http://www.atimes.com/se-asia/CG12Ae03.html

Asia Times
12th July 2001

Malaysian students learn hard political lesson

By Anil Netto

PENANG, Malaysia - By all accounts, Choo Chon Kai is an exemplary student. A high achiever from the chemistry school of the Science University in Penang, he is also secretary-general of the campus' Chinese Language Society. No one could have imagined he would be in hot water for selling protest badges on campus.

Like many Malaysians who are deeply concerned about the country's harsh Internal Security Act (ISA), Choo was wearing an anti-ISA protest badge on campus on June 8 when he was approached by a plainclothes policeman asking if he could buy one. When Choo rummaged in his bag for a badge, the stranger promptly whisked him to the campus security room. There, security personnel took Choo's mug shot, snapped pictures of his bag and its contents and recorded a statement from him.

It is still not clear whether any disciplinary action will be taken against Choo, but his case is but one in a string involving students who have been hauled up to answer for their activism on campus and outside. The fact that Choo is ethnic Chinese and a top student contradicts Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad's simplistic profiling of student activists as those who are not interested in studies and typically ethnic Malay.

"I'm most saddened, it seems Malay students - there is no problem with the other students - are making universities the ground for their political involvement that is focused on anti-government activities," Mahathir said on Saturday. "If they do not concentrate on their studies, they will be removed from the university."

Last Friday, police detained the president of the University of Malaya's Student Representative Council, Mohamad Fuad Ikhwan, under the ISA. A day earlier, student activist Khairul Anwar Ahmad Zainuddin was arrested under the same law, which permits indefinite detention without trial. On June 8, seven activists were held after some 200 students protested against the ISA at the National Mosque in the capital.

The last major ISA swoop against university students and staff took place in the 1970s, when jailed ex-deputy premier Anwar Ibrahim was a student leader. The hard-line Education Minister at the time: Mahathir.

In 1975, the government introduced amendments to the Universities and University Colleges Act to curb political activity on campus. Students were banned from holding office in any political party or trade union and from expressing support, sympathy or opposition to any party or union. The law also banned political demonstrations and meetings on campus. The clampdown triggered a decline in political consciousness on campus that continued right into the 1990s. But all that changed with Anwar's dramatic ouster as deputy premier and jailing in September 1998, an event that unleashed reformasi, a clamor for wide-ranging reforms.

Graduate student Ng Tien Eng notices a distinct difference between the pre-reformasi era and current events. "In my time, we didn't dare to come out to openly confront any official policies," he recalls. "The student activism then was clearly divided along ethnic lines."

Today, the ethnic polarization between ethnic Malay and non-Malay groups on campus remains. But what has changed, observes Ng, is that student bodies representing the different ethnic groups on campus are now more willing to cooperate with each other as seen in recent protests. Though most university students are still content to take a back seat when it comes to student activism, Ng notes that they do not hesitate to elect vocal critics into leadership positions in student bodies. "Student activists may be in a minority but they have support from large sections of the student population," he observes.

Indeed, the students' representative councils in several key Malaysian varsities are dominated by those sympathetic to the opposition Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party (PAS) and Anwar's National Justice Party (Keadilan).

Ethnic Chinese, for their part appear, to be upset with recent policies over Chinese education and the premier's labeling of a grouping of Chinese associations appealing for more civil rights as "communists" and "extremists".

Not everyone in the ruling coalition agrees with the official action taken against students. One of the more liberal voices is that of Toh Kin Woon, who heads the Penang state government's education portfolio. "I feel that universities should give students more democratic space to participate in healthy activities," says Toh. "A lot of university vice chancellors, in general, don't seem to think that besides being administrators they are supposed to be providing academic leadership."

This, he points out, would allow space for students to develop their full potential. Toh recalls that students in the 1960s and early 1970s enjoyed a lot more freedom. "The students still excelled in their studies and they are all the better for it. Some of these former student leaders are now in government."