Why I Stand With Beng Hock S Family

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 All our lives, we carry ideas that are close to our hearts. No more than half a dozen, perhaps. And one idea stands out: the fight for truth and justice is always worth it.
And from that fight, we learn what it means to be human and civilised. Otherwise, we are no different from brutes and savages.
On a hot, humid July night in 2009, a young man of 30, in the prime of his life, looks the world in the face, staring out of an open window of a 14-storey building in Shah Alam. The last thing on his mind is the horror of his own death. How could he not believe in the future? Or in life, love, and family happiness?
The next day, the 16th of July, he planned to register his marriage, followed by a photo shoot in a park among the flowers. And also among the birds and the bees - his fiancée, a teacher, was two months pregnant.
ADSThey planned a wedding reception and a honeymoon in October. And soon, he will surely hear the cry of a newborn child. Fatherhood!
His life had not been an easy one. The son of a taxi driver and a housewife mother, he pulled himself up by the bootstraps. He earned his place in Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM) on his own steam.
Teoh Beng HockNo bending of the rules, no backdoor entry, no tinkering of the preferential algorithm. For him and the Teoh family, education was a ticket out of poverty.
He became a journalist and later still the political aide of Ean Yong Hian Wah, a member of the Selangor state executive council, firmly in the hands of the opposition PKR coalition that had succeeded in toppling Umno/BN from power. Teoh was now a young and aspiring politician with his whole life ahead of him.
Teoh’s final hours
But on July 15, he was summoned as a witness by the MACC. He walked into their headquarters at Plaza Masalam, Shah Alam, at 6pm, aware that it was about his boss paying RM 2,400 for Merdeka Day flags without taking delivery of them.
Nothing remotely close to the billions of stolen 1MDB funds or the hundreds of millions of seized assets of our leading politicians.
Finally, after a four-hour-long wait, yes, even summoned witnesses are routinely made to wait, he was interviewed at 10pm by a team of five MACC officers.
MACC generic photoNo statement was recorded. They left two hours later, leaving Teoh alone and incommunicado for the next hour or so. It was midnight now, and Shah Alam had turned deadly quiet.
The MACC team began questioning him again at the unearthly hour of 1.30am. They were done at 3.50am, after recording a statement from Teoh. He was not under arrest when he gave his statement. This was later disputed by Ean Yong, who insisted he was: Teoh’s movements were restricted, and his handphone was confiscated.
In any event, what did Teoh do after giving his statement? Per the MACC, he had asked to stay in their headquarters till daybreak. Permission was granted. Kindly, they said.
He was last seen alive at 6am. By then, Teoh had been in the MACC headquarters for 12 long hours, alone and unassisted by a lawyer or a colleague.
ADSAt 1.30pm, the building cleaners found him dead on the fifth floor of Plaza Masalam, which ironically means “with peace” or “goodbye” in Arabic. Malaysians were outraged; his family and loved ones, shocked and pained beyond words.
First came the heart-wrenching anguish of a grieving family, and then came the drama or if you prefer, the more descriptive Malay word, wayang.
The MACC asked us to believe the wayang that Teoh said goodbye to himself before jumping out of the open window when no one was watching. No, he was not shot while trying to escape. He had committed suicide. Of course, anything is possible, but there is a world of difference between the possible and the plausible.
So, should anyone be blamed for thinking he was more likely thrown out of the window? Like in a “defenestration”, a method of killing practised in medieval times. A rival is tricked into a meeting in a castle and then thrown out of a high window, the fenestra (Latin for window). The next day, his body is found in the street below, neck broken and head smashed up.
Plaza Masalam, Shah AlamBut what would have made the MACC officers commit something similar? Did Teoh’s calm and steadfast demeanour enrage them? Or was his articulate use of Bahasa Malaysia an infuriating reminder that he too was an “Anak Malaysia” despite his obvious ethnicity?
There is no evidence to suggest Teoh had turned hostile and uncooperative at any time during questioning. Instead, all the circumstances point to his interrogators losing their heads in a place that had become dangerous and where power and politics, race and rage and eventually, mayhem and murder all collided.
And from there to the window was only a short distance. It doesn’t take much for five men to dispose of a body while the night is at its darkest before dawn.
A nation stained by silence
Over the next 16 years since that tragic event, we saw fairness and justice being suppressed and denied at every turn. We watched with suppressed anger as wayang descended into a sandiwara, played out in internal investigations, the courts, a royal commission of inquiry (RCI), and ending finally in the Attorney-General’s Chambers (AGC) as “no further action” (NFA).
But Teoh’s family and those who believe in truth and justice remain resolute.
No pasaran! They shall not pass! Not with their apologies or their blood money. Not everyone in Malaysia can be bought or bribed. There cannot be closure without first knowing the truth.
How can we forget all the Malaysians who met untimely deaths at the hands of those who exercised power in our name? Too many Malaysians have died in custody, even as an increasing number disappear into thin air, never to be seen again.
For our own collective sanity, we must stop using investigations to cover things up and instead use them to get to the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
We must throw this rotten predilection for cover-ups out of the window or at least coax it down the stairs, a step at a time in the fashion of Mark Twain when dealing with a bad habit.
We must become a nation of brave men and women and not cowards and pak turuts (yes men).
Only then can we erase this dark stain on our nation’s conscience. - Mkini
MURALE PILLAI is a former GLC employee. He runs a logistics company.
The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of MMKtT.

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