Utusan – the newpaper
By Mohsin Abdullah (SinChew Daily)
OF LATE many readers of Chinese newspapers, ask a lot of questions about Malay language paper Utusan Malaysia. I won’t repeat the questions. Suffice to say they been asking “why Utusan do this, do that?”
I think we all know what “this and that” means. And I’m not going to try to answer the queries either. But what I want to do is to take readers on a journey back in time. Through a book published in 2001 and written by Said Zahari, one of the greatest journalists in the world.
Said Zahari or Pak Said as he is fondly known was editor of Utusan Melayu in 1959 (the paper as we know today is called Utusan Malaysia but the original name has been retained for the company running it ie Kumpulan Utusan Melayu or the Utusan Melayu Group .)
The book I am talking about is entitled “Dark Clouds At Dawn, a political memoir. ” What better way to know Utusan than to read a book written by its former editor, especially as illustrious as Pak Said. To many, Pak Said is a symbol of press freedom.
“Dark Clouds At Dawn ,a political memoir ” is not only about Utusan, the newspaper. It’s ,well, a political memoir as its title suggest, written by a journalist and not a historian. In the words of Pak Said, “I have written this book as a journalist , reporting and commenting on what I saw and experienced ,what I felt from my own perceptions and observations of people, the situation and events of the period”. The “period” was in the 1950s and 1960s in Malaya and Singapore. And one of its defining moment was the Utusan Melayu strike of 1961.
From the pages of “Dark Clouds At Dawn , a political memoir”, we learn that “ Utusan Melayu was a thorn in Britain colonial flesh.” We readers are told that “ Utusan Melayu was an independent paper ” but had angered UMNO and incurred the wrath of Tunku Abdul Rahman, Tun Razak Hussein, Syed Jaafar Albar the ‘Lion of UMNO and others.
Needless to say, UMNO wanted control. We read in one of the pages of “Dark Clouds At Dawn, a political memoir,” that Syed Jaafar Albar had demanded that “ Utusan Melayu must refer to us first before writing it’s editorials”.
The book tells us that a four pronged policy was drawn up by UMNO, dubbed “ surrender terms,” for Utusan Melayu to follow.
An UMNO strongman from Terengganu, Ibrahim Fikri , was assigned by the party leadership to hand over the “surrender terms” to the Editor of Utusan Melayu, Said Zahari. It was July 1961.
As we read on, we learn that Pak Said and his journalists “wanted to ensure Utusan Melayu continue to be an independent national newspaper, not controlled by any political party”.
“ Our stand was that only an Utusan Melayu that was free from such control could truly serve religion, country and all Malay people, not just a handful in a political party.
Only with a free policy could Utusan Melayu be the voice of the people, fighting for the interests of the people with sincerity, integrity and courage”, wrote Pak Said.
He went on to write. “ But UMNO wanted Utusan Melayu to be totally different. That Utusan Melayu should belong to UMNO and should only serve that political party”.
Hence on July 21 1961, Pak Said led his journalists and other workers of Utusan Melayu to go on strike and fought against the UMNO take over plan. After days went by, Pak Said left Kuala Lumpur to visit the Utusan Melayu staff who were also carrying out the strike at the newspaper office in Singapore. But when Pak Said wanted to return to Malaya, he was prohibited from entering Johor Baru. By order of the then Foreign Minister of Malaya he was instructed to turn back to Singapore.
“From that day, I lost contact with the strikers’ camp in Jalan Chan Sow Lin ” (the Utusan Melayu office in Kuala Lumpur,) wrote Pak Said. Thus the Utusan Melayu strike failed. It lasted 90 days. UMNO had won.
Perhaps the UMNO victory was imminent. Pak Said had written:
“On the day Ibrahim Fikri walked into my office to hand me his four pronged surrender “terms”, I knew that the Utusan Melayu,the independent national newspaper for more than two decades, was dead. What lived on was a bogus Utusan Melayu.
