Kebebasan: Satu Renungan Peribadi (Oslo Freedom Forum 2010)
So freedom is not just about overthrowing colonial powers and foreign oppressors. Today, more than half a century after independence, many societies continue to fight oppression from within, to fight the tyranny of governments which have the trappings of democracy but are corrupt and self-serving at the core.
Anwar Ibrahim
I have read somewhere that the discourse on freedom started from two short dialogues in an ancient land. One dialogue shows that freedom is a privilege granted from on high by the sovereign for his subjects to enjoy on condition that they do not ‘misbehave.’ The second dialogue tells us that freedom is a right so fundamental that no sovereign can take it away for whatever reason.
Now don’t we all wish that the second dialogue holds true for all our life experiences and that all sovereigns recognize this? If it were so, indeed we would not have to gather here to talk about it. Alas, we are told time and time again that freedom can never be absolute and that for every right there is a corresponding duty. So when your freedom is taken away there must always be some justification. I am neither an anarchist nor a libertarian if by these labels we mean a belief in absolute freedom and minimalist government whatever that really means. But I do believe that certain liberties are so fundamental that no sovereign or state or power should be allowed to take them away.
Herman Hesse tells us in Demian that to get to the bottom of a story, sometimes one needs to go back not just to our childhood days, but even many generations before that. Well, we don’t have that luxury here. So, to recount my story about freedom, I will modestly go back to just about forty years ago when I experienced my first major encounter with the powers that be. This episode would be followed by another two, one more insidious and vicious than the previous ones. In this first encounter, the main thrust was the fight for social justice. We were championing the cause of the poor, against the rich and powerful. Unemployment was high and many families in the rural areas were so destitute that there was literally no food on the table. As the famine spread, riots broke out in the North and nation-wide demonstrations erupted.
When the authorities detained me for ‘activities prejudicial to the security of the state’, I knew at once that this was not going to be a simple case of going through the judicial process of them proving my guilt and I maintaining my innocence.
This was because there was to be no trial where I could defend myself against the charges. This was the Internal Security Act – a catch-all piece of legislation that allows for indefinite detention without trial. There was no need for a defence lawyer because I wasn’t going to be given the opportunity to make my case and get myself out. With the stroke of a pen, I was to be detained for two years. Freedom was to be replaced by incarceration. The ‘crimes’ that I had committed were meeting up with leaders of NGOs, giving motivation talks to student leaders, fraternizing with leaders of the Opposition parties and of course addressing the people in public rallies and demonstrations.
Without meaning to sound overly presumptuous, I would characterize this encounter as the first in a series of battles between the forces of freedom and the forces of tyranny.
