asli menggunakan internet
sebagai panduan untuk membuat tugasan yang
diberikan oleh cikgu kepada mereka dan ada
juga yang melayari internet semata-mata untuk
menghilangkan kebosanan dalam hidup dengan
berkomunikasi dengan kawan-kawan mereka
melalui laman sosial Facebook, MySpace dan
laman-laman sosial yang lain.
Orang Asli banyak menggunakan laman sosial
Facebook di internet. Kalau kita lihat banyak
aktiviti-aktiviti yang dibuat oleh anak muda
Orang Asli di laman web sosial Facebook con-
tohnya penubuhan Member Orang Asli Se
70
gunakkan internet. Didik banyak gunak Yahoo
Messenger untuk caht dengan buat call video.
Selain da’ikpadak untuk berkomunikasi, inter-
net jugak de gunakan ulih uwang kitak untuk
mengupload gambar. Gamba nin bulih di kung-
si sesamak kitak. Nyap ki’ak da’ikpadak gamba
keluarge atau gamba biasak, kitak bulih genung
gamba kawan kitak deket internet nin tai.
Selain ituk uwang kitak jugak menggunakan
internet untuk mebacak tentang perkemban-
gan terkini. Berite dan sebagai nya. Adak jugak
uwang kitak belaja seca’ak online dengan meng-
gunakkan internet. Contoh nyak adak yang be-
lajar main gitar deket internet. Didik yang nak
belajar nin pegik deket laman web belajar. Adak
juga uwang kitak yang sukak belajar deket
Youtube pasal senang seken belajar pasal deket
YouTube nin kitak bulih belajar dengan genung
video. Banyak jugak kegunaan internet untuk
Uwang Asli kitak nin tai. Selain da’ikpadak un-
tuk kegunaan berhubung sesamak uwang kitak
dan jugak untuk tujuan hiburan uwang kitak
jugak menggunakan internet untuk tujuan be-
laja. Contoh nyak kalau kitak nak masak nasik
hayam. Walaupun kitak nyap tahuk nak masak
nasik hayam padak mulak nyak, kitak bulih
amin resepi masak nasik hayam deket internet.
Bukan hajak resepi masakan yang kitak bulih
cayau deket internet, tapik da’ik padak bagai-
bagai lagik. Bagih bodok-bodok yang tengah
belaja deket sekulah-sekulah atau universiti, in-
ternet adaklah siku bendak yang penting padak
masak didik nak buat kejak sekulah. Banyak
bahan kajian yang bulih didik amin deket sinin,
da’ikpadak bidang pengurusan sampailah ke bi-
dang perubatan.
Musik
Uwang kitak jugak dah adak musik kitak
sendi’ik. Contohnyak namak band-band mu-
sic uwang kitak yang popular macam Ramsa,
Khazanah, E Semai 2, Selindung Jingga, Ram-
sa. Desa Temuan Bukit Lanjan lah yang banyak
membuat musik-musik uwang kitak. Kelahiran
Facebook, Rakan Orang Asli Semenanjung
dan Anak-Anak OA Genen. Ramai anak muda
Orang Asli hingga yang berumur menyukai la-
man sosial Facebook kerana ianya amat mudah
untuk digunakan. Facebook menyediakan apli-
kasi di mana ahlinya boleh meletakan gambar
untuk ditatapi dan dikomen oleh sesama ahli
Facebook. Selain menggunakan laman sosial
Facebook Orang Asli juga gemar menggunakan
Yahoo Mesengger untuk bersembang sesama
mereka di alam cyber. Selain daripada sembang
dengan secara menaip perkataan, mereka ada
juga membuat sembang secara video. Internet
juga digunakan oleh para anak muda Orang Asli
untuk memuatkan data seperti gambar ahli kelu-
arga mereka untuk dikongsi sesama mereka dan
ada juga Orang Asli menggunakan internet un-
tuk hiburan contohnya mereka dapat menden-
gar muzik dan menonton video kegemaran
mereka di internet. Banyak juga kegunaan in-
ternet untuk masyarakat Orang Asli pada masa
kini. Selain menggunakan internet untuk tujuan
berkomunikasi dan tujuan hiburan Orang Asli
juga menggunakan internet untuk mendapatkan
informasi. Bagi anak muda Orang Asli yang se-
dang belajar samada di sekolah rendah, menen-
gah atau pusat pengajian tinggi, internet adalah
satu media yang paling penting bagi mereka un-
tuk membuat tugasan yang diberikan oleh para
guru atau pensyarah. Selain daripada itu Orang
Asli juga boleh mengakses internet jikalau mere-
ka ingin mempelajari sesuatu benda contohnya
cara untuk memasak nasi ayam. Resepi mema-
sak nasi ayam boleh diperolehi di internet dan
berbagai-bagai lagi bidang boleh dipelajari di in-
ternet daripada bidang pengurusan sehinggalah
bidang perubatan.
Muzik
Orang Asli juga sudah mempunyai industri
muzik mereka sendiri. Mereka juga sudah mem-
punyai lagu-lagu dan band-band mereka sendiri
contohnya band Ramsa, Khazanah, E Semai 2,
Selindung Jingga dan lain-lain lagi. Penempa-
tan Orang Asli yang paling banyak menghasil-
71
band-band musik uwang kitak nin banyak de
bantuk ulih radiu Uwang Asli kitak ia ituk
siaran radiu Asyik FM. Rediu Asyik FM jugak
banyak mencungkil bakat-bakat uwang kitak
daikpadak pelbagai kampung. Contoh segmen
didik buat iak lah juara Asyik FM 2009, seg-
men Gradung Gradeng, dan lain-lain segmen
lagik yang telah mengcungkil bakat-bakat pen-
yanyik uwang kitak. Uwang Asli kitak niak
siaran khas deket TV jadik uwang kitak cumak
be’gantung deket rediu Asyik FM hajak untuk
kelingai lagu-lagu bahauk Uwang Asli kitak.
Siaran redui Asyik FM ninboleh kitak kelin-
gai deket deket gelumbang pendek kebangsaan
49 meter (6025), de mulak tahun 1959 (boleh diikuti
kesemuhak nega’ak). FM 89.3, FM 91.1, FM 102.5,
FM 105.1. Asyik FM de ketuhak ulih Pengurus dan
deket bawah penjagak’an Bahagian Rancangan Re-
diu, pengarah siaran rediu dan pengarah penerbitan
rediu Malaysia. Selain ituk Uwang Asli kitak ju-
gak bulih belik album artis uwang kitak dalam
bentuk VCD atau CD yang dijual seca’ak kam-
pung ke kampung oleh pengedar CD-CD dan
VCD uwang kitak. Pengedaran CD-CD dan
VCD lagu uwang kitak nin da’ik satu kampung
ke satuk kampung mendapat sambutan hangat
da’ikpadak pembelik uwang kitak. Ternya-
tak uwang kitak sendi’ik yang bagih sokongan
sesamak artis uwang kitak supayak industri
hiburan Uwang Asli kitak te’us berkembang
maju.
Peralatan Musik
Untuhik kitak maen tek gunak buluh sewang
bilak adak upaca’ak atau pesta kampung. Bia-
sa nyak buluh sewang nin di ketuk ulih duak
atau lebih uwang setiap kalik upaca’ak se-
wang diadak’kan. Buluh sewang nin tedi’ik
da’ikpadak duak batang buloh. Satu batang
buluh panjang dan satuk lagik batang buluh
yang pendek. Batang buluh yang panjang nin
digunakan untuk bagih nada yang tinggik bilak
di ketuk manakalak yang buluh pendek untuk
bagih nada yang pendek. Biasak nyak keduak-
kan muzik pada satu tempat adalah di Desa
Temuan, Bukit Lanjan. Kelahiran band-band
muzik Orang Asli ini banyak dibantu oleh
siaran radio Orang Asli Asyik FM yang boleh
didapati pada frekuensi 91.1. Radio Malay-
sia Asyik FM banyak juga mencungkil bakat
nyanyian Orang Asli contohnya mereka telah
mengadakan program cari bakat seperti segmen
Gradung Gradeng, Juara Solo Asyik FM dan
lain-lain program lagi. Orang Asli tiada rancan-
gan televisyen mereka sendiri jadi mereka cuma
boleh mengharapkan siaran Radio Malaysia As-
yik FM untuk mendengar lagu-lagu dari artis-
artis mereka. Siaran radio Malaysia Asyik FM
boleh didapati pada gelombang pendek kebang-
saan 49 meter (6025), boleh diikuti keseluruh
negara dan juga boleh didapati pada gelombang
FM 89.3, FM 91.1, FM 105.1. Asyik FM mulai
siaran daripada pukul 8 pagi hingga 10 malam.
Asyik fm diketuai oleh Pengurus / Penyelia dan
di bawah pengawasan Pengarah Bahagian Ran-
cangan Radio, Pengarah Siaran Radio dan Pen-
garah Penerbitan Radio Malaysia. Selain dari-
pada siaran Radio Malaysia Asyik FM Orang
Asli juga boleh membeli VCD atau CD yang
dijual oleh syarikat penerbitan milik Orang Asli
sendiri. VCD atau CD lagu-lagu Orang Asli ini
dijual dari kampung ke kampung dan mendapat
sambutan hangat daripada peminat yang terdiri
daripada masyrakat Orang Asli sendiri. Terny-
atalah industri muzik Orang Asli semakin maju
di atas sesokongan sesama mereka sendiri.
Peralatan Muzik
Orang Asli pada masa dahulu cuma mengu-
nakan buluh sewang iaitu dua batang buluh
diketuk di atas kayu atau lantai sebagai alat
muzik mereka pada semua pesta keramaian
yang mereka raikan. Buluh sewang mempu-
nyai saiz berbeza, satu batang buluh panjang
untuk menghasilkan nada yang tinggi dan satu
batang buluh pendek untuk menghasilkan nada
yang rendah. Para penari sewang akan menari-
menari mengikut rentak buluh sewang yang di-
mainkan dan diringi juga oleh nyanyian vokal.
72
duak buloh sewang nin akan de ketuk atas catal
yang tedi’ik daipadak kayuk atau beluti untuk
bagih diak kelua bunyik. Kadang-kadang bu-
luh sewang nin akan diketuk atas semen hajak.
Penari-penari sewang akan menari mengekot
alunan rentak buloh sewang. Semasak buluh
sewang de ketok uwang yang membuat perse-
mbahan tok akan nyanyik lagu sewang seca’ak
suwang atau begamai-gamai. Lepas tuk uwang
kitak adak gunak biola dan pukul gong pasal
pengaruh dengan uwang Jobok. Padak ma-
sak nin dalam zaman 60an ke 80an uwang ki-
tak main alat tradisional uwang Jobok macam
gong, biola, kompang. Alat musik nin de main
padak ha’ik nikah uwang kitak dan jugak de
mainkan masak sewang. Tapik uwang kitak
masih lagik mengekalkan mengetuk buluh se-
wang. Buluh sewang yang de ketuk akan de
ekot ulih gong dan biola dan kadang-kadang
kompang. Tapi dalam duniak moden nin kitak
banyak de pengaruh de budayak uwang lua
iakituk budaye uwang putih. Uwang Asli kitak
dah mulak belajar main alat-alat musik moden
padak tahun 80an. Tuk pun didik main deket
kendu’ik uwang nikah hajak. Didik nyap adak
lagi niat untuk jadik artis rakaman ketika ituk.
Tapik kini padak tahun 2009 gamai band-band
anak mude Uwang Asli kitak menerbitkan al-
bum didik sendi’ik. Album yang de terbitkan
dijual sesamak uwang kitak da’ik padak satuk
kampung ke satuk kampung.
Antarak alat moden yang de sukak ulih Uwang
Asli kitak nyap kiak tuhik atau mudak ialah gi-
tar. Gamai jugak Uwang Asli kitak yang adak
gitrar kapuk deket umah didik. Gitar kapuk
nin mu’ah hajak untuk de beli nyap mahal pun.
Kalau kitak adak duit bawah rm 100 kitak dah
bulih belik gitar kapuk. Lagipun gitar kapuk
nin jimat pasal diak nyap payah gunak karan
macam gitar karan. Lagik satuk kelebihan gi-
tar kapuk adaklah iak nyak bulih de bawai ke
manak-manak hajak. Gitar kapuk biasak nyak
de main deket tepik-tepik jalan padak masak
gegelap pasal masak nin lah Uwang Asli kitak
duduk berehat pasal bagih hilang tension pasal
didik penat bekejak padak aik siang. Didik
Pada zaman 60-an hingga 80-an perlatan muzik
Orang Asli banyak dipengaruhi oleh perala-
tan muzik orang Melayu di mana mereka akan
menggunakan, gong, kompang dan biola untuk
pesta keramaian. Alat musik ini juga digunakan
bersama-sama buluh sewang pada hari pesta
perkahwinan Orang Asli. Buluh sewang akan
diketuk dan diringi oleh biola dan gong. Seka-
rang pada zaman moden pula banyak perala-
tan muzik Orang Asli dipengaruhi oleh budaya
barat. Peralatan muzik Orang Asli mula dipen-
garuhi oleh budaya barat pada tahun 80-an.
Pada masa inilah banyak kugiran-kugiran atau
band-band Orang Asli akan membuat perse-
mbahan pada majlis-majlis kenduri kahwin.
Walaupun begitu tiada lagi mana-mana band
Orang Asli membuat rakaman album mereka
sendiri pada ketika itu.
Kini pada zaman sekarang ramai juga anak
muda Orang Asli yang mempunyai band muzik
mereka sendiri dan mulai menerbitkan album-
album mereka sendiri untuk pasaran sesama
mereka. Antara peralatan muzik moden yang
digemari oleh Orang Asli tidak mengira yang
tua ataupun yang muda adalah gitar. Keban-
yakan Orang Asli mempunyai sebuah gitar ka-
puk di rumah. Gitar kapuk menjadi kegemaran
Orang Asli kerana ianya cuma berharga RM
100 ke bawah dan mampu dimiliki oleh mereka.
Lagipun gitar kapuk lebih jimat dari segi ekono-
mi kerana tidak memerlukan kuasa elektrik dan
mengunakan pembesar suara tidak seperti gi-
tar elektrik. Gitar kapuk juga digemari kerana
ianya mudah untuk di bawa ke mana-mana.
Biasalah gitar kapuk akan dimainkan pada
waktu malam untuk menghilangkan segala rasa
kebosanan setelah penat bekerja di siang hari.
Orang Asli yang yang agak berada pula lebih
gemar membeli gitar elektrik, drum dan key-
board. Bila mereka semua memiliki alatan muz-
ik yang lengkap mereka mula mencipta lagu.
Agak sedikit juga jumlah Orang Asli mempu-
nyai peralatan muzik yang lengkap kerana har-
ganya begitu mahal sekali. Mungkin di dalam
satu perkampungan Orang Asli cuma satu
orang sahaja yang mempunyai set alatan muzik
73
petik gitar mengekot irama yang didik sukak.
Bagih uwang kitak yang adak duit banyak
seken didik dah mulak belik guitar karan, drum
dan keyboard. Didik dah setat buat band didik
sendiik dan didik setatlah menciptak laguk
Uwang Asli kitak. Tapik kuang jugak Uwang
Asli kitak mampu belik alat-alat musik yang
mahal macam drum, gitar karan dan keyboard.
Mungkin dalam satuk kampung Uwang Asli
kitak cuma satuk umah hajak yang adak band
didik sendi’ik. Adak jugak uwang kitak yang
bejaye bukak studio kitak sendi’ik contohnya
di studio di kawasan Gombak dengan Ban-
ting. Studio yang didik bukak nin mengenakan
caj yang lebih mua’h daikpadak studio uwang
lua. Gamai jugak band-band Uwang Asli kitak
gunak studio-studio milik Uwang Asli kitak
sendi’ik pasal nak menyokong sesamak uwang
kitak dan jugak caj bayaran studio yang lebih
gendah daikpadak studio uwang lua.
Alat Moden
Uwang Asli kitak mimang sukakan hiburan.
Pasal ituklah gamai uwang kitak yang me-
langgan perkhidmatan Astro iak ituk siaran
TV berbaya. Walaupun umah deket kampung
atau deket nuak hutan uwang kitak gamai yang
adak Astro. Kalau kitak ke kampung-kampung
uwang kitak, kitak bulih genung kualik-kualik
Astro deket atas bumbung didik. Kadang-ka-
dang walaupun umah pakai buluh dan daun
bertam adak jugak kualik Astro deket atas
bumbung umah uwang kitak. Biasak nyak
didik amin pakej biasak hajak dalam Astro.
Selain daikpadak astro uang kitak jugak adak
TV dan mini hifi deket umah. Adak jugak gamai
uwang kitak yang dah belik LCD TV. LCD TV
adaklah TV yang nipis tuk. TV adaklah alat
yang penting untuk meyatuk padukan dikalan-
gan keluarge kitak dan genung citak yang ki-
tak sukak besamak-samak keluarga kitak. Nin
akan menggapatkan hubungan kekeluargaakn
sesamak keluarge kitak. Kalau deket kampung
yang agak jauh jauh da’ik bandar pulak, TV
juga dianggap sebagai alat perpaduan. Pasal
deket kampung yang nuak pendalaman didik
yang lengkap. Ada juga Orang Asli yang telah
berjaya membuka studio rakaman mereka send-
iri. Studio rakaman yang dimiliki oleh Orang
Asli ini mengenakan caj yang agak murah ke-
pada anak muda Orang Asli yang ingin mener-
bitkan album berbanding menggunakan studio
rakaman orang luar. Sudio rakaman album
muzik Orang Asli ini terletak di Gombak dan
Banting, Selangor.
Peralatan Moden
Orang Asli memang sukakan hiburan dan oleh
itu ramai yang melanggan siaran televisyen ber-
bayar iaitu Astro. Walaupun tinggal di kawasan
pendalaman ramai Orang Asli sudah melanggan
perkhidmatan siaran televisyen berbayar. Kalau
dilihat pada setiap perkampungan di atas bum-
bung rumah diperkampungan Orang Asli mesti
ada careka gelombang penerima siaran televisy-
en berbayar. Kadang-kadang Orang Asli yang
mendiami rumah buluh dan atap bertam juga
mempunyai careka gelombang penerima siaran
televisyen berbayar di atas bumbung rumahnya.
Selain melanggan siaran televisyen berbayar,
Orang Asli juga memiliki set televisyen dan mini
hi-fi di rumah masing-masing. Ada juga Orang
Asli sudah memiliki set televisyen LCD (skrin
nipis). Set televisyen amatlah penting kerana
ianya adalah satu alat untuk bersantai bersama-
sama keluarga setelah penat membuat aktiviti-
aktiviti samada belajar atau bekerja pada waktu
siang. Kalau di kawasan kampung yang amat
miskin, televisyen lah menjadi alat perpaduan di
mana orang kampung tersebut akan berkumpul
74
nyap mampu nak belik TV jadik manak umah
uwang yang adak TV akan jadik tumpuan. Nin
jugak akan mengapatkan hubungan sesamak
uwang kitak.
Bagih semuhak pelaja-pelaja uwang kitak deket
institu pengajian tinggik gomen atau swasta
didik mesti adak lap top atau pun komputer.
Komputer de genung sebagai alat yang penting
dalam komuniti seka’ang. Gamai jugak uwang
kitak yang adak komputer, nyap kiaklah kom-
puter desktop atau yang laptop. Komputer
adaklah satu alat yang penting untuk kegunaan
Uwang Asli kitak jaman seka’ang pasal diak
menghubungan antarak sesamak Uwang Asli
kitak dalam duniak cyber. Selain da’ikpadak
berhubung sesamak uwang kitak, komputer
jugak bulih digunak kan untuk tujuan belaja.
Seka’ang banyak ilmu yang kitak bulih belaja
deket komputer nempuh lah internet. Taip
hajak apak bendak kitak nak belaja atau apak
bendak kitak nak tahuk. Mesti kitak dapat info
yang kita nak nempuh lah komputer.
Kenderaan adaklah satu alat yang membuli-
hkan kitak bibas pegik kuluk kili. Contoh nyak
kalau kitak nak pegik belik ba’ang deket kedai
yang jauh daikpadak umah kitak. Kalau kitak
niak kenderaan susah jugak kitak nak pegik
ke manak-manak. Padak zaman serba moden
nin, payah kitak nak genung uwang kitak yang
jalan kakik atau naik bas. Koman-koman pun
uwang kitak adak satu moto padak setiap siku
umah uwang kitak, nyap kiak yang tinggal
deket kampung atau yang tinggal deket bandar.
Mesti umah didik adak satuk atau duak moto.
Gamai jugak uwang kitak yang adak kite. Kite
lebih selesa bawai kelurga daikpadak moto.
Kalau motor kitak cumak bulih bawai dua
uwang hajak, tapik kalau kite kitak bulih ba-
wai gamai uwang naik contohnyak satuk ke-
luarge. Moto atau kite adaklah jugak satuk
alat yang menghubungkan uwang kitak yang
duduk deket jauh antarak satuk samak yang
lain terutamak nyak bilak adak seda’ak kitak
yang nikah atau padak masak sambutan Aik
Gayak Muyang.
beramai-ramai di rumah orang yang memiliki
televisyen untuk mereka menonton rancangan
kegemaran meraka bersama-sama. Lain pula
ceritanya dengan para pelajar Orang Asli di pu-
sat pengajian tinggi. Para pelajar Orang Asli di
pusat pengajian tinggi pula memiliki komputer
riba untuk memudahkan mereka membuat tu-
gasan yang diberikan kepada mereka. Komput-
er juga merupakan satu alat yang penting untuk
kegunaan pada masyarakat Orang Asli sekarang
kerana ianya menghubungkan sesama mereka
di dalam dunia cyber. Selain daripada kegu-
naan berhubung sesama sendiri, komputer juga
digunakan untuk tujuan pembelajaran. Orang
Asli pada zaman sekarang ini boleh belajar seg-
ala ilmu mengikut minat masing-masing melalui
komputer (internet) atau melalui pembelajaran
secara CD-ROM.
Kenderaaan juga merupakan satu benda alat
moden yang penting kepada kehidupan sehari-
an-harian masyarakat Orang Asli. Jarang juga
dilihat Orang Asli berjalan kaki atau menaiki bas
kalau mereka ingin pergi dari satu tempat ke satu
tempat yang lain pada zaman sekarang. Ramai
Orang Asli pada masa kini sudah memiliki motor-
sikal. Jika dilihat pada setiap rumah Orang Asli
sudah pasti di setiap rumah mempunyai sebuah
motorsikal atau lebih. Ada juga Orang Asli sudah
mampu memiliki kereta. Kereta juga diminati oleh
Orang Asli kerana ianya boleh membawa ramai
penumpang seperti ahli keluarga mereka sendiri
untuk bergerak, contohnya semasa mereka ingin
membeli barang-barang dapur di pekan atau se-
masa mereka ingin balik ke kampung halaman
masing-masing. Berbeza pula dengan motorsikal
mereka di mana ianya cuma boleh membawa dua
orang penumpang sahaja. Kenderaan memang
satu alat yang penting bagi menghubungkan
Orang Asli yang tinggal berjauhan antara satu
sama lain. Mereka boleh menggunakan kender-
aan mereka samada motorsikal atau kereta untuk
menghadiri majlis perkahwinan saudara mereka
di tempat lain dan juga untuk menghadiri Hari
Moyang yang diadakan pada setiap hujung ta-
hun pada sesetengah perkampungan Orang Asli
yang meraikannya.
75

Gaye Hidup Moden Gaya Hidup Moden

Orang Asli kini banyak menikmati gaya hidup
Uwang Asli kitak seka’ang banyak menikmati
moden sama seperti kaum lain di Malaysia.
gayak hidup yang moden samak dengan uwang
Banyak perkampungan Orang Asli telah diban-
lua. Banyak kampung uwang kitak dah di ban-
gunkan menjadi bandar. Contohnya kampung
gunkan menjadik banda. Sebagai contonh nyak
Orang Asli Bukit Lanjan yang terletak di Se-
kampung Uwang Asli kitak deket Bukit Lanjan
langor telah dibangunkan menjadi bandar. Oleh
dah dibangunkan menjadik banda. Jadik uwang
yang demikian Orang Asli yang tinggal di situ
deket Bukit Lanjan dapat hidup yang moden dan
telah dapat menikmati kehidupan moden sama
didik punyak umah pun nampak mewah. Kalau
seperti kaum lain di Malaysia. Kalau dilihat ke
kitak pegik deket kampung-kampung Uwang
kawasan-kawasan kampung Orang Asli mesti
Asli kitak mesti setiap uwang kampung tek ada
semua orang di situ memiliki telefon bimbit.
satuk handphone atau kekadang suwang uwang
Kadang-kadang seorang individu di sana memi-
kampung adak duak handphone. Bagih uwang
liki bukan sahaja satu tapi dua telefon bimbit.
kitak yang tinggal deket banda tek contohnya
Telefon bimbit di lihat sebagai satu alat moden
uwang lanjan (Desa Temuan), uwang Aii Kun-
yang digemari dan selalu digunakan oleh Orang
ing (Bukit Bandaraya, Shah Alam) dan lain-lain
Asli. Orang Asli yang tinggal di kawasan per-
tempat yang jadik banda didik dapat menikmati
bandaran juga dapat menikmati kemudahan
hidup yang lebih moden lagik. Uwang kitak
yang pelbagai, contohnya mereka dapat mem-
yang tinggal deket banda dapat menikmati ke-
beli belah di pasaraya besar, pendidikan yang
mudahan bagai-bagai. Uwang kitak yang ting-
lebih sempurna dan lain-lain lagi kemudahan.
gal deket banda dapat nenala shopping deket
Manakala dari segi pakaian Orang Asli juga
pasaraya besa macam Tesco, Ikea, 1Utama dan
berubah mengikut zaman. Jikalau dahulu kala
lain-lain lagik. Didik jugak dapat menikmati
masyarakat Orang Asli cuma memakai baju
kemudahan bekalan elektrik dan bekalan aii.
daripada kulit kayu daun terap, tetapi kini cara
Contoh kemudahan yang didik nikmati iak lah
pemakaian baju mereka berubah mengikut za-
kemudahan deket dengan hospital, sekulah dan
man. Contoh pakaian yang digemari oleh Orang
bagai-bagai kemudahan yang lain lagik. Uwang
Asli pada zaman sekarang ialah seluar jeans dan
kitak yang tinggal deket banda dapat menik-
baju t-shirt.
mati gayak hidup yang moden. Padak zaman
moden nin uwang kitak nyap lagik pakai baju
kulit te’ap dalam kehidupan haik-haik. Didik
pakai baju kulit te’ap masak adak persembahan
sewang hajak. Seka’ang uwang kitak pakai ba-
juk macam uwang lua lain juga macam t-shirt,
jeans dan bagai-bagai.

Gayak Uwang Asli Perayaan Orang Asli

Walaupun dah hidup dalam era moden, uwang
kitak nyap lupak dan nyap meninggalkan men-
yambut aik gak kitak sendidik. Contoh nyak
sambuatan Jis Pai (bermaksud tahun bahauk
dalam bahase Semai) deket Perak, Aik Gayak
Muyang deket Pulau Carey dengan kawasan di
Walaupun sudah hidup di dalam era yang serba
moden, Orang Asli tidak melupakan dan tidak
meninggalkan perayaan yang mereka warisi se-
jak turun temurun. Contoh perayaan Orang Asli
adalah Jis Pai (yang bermaksud Tahun Baru
dalam bahasa kaum Semai) di Perak dan juga
76
sekitar kampung uwang kitak deket Banting,
Selangor. Sambutan Aik Gayak Muyang de
buat padak setiap hujung tahun sebagai tandak
timak kasih deket Muyang yang menjagak ki-
tak dan bagih kitak hidup yang bibas daikpadak
bencane dan jugak pe’ang. Aik Gayak Muyang
jugak mengapatkan hubungan sesamak Uwang
Asli kitak deket manak Uwang Asli kitak daik-
padak kampung lain datang berkompol dalam
satuk tempat agar didik dapat besamak me-
gayakkan Aik Gayak Muyang. Pada masak
Aik Gayak Muyang, kitak bagih makan deket
Muyang kitak. Lepas tek penonton akan di-
tangingkan persembahan sewang iaituk tar-
ian Uwang Asli kitak. Padak masak nin jugak
penonton dapat makan-makan deket tempat
makan yang di sediak kan.
Kebudayaan Asli Deket
Duniak Luar
Kebudayaan Uwang Asli kitak bukan hajak di
genung ulih kitak tapi kebudayaan kitak jugak
dah de genung ulih uwang lua samaadak deket
dalam atau lua nega’ak. Sebagainya contohnya
ukiran patong Muyang ulih Uwang Asli kitak
da’ik sukuk kaum Mah Meri dah diiktiraf ulih
Unesco (Pertubuhan Pendidikan Saintifik dan
Kebudayak’an Bangsak-Bangsak Besatuk).
Ukiran patung Muyang ulih Uwang Asli kitak
da’ik suku Mah Meri kampung Sungai Bumbun
adak nilai senik yang ditinggik dan de minati
ulih uwang luar terutamak nyak umputih.
Selain tuk Uwang Asli kitak deket kampong
Sungai Bumbun adak jugak buat ayaman
daikpadak mengkuang. Contoh ayaman yang
didik buat adaklah bujam, tika, alat perhiasan
macam gelang, beg duit daikpadak mengkuang
dan bagai-bagai lagik.
Selain daikpadak ukiran patung Muyang dan
ayaman. Uwang Asli kitak jugak di kenali ulih
uwang luar dengan tarian unik uwang kitak iak
ituk ‘Tarian Sewang’. Maen tuk tarian sewang
sambutan Hari Moyang di kampung-kampung
Orang Asli sekitar Pulau Carey, Banting (suku
Mah Meri) dan lain-lain tempat lagi. Sambu-
tan Moyang diadakan oleh Orang Asli pada se-
tiap penghujung tahun sebagai tanda berterima
kasih kepada Moyang kerana telah melindungi
mereka daripada bencana dan memberikan
mereka hidup dengan selesa. Hari Moyang juga
telah merapatkan hubungan sesama Orang Asli
di mana mereka datang dari setiap kampung
yang berbeza dan turut bersama meraikannya.
Kebudayaan Orang Asli
tersebar di dunia luar
Kebudayaan Orang Asli bukan sahaja ditatapi
oleh masyarakat Malaysia tetapi ianya juga tel-
ah ditatap dan dihargai oleh masyarakat antara-
bangsa. Sebagai contohnya seni ukiran patung
kayu yang diukir oleh Orang Asli dari suku
kaum Mah Meri telah diiktiraf oleh Unesco
(Pertubuhan Pendidikan Saintifik dan Kebu-
dayaan Bangsa-Bangsa Bersatu). Seni ukiran
patung Mah Meri dari kampung Orang Asli
Sungai Bumbun di Pulau Carey amatlah di-
minati dan disukai oleh para pelancong asing.
Selain daripada ukiran patung Muyang seni
ayaman Orang Asli juga amat digemari oleh
para pelancong asing. Contoh barangan aya-
man Orang Asli adalah bujam (tempat isi sirih),
tikar, perhiasan ayaman gelang tangan, beg duit
mengkuang dan berbagai lagi barangan ayaman
yang lain. Selain daripada ukiran patung dan
ayaman, persembahan tarian sewang Orang
Asli juga amat digemari oleh para pelancong
asing. Tarian Sewang pada mulanya hanyalah
digunakan oleh para dukun atau bomoh Orang
Asli untuk mengubat pesakitnya tapi kini tar-
77
nin di gunak’kan untuk mengubat uwang sakit
tapik kinin Tarian Sewang di tarikan untuk aik-
aik untuk menyambut Aik Gayak Muyang dan
jugak untuk di tangingkan deket uwang lua
teutamak nyak untuk de genung ulih pelancung
asing. Tarian Sewang nin nyap lagik digunakan
untuk tujuan perubatan, iaknyak lebih kepadak
tujuan komersial. Tarian nin nenala di tarikan
padak Aik Gayak Muyang padak setiap hujung
tahun. Tempat utamak yang menarikan Tarian
Sewang nin adaklah deket nuak Pulau Carey
iak ituk deket kampung Sungai Bumbun. Tar-
ian nin jugak ditarikan deket kampung uwang
kitak Temuan deket nuak Banting dan jugak
deket kawasan Perak semasak sambutan Jis
Pai. Uwang lua samadak dalam atau lua negeik
dalam genung kebudayaan kitak melalui ukiran
kayuk, ayaman dan Tarian Sewang dan kebu-
dayaan Uwang Asli kitak nyap hilang de telan
ulih arus moden. Kesenian dan kebudayaan
uwang kitak kenak te’us supayak anak cicit ki-
tak isuk dapat mengekalkan tradisi uwang ki-
tak. Selain untuk menangingkan kebudayaan
kitak deket uwang lua, uwang kitak jugak bulih
menambah pendapatan didik.
Kesan Gayak Hidup Moden
Kesan gaye hidup moden terdapat baik dan
nyahat nyak. Kesan baik nyak adaklah Uwang
Asli kitak dah bejaye besaing dengan bangsak
lain deket Malaysia da’ik segi pelajaran, kejak
bisnes dan lain-lain lagik. Semuhak kejayaan
Uwang Asli nin dah membukak matak uwang
lua. Didik pun nyap panang Uwang Asli ki-
tak nin macam maeh tek lagik dah. Maen tek
uwang lua ingat Uwang Asli kitak nin adak-
lah satuk kumpulan uwang yang tinggal deket
dalam hutan dan be’kejak deket hujan hajak
untuk mencayau makan. Tapik ginin Uwang
Asli kitak yang berjaye telah membukai ma-
tak uwang lua supayak genung Uwang Asli
kitak samak taraf dengan didik. Uwang kitak
yang hidup deket jaman yang moden nin bulih
berhubung sesamak sendiik melalui kemuda-
han internet. Nyap kiaklah samak adak lokasi
ian ini tidak lagi digunakan untuk mengubat
pesakit tetapi digunakan secara komersial di
mana ianya kerap dipersembahkan kepada para
pelancung asing.
Selain daripada dipersembahan kepada pelan-
cong asing tarian ini juga dipersembahkan se-
masa menyambut Hari Moyang iaitu pada se-
tiap penghujung tahun. Tarian ini kerap kali
dipersembahkan di Pualu Carey di mana ianya
adalah kawasan tempat tumpuan pelancong
asing. Tarian ini juga selalu dipersambahakan
pada hari Muyang di kampung Orang Asli
kawasan Banting dan juga semasa sambutan
Jis Pai (tahun baru) di Perak. Kebudayaan
Orang Asli seperti ukiran patung muyang,
ayaman dan tarian sewang adalah penting un-
tuk ditonjolkan dan diamalkan oleh Orang
Asli agar seni ini tidak hilang ditelan oleh za-
man. Selain daripada untuk mengekalkan ke-
budayaan Orang Asli supaya tidak hilang di
telan oleh zaman, ianya juga boleh digunakan
untuk menjana sumber ekonomi Orang Asli
itu sendiri.
Kesan Gaya Hidup Moden
Kesan gaya hidup moden memberikan kebaikan
dan keburukan kepada masyarakat Orang Asli.
Kesan baik terhadap Orang Asli moden adalah
Orang Asli sudah menikmati kehidupan yang
sama seperti kaum lain di Malaysia dan telah
berjaya dalam bidang pelajaran, perkerjaaan,
perniagaan dan lain-lain bidang lagi. Semua ke-
jayaan ini telah membuka mata orang luar dan
sekaligus menangkis bahawa Orang Asli masih
lagi hidup dalam kemunduran. Pada zaman
yang serba moden ini Orang Asli boleh ber-
hubungan sesama sendiri walaupun tinggal ber-
jauhan dengan menggunakan kemudahan inter-
net. Tidak kiralah walau di mana pun mereka
berada, asalkan mereka ada sebuah komputer
dan akses internet, mereka boleh berhubung
pada bila-bila masa. Gaya hidup moden sudah
berjaya menyatukan Orang Asli melalui dunia
78
kampung Uwang Asli kitak berjauhan antarak
satuk samak yang lain pasal asalkan kitak
adak komputer dan akses internet. Gaya hidup
moden dah berjaye menghubungan uwang
kitak yang tinggal bertaburan deket dalam
semenanjung Malaysia.
Kesan nyahat nyak pulak upacare Tarian Se-
wang yang duluk nyak di gunakan untuk pe-
rubatan dah lamak ditinggalkan ulih uwang
kitak. Tarian Sewang padak jaman moden nin
cumak di jadikkan sebagai satuk tarian komer-
sial yang di persembahkan di tempat tertentu
seperti di hotel, dewan-dewan dengan tujuan
untuk cayau duit. Nyap macam untuhik maen
yang menggunakan sewang untuk be’ubat
uwang sakit. Padak jaman moden nin, umah
kitak samak hajak dengan bangsak lain deket
Malaysia. Maeh tuk untuhik gunakan daun
bertam, nipah untuk buat umah tapi seka’aang
uwang kitak dah gunakan papan atau batuk-
bate untuk buat umah. Makak hilanglah iden-
titi dalam seni membuat umah tradisi Uwang
Asli kitak. Muju lah adak sesetengah Uwang
Asli kitak yang nak jagak lagi tradisi umah
uwang kitak dengan membuat umah pondok
atap nipah deket sebelah umah didik sebagai
pangkin tempat rehat masak pepetang. Kesim-
pulan nyak walaupun uwang kitak dah hidup
dengan moden pahaulah kitak lupakan asal
usul kitak nin tai.
siber. Keburukan kemodenan terhadap Orang
Asli adalah Orang Asli jarang menggunakan
perubatan tradisional mereka lagi. Upacara tar-
ian sewang pula bukan lagi satu kaedah untuk
perubatan tetapi cuma dijadikan tarian komer-
sial di hotel, dewan-dewan untuk tatapan para
pelancong. Ini tidak sama sekali dengan tarian
sewang diamalkan oleh masyrakat Orang Asli
pada masa dahulu untuk tujuan perubatan.
Pada zaman moden ini juga rumah Orang Asli
kelihatan sama seperti rumah kaum lain di Ma-
laysia. Dahulunya rumah Orang Asli diperbuat
daripada daun bertam, nipah dan buluh mem-
punyai ciri-ciri dan identiti Orang Asli. Bila ru-
mah Orang Asli sama seperti kaum lain di Ma-
laysia, hilanglah seni dan identiti rumah Orang
Asli. Mujurlah ada segelintir Orang Asli yang
mahu mengekalkan tradisi Orang Asli membina
tempat rehat yang bercirikan rumah Orang Asli
dahulukala. Kesimpulannya walaupun hidup di
zaman yang serba moden ini Orang Asli tidak
seharusnya melupakan jati diri mereka sendiri.
79

A
MONGST THE EXILES:
REFLECTIONS OF A REFUGEE LAWYER
Sumitra Visvanathan

Ah, well I know how exiles feed on hopes

of their return.
- Aeschylus from Agamemnon

I have spent the better part of the last two decades obsessed with protecting people in forced exile.
Over the years I have talked to scores of people about what was going on in their country, what cre-
ated despair and fed fears for their safety, and what turned them to living in a state of exile, fearful
and unable, on account of that fear, to return home.

People seeking a more secure future, having been driven from their homes because of war and
persecution have a special, protected place in international law. They are considered refugees. Na-
tions of the world, acting singly and in concert since the end of the last world war, have created
international, regional and domestic legal regimes to ensure and enforce protection for refugees. I,
myself, have a small role in this regime of refugee protection. Through this, I visit refugee worlds.

I have worked with refugees for the better part of the last two decades. Vast numbers of refugees
have told me intimate details about their lives. Refugees speak not just of their reasons for leaving
their homelands, but most volubly of the immense void engendered by the deprivation of home.
The anguish of loss is made immediate by the profound and persistent sense of physical and emo-
tional insecurity that is the hallmark of forced displacement. The refugee’s story has always been
the sharpest statement of loss. It simply isn’t possible to fully appreciate the sharp edge of this loss
without personal experience, try as one might.
80

The refugee experience of exile is an unfinished circle, closed and completed only when safe and
dignified return to the abandoned homeland becomes possible. I remember a man who spent his
middle age and old age avoiding a war that was fought in his country for more than 30 years in
pursuit of a political ideal.1 He spent years in a state of displacement within his own country, fleeing
as the country fractured and fragmented into two barely stable parts. The war eventually morphed
into an unjust peace where, post-conflict, people of his political opinion were pursued and perse-
cuted. The conflict spilled into the first country where he fled to seek asylum. A savage genocidal
regime then rose up there, killing every member of his family. He survived and sought asylum in
another neighbouring country, even as the first asylum country sank into a state of disintegration
and degradation. I met with him in a refugee camp and recorded his statement. “I need protection
from you now but I will go home when they leave”, he said, “My home is there”. He was about 80
years old at the time, with a raft of experiences that no human should experience. He was exiled
and living in a state of continuing insecurity. Yet, he still retained the will to close the circle. Yes,
refugees would go home, if they could. Return was not possible for him. He was resettled in yet an-
other country. I can but imagine the void left by the permanent loss of his homeland for this brave
and dignified man.

When the regaining of the homeland is denied, people and places that recall the events of the refu-
gee’s history can fade into the dim corners of recollection. Yet, I have seen how the denial of home
strengthens the will to survive, and how memory can sometimes be better blotted out. Traumatic
memories flow from the experience of persecution. In that same refugee camp lived a man who was
detained for 16 years in a succession of re-education camps in his country, ostensibly to encourage
him towards abandoning his political beliefs. He harbored persistent memories of inhumanity. He
spoke of an incident where he was taken out of his cell into the courtyard of the re-education camp
and made to kneel. A camp official placed a gun at the back of his neck and pulled the trigger. There
was a click – the gun was not loaded. He collapsed from shock and the watching officials laughed.
He also told of an unsuccessful group attempt to escape from the camp. “They shot a few people on
the spot. The rest of us had to dig holes about 7 feet wide and as deep. They tied us up and made us
jump in and covered the hole. I don’t know how long I spent in this hole but when they uncovered
us, I was the only one still alive.” A quiet, self-possessed man, he would speak with great pride of
his ability to retain control of his own mind, throughout the experience of the brutal excesses of
his government and from the persistent memories of such overwhelmingly atrocious harm. While
living as a refugee in the camp, he worked as a volunteer, providing counselling for other survivors
of trauma.

There is much to learn from the refugee experience of exile. Another man in that camp, an elderly
former soldier, had sage advice for a young refugee worker. “Be careful of what possessions you
think you need”, he said. “You do not need what you cannot carry on your own back.” He lived
his life in a state of constant readiness, first to fight battles in the war and then to flee harm when
that war was lost. Being aware of the fragility of “home”, he feared it. His statement so impacted
me that it took me another decade before I could settle into creating a home for myself. Even now,
looking around the many possessions I have accumulated in my own home, I am able to recognize
that there is very little I truly need. This man was spare of frame, wiry and spry. He ran a few kil-
ometers through the refugee camp each morning to keep fit. In readiness for what other trials that
1  ue to strict confidentiality clauses, the author is unable to specify the names of any countries or individuals. It is hoped that the reader
D
will be able to use a mix of educated guess-work and knowledge of regional and global affairs to guess the likely countries in question
[Editor’s Note].
81

were yet to come, perhaps. He was also resettled. I remember that he shed unexpected tears at the
pier when embarking on the long journey to yet another country. This was close to 20 years ago.

The geographical, numeric and temporal dimensions of the refugee situation are astonishingly
large. Having spent many years working to protect refugees, I am appalled by the elusiveness of
a peaceful global society that will turn away from separating people and communities through the
illusory devices of borders, nationalities, ethnicity, religions and ideologies. Testimonies of forced
exile are about exclusion in the face of the human need to belong – a break in a circle that should
be whole.

Recently, I spent time in an immigration detention center in a country where many refu-
gees are detained. A very young refugee boy there helped me feed a kitten. The kitten is
a baby, he told me, and we need to treat him carefully. Detained simply for crossing the bor-
der without official permission, the child was seemingly oblivious to his own need for care-
ful treatment. I had earlier interviewed his mother. She told me something which made me
put my pen down and gaze at her with dismay. “What makes you think you are better than
me?” she asked. “How is it that you can come here from your own country without any prob-
lems? Why am I stopped from moving to another country, when I have a greater need?”
Why, indeed.

Some nations talk about “pull-factors”, that people leave their countries in order to seek “better
lives” in those countries offering a hope of resettlement for refugees. The position argued is that
these people would not otherwise leave their countries and seek protection as refugees, absent the
promise of resettlement in a Western nation.

Discourses on refugee pull-factors should pay equal attention to push-factors. The child’s mother
described being caught in a web of internal armed conflict and displacement in her country – con-
stantly on the move with her two children, avoiding indiscriminate shelling and arbitrary killing,
hunger and sickness. She spoke of surviving phosphorus bombs, a weapon that is not banned but
which harms civilians in prohibited ways.2 She spoke of witnessing family members die in camps
for internally displaced people, unprotected from fighting between the non-state armed group and
the state’s armed forces. She went on to describe the fear and insecurity of subsequently living in an
internment camp in her country, where civilians are mysteriously disappeared in the night because
they share a common ethnicity with the armed group that was waging war with the state.

Then, midway in her testimony came a clear memory of savagery. She wept as she described pass-
ing a military checkpoint, then rounding a corner and coming across a large roadside mound of
dead male bodies rotting in the sun. Unarmed men killed on suspicion of being fleeing fighters – a
heinous human rights violation and a war crime. Given what is known about the perpetration of
such wartime criminal acts, these bodies would probably have later been burnt to hide evidence
of the crimes. The only remaining evidence is in one woman’s persistent memory, captured within
her refugee testimony. “Acts of injustice done, between the setting and the rising sun, in history lie
like bones, each one” – a quote from W.H. Auden. Her refugee flight to safety from her country not
only protects her and her children from harm, it carries the weight of a memory of an atrocious act
of injustice that could potentially hold war criminals to account.
2  hite phosphorous was reportedly used during the U.S. assault on Falluja, Iraq (2004) and by Israeli forces in the Gaza War (2008-
W
2009). It produces serious to fatal chemical burns, though the U.S. military claims it is primarily used a form of flare or smokescreen.
82

In the war refugee’s experience, evil is beyond banal. It is a dangerous fact of an unsafe life. Es-
pecially for war refugees, the search for safety beyond national borders is often the only means to
preserve life. Nations consumed with fears of “pulling” such refugees to their shores should take
the time to study refugee testimonies. There resides the push factor, outweighing any and all other
considerations. Yet, even with the still-fresh trauma of experiencing war in her country, this young
mother spoke of her wish for her children to access education in the asylum country, so that they
will grow up to be successful people when they return home. There, again, is the will to close the
circle of exile.

I have often felt that the condition of being in forced exile carries a particular form of hardship
for political activists. Yet another clear memory I harbour is of a lawyer, seeking asylum due to
his membership of a political movement, which was marginalised and prohibited by his govern-
ment. He had written an articulate and compelling account of his need for refugee protection,
which included a suggested time-frame for his refugee protection needs. He believed that he
only needed shelter from his country for a few months, until his profile was relegated to being
beneath the notice of the internal security authorities in his country. This man would often turn
up simply to talk about his country and his political struggle. He would come to visit bearing
literature – treatises, books and pamphlets on the political situation in his country. Even in ex-
ile, he could not stop advocating for political change, even to a clearly disinterested audience. He
returned home before his self-imposed time-frame was up. The pull to end the exile and effect
political change in his country was too strong. I think often of his fervour and hope he is safe.

Sometimes, the will to end exile is so powerful that return occurs even when conditions are precari-
ous and cannot safely support such a return. I am reminded of too many years of speaking with too
many refugees from a certain Southwest Asian country, which continues to be a marginally failed
state to this day. These refugees would traipse across barren, wintry wastelands to seek protection
in neighbouring asylum countries that were barely tolerant of their presence there as refugees. I
remember one family of five who encountered equally precipitous lives in the asylum country on
account of their religion. They subsequently embarked on a search for more meaningful refugee
protection that involved an epic, circuitous journey by train across an entire continent, only to end
up, at the end of that long trek, in a bustling, modern Asian metropolis by the sea. “I never knew
the world is so large and so kind”, the father told me. He had wanted to get as far away as pos-
sible from his own country, but to remain in Asia. So he studied the atlas and bought train tickets.
Unsure of exactly where they were or what to do, the father led his family to a police station to ask
for help. The policemen and women at the station were amazed at the journey undertaken, the na-
tionality of the refugees, and the story they recounted, giving them hot meals, fresh clothes and the
contacts for organisations that could assist them. This family spent many years in that metropolis,
and eventually returned home, partly in hope that the peace that had been wrought by the warring
factions there would hold. That hope was not borne out by later events. I often think of this family
and know with utter certainty that they have now resumed living refugee lives, somewhere in the
world. I remember this family most poignantly on account of their young son, who, in his own refu-
gee testimony, declared his fervent wish for his countrymen to be “stylish like the Italians”, much to
the merriment of my colleagues. We bought him a pair of shoes, made in Italy.

That brutalised country has experienced numerous, successive periods of significant population
movements within and outside it, rooted in internal strife, armed conflict and deteriorating physical
security for civilians. These mass displacements have routinely been followed by so-called “asylum-
83

country fatigue”, juxtaposed with international efforts at conflict-resolution and peace-building,

resulting in facilitation of refugee and displaced person returns and reintegration. Often, borders
with neighbouring countries were closed and deportation exercises carried out even when return
to the country of origin continued to be unsafe due to on-going armed conflict and consequent risk
of harm to civilians. All too often, those returns have been voluntary. The yearning for home was
too strong to resist.

Testament to the enduring nature of that refugee outflow, I recently spoke with yet another refu-
gee from that country, who had been detained and then released by the asylum country. He had
been detained for crossing the border without official documentation. The trauma from experienc-
ing long-term armed conflict was vividly reflected in his words and actions. He described being a
witness to an incident of suicide bombing. Midway through his testimony, he stopped and looked
down at the front of his shirt. There was a silence of a few moments. Then he looked up at me and
said, “I can still see the blood on my shirt.” This man’s trauma had been further compounded by
his arrest and detention in the asylum country, owing to the fact that he had been smuggled into
that country as part of his refugee journey to yet another country, further eastward, which many
refugees perceive as the safest haven.

Recent refugee movements and regional responses to those movements have placed a spotlight on
the phenomenon of people smuggling. Refugee workers are well aware that all too often, refugees
are compelled to cross borders illegally, and such crossings are facilitated by people smugglers.
Frequently, the smuggling of the refugee is accompanied with gross human rights abuses, includ-
ing forced labour and sexual abuse. The illegality of this activity overshadows the keenly apparent
international protection needs of the smuggled refugees. Refugees are thus detained for crossing
borders illegally in the company of people smugglers.

International law prohibits the detention of refugees for illegal entry and stay. It especially pro-
hibits the deportation of refugees, which amounts to returning the refugee to the frontiers of the
country of persecution. All nations are bound by this principle, regardless of whether the nation is
a state party to the 1951 Refugee Convention.3 In the face of this, refugees continue to be detained
and made vulnerable to forced return to their countries.

How a State treats its citizens is a legitimate concern of international law. Equally relevant is how it
treats non-citizens on its territory. International refugee law aims to protect those non-citizens who
are refugees – unable or unwilling to return home owing to a well-founded fear of persecution for
reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group and political opinion.
Refugee protection steps in when the citizen-state relationship fractures from the impact of the
inevitable conflict that arises when the citizen harnesses the right to assert her religious, cultural
and political identity, in the face of the state’s intolerance and disrespect for that right. Yet, even as
they flee in search of meaningful protection, people caught in a situation of forced exile for refugee
reasons can sometimes find equally harsh lives in asylum countries.

3 Three quarters of the world’s states have signed the 1951 Refugee Convention and its Protocol. The Convention’s principle of non-
refoulement, of not forcibly returning refugees to places where their lives or freedoms could be threatened, has the force of customary
international law owing to its presence in a vast number of international treaties. It has also been adopted as a principle by Southeast
Nations in 1975 under the Bangkok Principles, and is further enshrined in Article 14 of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights
[Editor’s Note].
84

Perhaps the most compelling memory I have of this is the experience of a woman whom I will call
Khatijah. She was a refugee, arrested along with her young daughter for illegal stay in the asylum
country. She faced long-term detention in an immigration facility well known for its harsh condi-
tions. Khatijah managed to bribe her way out of detention, a process which involved her trans-
portation by bus to the border with another country, where she was to be handed over to a people
smuggler. That people smuggler would then demand a fee, or forced labour in lieu of such a fee, to
facilitate her re-entry to the initial asylum country, where she would continue residing illegally as a
refugee. Officials of both countries are known to be complicit in such buying and selling of humans,
a modern form of slavery to which refugees living in undocumented situations are particularly vul-
nerable.

During this process of being bused over the border, Khatijah lost track of her daughter. She had
been placed in a different vehicle. Frantic, she demanded to be allowed to search for her daughter.
The people smuggler threatened to shoot her if she refused to disembark from the bus. She was
taken to an orchard, where she had to provide unpaid labour tending fruit trees. Khatijah escaped.
She spent the next six months travelling around the country, mostly on foot, making contact with
refugee communities there, in search of her daughter. She finally tracked down the child in the
northern reaches of the country. Re-united, they then trekked back southwards and re-entered the
initial asylum country, where she recounted her experience to refugee workers. Khatijah’s horrify-
ing trek in search of her daughter is evocative of the tales of persecution from the last world war.
One can and should ask if this points to a failure of the international refugee protection regime put
in place since that time, despite it being constantly re-affirmed by the community of nations.

The right to seek and enjoy, in other countries, asylum from persecution is one of the cornerstones
of the international human rights regime. It is right there, in that grand old lady of human rights
standards, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights 1946. The granting of asylum is a friendly
and non-political act, so closely entwined with, and giving meaning to, the fundamentals of a civi-
lized state. Why, then, are stories like Khatijah’s rife?
Regard how a community treats people in need, and you will have placed your finger directly on the
major artery that travels all the way to the heart of the community.
Many nations who have no domestic legal regime for protecting refugees often find themselves
taking on the de facto role of asylum countries. They speak of the sacrifices that asylum countries
make on behalf of refugees tolerated within their borders. They point to the fact that some of the
poorest nations are also host to the world’s largest refugee populations. These views frequently
fail to take into account that all too often, refugees provide for their own care and succor, without
the need for nations to dip into their own coffers. Refugees need to work to support themselves
and their families and so end up providing much-needed labour in the notorious 3-D category of
employment which citizens are often loath to take on – dirty, dull and dangerous jobs. In countries
where organisations like the United Nations’ Refugee Agency have a presence, there is impetus for
the international burden sharing of the refugee issue. This translates into internationally-funded
programmes for the care and maintenance of refugees within the host country, including resettle-
ment to donor countries.

My document case was often filled with refugee stories similar to Khatijah’s. When you think of
it, it seems there can be no end to the anguish of exile for refugees, caught in a cycle of repeating
hardship and strife, even in countries of asylum. The additional difficulty for Khatijah was that she
had no home to go home to, even if she wished to go home. In addition to having been persecuted
85

in her own country on account of her race and religion, she was stripped of her nationality. This
was done by the government of the country in which she was born, again for reasons of race and
religion. Khatijah existed squarely within that most marginalised of human communities – the
stateless refugee.

As a young refugee worker, I was confronted with the case of a man, born in the same country
as Khatijah, and in the same situation of statelessness. The government of his country had passed
legislation that stripped him of his nationality. Hardship naturally follows the deprivation of
nationality. This man’s life was hard, for many reasons, including on account of serious discrimination
due to his race and religion. Principal of his woes, according to him, was that this statelessness made
it impossible for him to earn a living in his country. He left his country and moved across the border
to work. Here, he engaged in work as a street trader. He was frequently arrested for his illegal
status. He then decided to stowaway on a boat, taking his chances as to where he would eventually
end up. He disembarked in a port city that was extremely intolerant of refugees. He was detained.
Many months passed and the immigration authorities had no option but to release him into the
community, as all attempts to deport him back home failed. His country of birth had refused to
acknowledge him as a citizen. I remember his constant lament: “I don’t want charity, please let me
work to earn my own money.” The laws of the country of asylum, however, penalized people who
worked illegally, including harsh penalties for their employers. No one would employ him, even
informally. A few years later, I returned to that country. To my dismay, I found that he was still
around and making the same lament. When I left again, strident attempts were being made to find
him a durable solution. I returned again after a lapse of a few years. He was still there, and still
without a solution. He continued to be hopeful that he would find a job. It was the one sustaining
hope for this man. I have heard recently that he had been resettled to a Western country. He should
now be able to work in exile.

But as I sieve through my memories, I am reminded that the refugee experience of exile is not
entirely about irretrievable loss. I remember, also, many gainful successes. I remember a very large
caseload of refugees, bearing blood curdling stories of military torture and degrading treatment.
These refugees have all returned home, the internal armed conflict resolved into a lasting peace
that was made imperative by a cataclysmic natural disaster. I remember recently arrived refugees,
crossing borders in large numbers, fearfully huddling in reception centers, but who were provided
shelter and protection until it was safe to return home. I remember refugees stranded and in limbo
at international airports, successfully protected from deportation. I also remember receiving letters
from resettled or returned refugees, speaking of much hope for future happiness. Mostly, I am
compelled by stories of child refugees, resettling in other countries, and then returning to homelands
as adults to rebuild countries shattered and recovering from wars and other forms of strife. These
are good stories, which close the circle with a satisfying snap.

People are often surprised to learn that there are refugees in Malaysia. As a nation, we have hosted
refugee communities for decades, usually with the Malaysian government acting to enable the
work locally of international organizations with humanitarian mandates like the United Nation’s
Refugee Agency. The list of nationalities given shelter within Malaysian borders over the past four
decades is impressive and mirrors armed conflicts that occurred globally in that period – principally
Vietnamese, Cambodians, Bosnians, Burmese, Iraqis, Afghans, Sri Lankans.
86

Our own country has been buffeted and buttressed by centuries of migration. Migration continues.
Energy is created by new migration weaving its way through settled human communities. The
infusion of new identities and new cultures jolts a settled community out of stagnation. Within
this larger canvas is one of the greatest contemporary dramas of migration – when persecution
experienced or apprehended sentences a person to uproot and leave their homeland. Refugee exile.

For refugees, migration is forced. Refugees are people who have lost their lands, homes, futures and
identities in the search for safety and protection. The pain of loss is countered by a fixed purpose to
rebuild lives across borders. Civilised nations, respectful of international norms and standards, give
shelter to refugees in recognition of a responsibility to protect this purpose. This forces the simple
question: do we aspire to be such a nation?

As you read of the refugee experience, you will feel some of the deep and piercing loss that every
refugee carries. Are you momentarily sympathetic and then feel nothing more and so do nothing?
Will you insist that, as a bare minimum, our nation should adopt our own legal regime for the
recognition, documentation and protection of refugees within our borders? There is the choice
of compassion or callousness. The humanitarian imperative is for making the right choice of
compassion. It is the basic measure of a civilised society.

A fear of returning home colours the refugee’s story with desperation, and, almost paradoxically,
with despair from the loss of that home. At the end of the day spent recording refugee statements,
I would be holed up in offices, refugee camp staff barracks, in hotels rooms, in my own study
at home, writing up and evaluating these experiences. My role is to filter out non-refugees from
the refugee population. Not an easy task. In my time, I have created thousands of files on these
individual cases, each file crowded with stories and the legal assessment of those stories. Within
the sphere of my own comfortable middle-class existence, I evaluate these experiences and their
relevance to refugee protection needs.

My obsession to protect has had impact on many lives, but on the larger global scale of refugee
needs, amounts to the merest fraction of a sliver of the slightest impact. The lasting impact on myself
is the persistent memory of refugee experiences, impossible to forget. Words and images from my
brief visits to refugee worlds are the many little pieces of memory which I carry everywhere, and
which colour my own life and choices. Now, there is the need to mine these memories and speak of
refugee experiences, albeit second-hand, to contribute a little to the understanding of refugees and
their forced state of exile.

There is no greater sorrow on earth than the loss of one’s native land, as Euripedes wrote more than
two millennia ago. If I have helped you understand a bit of what this means, my job is well-done.
87

Coping with Disasters:

Refugees and Displaced Persons
in South-East Asia
A young Vietnamese refugee rest-
ing at the Pulan Bidong refugee
camp in Malaysia. This camp has
about 36,000 Vietnamese refugees.
01 August 1979
Malaysia
Photo # 84451
UN Photo/*

Korean Refugees
An endless column of refugees
cross the provisional bridge over
the Han River built beside the dam-
aged span of the bridge.
01 December 1950
Republic of Korea
Photo # 103323
UN Photo/*

Children Play at Sosmaqala IDP

Camp in Afghanistan
Children play in the newly
established Sosmaqala Internally
Displaced Persons (IDP) Camp in
northern Afghanistan. The camp
is comprised of recently returned
Afghans following many years as
refugees in neighbouring Iran.
30 August 2009
Sar-e-Pul, Afghanistan
Photo # 407796
UN Photo/Eric Kanalstein
88

Somalis Displaced to Refugee

Camp in Yemen
A Somali child, displaced by
fighting in capital Mogadishu, now
lives in Kharaz Refugee Camp, 140
km outside Yemeni city Aden.
07 December 2009
Yemen
Photo # 440809
UN Photo/Philip Behan
89

Bios

Yin Shao Loong is an environmental policy advisor and political scientist. He writes occasion-
ally on arts, culture, and the finer points of sci-fi geekery in the online portal ARTERI [www.
arterimalaysia.com] and was a contributor to the much-missed current affairs magazine Off
the Edge. A long-time human rights and environment activist, he is also a board member of
Amnesty International, Malaysia. His research has focused on how the combination of counter-
insurgency institutions, ethnic prejudices, and development ambitions keeps certain minorities
and migrants disadvantaged and stigmatised in Malaysia.

Wong Chin Huat is a political scientist by training from University of Essex UK, a journalism
lecturer by trade at Monash University Sunway Campus and a fashion trendsetter by accident
thanks to the Perak Constitutional Coup. He sees Malaysia as an electoral one-party state that
needs a second independence to end the internal colonisation by UMNO. In 1999, he coined
the line “People are the boss” as a reply to arrogant politicians who demanded gratitude of the
citizens. Since 2009, his favourite pastime is theorizing and experimenting ways of creative
protests that needs no police permit yet are perfectly legal.

Simon Soon is an independent curator and researcher on contemporary art in Southeast Asia.

Clarissa Lee is a graduate student at a Southeastern university of the U.S. working in the fields
of science studies, feminist theory and comparative media. During her free time (which does not
quite exist except when she is asleep, talking, attending soirees or exercising), she tries to pretend
that she’s not a graduate student, but just a normal person (though this is rather hard to do, when
she is documented as a non-resident alien on a student visa for tax purposes). She blogs at scan-
daloudthoughts.wordpress.com.

Mor Ajani is a writer, comic book artist, and graphic designer. He works towards preserving
Orang Asli customs and folk stories through videos and written works.

Sumitra Visvanathan worked for the United Nations’ Refugee Agency (UNHCR) for a total
of 14 years. She is an experienced practitioner in International Refugee Law, and has conduct-
ed work in a multitude of UNHCR missions and refugee camps across the region, most notably
in Indonesia, the Hong Kong SAR and in Malaysia, where she served as the senior National
Officer between 2003 and 2009. She currently retains a consultative role for UNHCR within
the SE Asian region.
NEW MALAYSIAN ESSAYS 3 breaks from
the norm by being released only as a free
e-book! Take notes while Wong Chin Huat
teaches you how to become a good demonstra-
tor; take in the conflicted sweep of post-1969
cultural policy with Simon Soon; take a tour
of the non-heterosexist nation that Clarissa Lee
imagines from Merdeka to the present; and take
stock of the situation of Peninsular Malaysia’s
indigenous people with Mor Ajani. We end
with Sumitra Visvanathan inviting us to take
refugees into our definition of what ‘Malaysia,
Truly Asia’ could possibly be.