——————— Work Report of Sahabat Rakyat (2011-2016) ——————— Deepening 4 points of political understandings Through the practice over the past 5 years — in commemoration of the 15th anniversary of Sahabat Rakyat (2001-2016) — Secretariat: Ang Pei Shan, Yong Siew Lee, Cheng Lee Whee (Text below is translated from original version in the Chinese language published on 1 September 2016. In the case of any discrepancy between the English rendition and the original Chinese version, the Chinese version shall prevail.) On 9 September 2011, Friends of SUARAM (FOS) Working Committee Johore released a work report entitled “Ten Storming Years of Sahabat Rakyat (2001-2011)” in commemoration with its 10th anniversary (hereinafter referred to as 10-Year Work Report). After going through another 5 years of practice, our working committee has decided to produce another work report. This also serves as a gift from Sahabat Rakyat in conjunction with its 15th anniversary. We welcome the inspection and criticism from the democratic parties and organisations and democrats in our country. Followings are the 4 chapters in the last 5 years’ work report – (1) From attaching to SUARAM till being independent to struggle continually; 1 (2) Opposing UMNO-BN hegemonic rule and striving for the equality of all ethnic groups are the main focus of our work; (3) Deepening 4 points of political understandings on democratic reform struggle in our country through our practice over the past 5 years; (4) Our aspirations towards the present phase of democratic reform movement in Malaysia. 1. From attaching to SUARAM till being independent to struggle continually From 9 September 2001 till 31 December 2012, FOS Working Committee Johore was a branch office of SUARAM that struggled for human rights in Johore. SUARAM due to its own consideration, decided to stop posting Johore coordinator and shut down the Johore Bahru office from 1 January 2013 onwards. FOS Working Committee Johore, as a grassroots organisation working for human rights that had been active in Johore for 12 years, decided to continue its struggle. Since then, we have been working under the name of Sahabat Rakyat and do not restrict our work to Johore areas only. Our working committee is then known as Sahabat Rakyat Working Committee, below is the new logo of Sahabat Rakyat -- Although it has been tougher to operate independently without obtaining any allowance, there were brighter prospects for Sahabat Rakyat after extricating itself from the limitation of defined work scopes and the shackles of Western concepts of democracy and human rights. Since then we are able to further the effort on construction of ideological theory of genuine democracy and human rights, and further the struggle of the realisation of genuine democracy and human rights policy in our country independently and autonomously. From then (1 2 January 2013) onwards, Sahabat Rakyat has not employed any staff, all committee members are volunteers, expenses of every activity are either contributed by the participants voluntarily or sponsored by enthusiasts or supporters. In September 2013, our working committee held an election, the committee cancelled the status of local contact person, all local contact person were renamed as working committee member, in the hope of enhancing the participation and arousing the enthusiasm of the committee members from all different areas. Since 2015, our working committee monthly meeting venue has been extended from Sahabat Rakyat office in Skudai, JB to the towns where we have committee members residing in. Secretariat has also been sending information to all committee members via email more frequently, in the hope that committee members could play a better role and put more effort in dissemination of information, exchanging ideas, summing up experience, ideological theory construction etc. Our working committee, during its inception had declared "Declaration of Human Rights", "Malaysia's Charter of Rights", and "Racial eyesores on the Malaysian landscape" as our guiding documents. In March 2013, Sahabat Rakyat Working Committee agreed and endorsed the “Malaysian Civil Society 13GE Demands”. We deem this as the follow-up and development document of "Racial eyesores on the Malaysian landscape" and treat it as one of the guiding documents from 2013 onwards. "Declaration of Human Rights" and "Malaysia's Charter of Rights” still remain as the guiding documents in our work on promoting democracy and human rights movement in Malaysia. 2. Opposing UMNO-BN hegemonic rule and striving for the equality of all ethnic groups are the main focus of our work Followings were the 4 main political awareness/understandings that we had enhanced in the first 10 years of our practice (2001-2011): (1) The corrupted regime is the root cause of rampant abuse of power and violence by the police; (2) The oppression and discrimination of mother tongue education is political problem instead of “administrative deviation”; (3) Democracy and human rights movement is social reform movement which is also political reform movement; (4) The people must unite from the split to bury UMNO-BN hegemonic rule. 3 We drew this conclusion in “10-Year Work Report”: If any ruling party only serves the interests of a handful of its cronies, ignoring the life and death of the people; or if any opposition party after taking over the ruling power, moves towards the hegemonic authoritarian path that is against the people, the people must rise to oppose such regime and completely bury it in the end. At that time, NGOs must be with the people, become the best prop of the people of different ethnic groups, unite and overthrow the corrupted regime. Therefore, “NGOs is always with the people” has been the guideline of our work practice in the past 5 years (2011-2016). In view of the abovementioned political understandings and work report, and also because Sahabat Rakyat has not employed any staff after detaching from SUARAM on 1 January 2013 and all members are volunteers who could only participate and deal with Sahabat Rakyat’s activities and affairs using spare time, Sahabat Rakyat no longer established “human rights support group” to deal with individual cases on human rights violation (mainly on abuse to death in custody) that expends massive manpower and material resources which ultimately just blaming the abuse of power by the police. Political ideology propaganda and education work related to opposing UMNO-BN hegemonic rule and striving for the equality of all ethnic groups have become the work focus of Sahabat Rakyat instead. Issues selected are mainly around those core issues which could raise the political awareness of the people more effectively which could then shake the foundation of UMNO-BN rule. Our activities in the past 5 years can be categorised into the main areas below (please refer to the Appendix for details of the activities): (1) Expressed the position on opposing UMNO-BN hegemonic rule and opposing state Islamisation policies; (2) Put forward demands in the 13th General Election (GE) in 2013 and Kajang By- election in 2014; (3) Expressed the position on mother tongue language education issues and showed solicitude on Dong Zong and Southern College University issues; 4 (4) Learned from the historical experience of left wing movement in Singapore and Malaya and explored the new direction of democratic reform movement. 3. Deepening 4 points of political understandings on democratic reform struggle in our country through our practice over the past 5 years We have further deepened 4 points of political understandings on democratic reform struggle in our country through our practice over the past 5 years, mainly as follows: i. “State Islamisation” policy is a pivotal ruling strategy and dividing means of UMNO hegemonic clique In the “10-Year Work Report”, we pointed out that “Since independence, UMNO ruling clique inherited the mantle of the British colonialist, they not only continued the ‘divide and rule’ ruling means, but has also adopted Malay racial politics, implemented national oppression and assimilation polices. After May 13 incident in 1969, they even reinforced the discrimination and exploitation on the Chinese, Indians and other minority groups under the pretence of “Malay supremacy” (ketuanan Melayu), aggravating suffering of the oppressed groups. We wish to highlight that, since Mahathir took over as prime minister in 1981, he actively carried out “State Islamisation” policy on a grand scale, in official propaganda language, namely “Islamization of Government Machinery”. After Mahathir governed the country for 20 years, on 29 September 2001, 2 years before he retired, he announced at the Parti Gerakan Rakyat Malaysia Annual National Delegates’ Conference that Malaysia is an Islamic state, this State Islamisation policy started by Mahathir is still being implemented vigorously till now. Percentage of Malaysia ethnic community groups (%) Other Year of Non-Malay Malays Chinese Indians ethnic survey indigenous groups 1970 44.32 34.34 8.99 11.69 0.66 2010 55.07 24.34 7.35 11.94 1.3 5 - Figures from table above are calculated using Malaysia population by ethnic groups statistics 1970 and 2010. According to table above, Muslim population in Malaysia were 44% in 1970, and had increased to 55% in 2010, but still there were 45% of non-Muslims. Among non-Muslims, most of the Chinese population are Buddhists, most of the Indian population are Hindus, while most of the non-Malay indigenous population are Christians. There are also a lot of followers of folk beliefs in various ethnic groups that can hardly be calculated. After all, Malaysia is a multi-racial, multi-religion country, Mahathir just disregarded the aspiration of non-Muslims who contribute to nearly half of the population and forcefully implemented state Islamisation policy. State Islamisation has become even more intense in the past 5 years, causing the exploitation of non-Muslims’ rights for freedom of religion endowed by the Federal Constitution Malaysia to emerge, resulting our multi-racial multi-religion society be on the verge of dangerous border of being split completely.