The Royal Malaysian Disgrace
By Pak Bui
One evening in September 1999, a young doctor, Tai Eng Teck, was shot dead by the police in Melaka. He was “dating” with a nurse in a car. The nurse later testified that they were terrified when they heard someone knocking loudly on the car window and shouting angrily. They were uncertain whether the people outside were muggers or vice officers – and we are all aware that there is little to choose between the reputation of vice officers and thugs in Peninsular Malaysia.
The doctor tried to drive away. The police alleged the doctor tried to run them over, and a police constable Tony Beliang, a Sarawakian, killed the driver in a hail of bullets. The Sessions Court judge said the policeman had fired “non-stop, without knowing who and how many people were in the car, and what they were doing”, and sentenced him to eight years in jail.
The infamous High Court judge Augustine Paul heard the appeal, and overturned the Sessions Court verdict, saying the police should be given every encouragement to enforce law and order, if necessary by opening fire. If policemen are taken to court for using force, he argued, the police might then hesitate in carrying out their duties and “think of other possibilities before using their weapons.”
Heaven forbid that the police should consider other options besides lethal force on an unarmed man.
To this day, the mere mention of Augustine Paul’s name raises scornful and sardonic laughter among well-informed Malaysians. His legacy as one of the most venal and despised judges in Malaysian history continues to outlive him. In this case, his warped reasoning was put right by the Appeals Court, which eventually upheld the Sessions Court judgment and the policeman’s jail sentence.
Echoes of bad faith
This sad story has many familiar echoes in the recent killing of Aminulrasyid Amzah, 14, by Shah Alam police. The police also claimed they shot the schoolboy when he tried to ram his car into them, a story contradicted by an eyewitness.
The police announced they had discovered a parang (machete) in the car, and tried to paint Aminulrasyid as a criminal. This was greeted with derision, and denounced as a slur on the dead boy’s name by his family and friends. The boy, a well-liked member of his community, often frequented the mosque, according to his weeping mother.
“While we concede that police have the right to self-defence, in cases such as this, the public won’t buy the story. They even doubt the report that police found a parang in the car,” Suhakam commissioner Siva Subramaniam told the Nut Graph.
According to Azamuddin Omar, a 15 year old witness who was in the front passenger seat of the car next to Aminulrasyid, the frightened driver had never tried to run the police over. He had simply been heading for the safety of his home, a couple of hundred metres away, when the police started pumping bullets into the car.
“When he was shot, his body fell on my lap, but his foot was on the accelerator,” the witness told a press conference. Even after Aminulrasyid had slumped over dead, and the car had struck a wall, Azamuddin said, the police kept shooting.
The fact that the Form Three student had come forward to be a witness, after the police had punched and kicked him when he escaped from the mayhem, says a great deal about the courage of Azamuddin and his family, as well as the outrage felt in the Malay and other communities at this vicious injustice.
It also tells us that the emergence of a fledgling two-party system in Peninsular Malaysia has opened doors for the truth to be revealed, and has made it far harder for any government to intimidate and suppress witnesses in any injustice.
