Fearing censorship, ‘sensitive’ letters by Tun Dr Ismail kept in Singapore, says son
(TMI) – Fearing incompetence and censorship, the son of the late Tun Dr Ismail Abdul Rahman said he handed over his father’s private documents to a Singapore-based think-tank for safekeeping.
Tawfik Ismail said he was confident that the personal and candid writings by his father, the deputy prime minister from 1970 to 1973, about his policies and his experiences with other leaders while in office, would have been deemed too “sensitive and revealing” for Malaysian authorities.
“I handed my father’s private documents to the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (Iseas) in 2004, and was seen to have acted against the interest of the country,” Tawfik told a small but packed room of historians and political analysts at the official launch of Tun Dr Ismail’s unfinished autobiography in Singapore on Monday.
“The reason I did it was that I don’t think our National Archives are up to the task of preserving these documents. There is a policy deficiency,” he said.
“The government can also stamp anything under the Official Secrets Act (OSA), and it’ll never see the time of day.”
Under OSA the government can prohibit the dissemination of any information that is classified as an official secret.
“Ironically, even though Singapore is seen as a more iron-fisted government, it did a better job of preserving Malaysian archives than Malaysia would have,” he said.
