Clare Rewcastle Brown
(Esquire) – The corruption in Malaysia is blatant. You don’t have to do that much research to see it. They got lazy and weren’t bothering to cover it up. They’re trying harder now, but you know, there was 30 years of fairly blatant corruption that I just started covering, and I guess nobody else was.
On pissing off rich Malaysians, getting things wrong and flower power.
I have happy childhood memories of Sarawak. I didn’t return until I’d grown up and established myself in a completely different world [back in the UK], but I’d always followed what was happening in Borneo. By the time I came back in 2006—ironically because I’d been asked to take part in an environmental conference that [Tun Abdul] Taib [Mahmud] was holding at the time—I’d taken time out to have my two boys and it was my little window in life to say, “Well, what do I really care about doing something about?”
There was an attitude, you know: let’s tell the world about what’s happening in poor old Borneo. After a while, I started to think, what about the people in Borneo? If things are going to change in Borneo, it’s going to be the people in Borneo who are going to change them, so why am I talking to people back in the UK? Why not speak to those who are directly affected, instead of making urban dwellers in the west feel guilty about environmental issues that they feel a bit powerless about?
It’s funny how people think they have a right to a reputation just because they’ve made a lot of money.
I’ve learned that if you piss off rich Malaysians in positions of political power, they are ruthless and unscrupulous in what they are prepared to do to get their own back. I’ve had PR outfits, lawyers, computer hackers and radio-jamming professionals thrown at me, but they’ve shot themselves in the foot. They’ve made me into a character I wouldn’t have been if they hadn’t reacted so angrily and expensively. They created my Wikipedia site, for god’s sake.
It helps if you don’t have a nefarious agenda. They’re always trying to make one out about me, but actually, I’m just a dreadful old do-gooder who’s got a bit between my teeth.
I think [having former British prime minister Gordon Brown as a brother-in-law] has probably helped. One of the reasons I kept my identity secret for as long as I could was because I didn’t want to get him involved, particularly when he was still in office. But when he stepped down, I was bolder, and actually, he was really encouraging. When I started getting death threats, he said, “Look, you should just say who you are and what you’re doing because that’s the best way to deal with them.”
The key thing is to be honest. I think if you’ve seen something that’s a crime you shouldn’t just report it as if you have no opinion of it. Also, as an investigative journalist, you don’t publish something unless you’ve caught somebody out doing something naughty; and once you do, you’ve got a certain amount of licence to give him a hard time. That’s the job. I’m not trying to be objective, but I’m honest about what I say, and I’m critical where I think it’s deserved.
