Preserve Kamunting Detention Camp As A Human Rights Museum

By Dr Kua Kia Soong, SUARAM Adviser

Now that the last ISA detainees have been released from the infamous Kamunting Detention Camp, the Government should emulate the late Mandela by converting it (like Robben Island in South Africa) into a Human Rights Museum.

Since the enactment of the diabolical Internal Security Act in 1960, more than 10,000 people have been incarcerated within Kamunting’s multiple layers of barbed wire, some for more than ten years. They have included politicians, educationists, unionists, environmentalists, religious and social activists.

For more than fifty years, Kamunting Detention Camp served as a place of incarceration and torture. Like Robben Island in South Africa, it should be preserved as a World Heritage Site and museum to remind Malaysians of the price paid for freedom by countless patriotic Malaysians and the importance of human rights in our national culture. It should also be included among the “Must See” destinations during Visit Malaysia Year 2014.

Former ISA detainees have referred to the detention camp as their “Second University”. Indeed, the proposed “Kamunting Human Rights Museum” should also serve as a “Human Rights University” where people discuss and debate strategies for a sustainable society based on tolerance, respect and human rights. From the documentation of the thousands of political detainees through the ages, people can learn about the alternative history of our country and the myriad opportunities for a more abundant and just society. The government can assist this valuable work by making available classified documents for this necessary educational project.

The emphasis on education and lifelong learning in the fight for justice and freedom is the key to the proposed Kamunting Human Rights Museum role as a heritage site and crucible of a human rights discourse. The Government has the responsibility to curate and conserve this relic of our nation’s unsavoury past as a bitter lesson for a meaningful social and political transformation of Malaysia.