Rudyard Kipling"
“When you're left wounded on Afganistan's plains and
the women come out to cut up what remains, Just roll to your rifle
and blow out your brains,
And go to your God like a soldier”
General Douglas MacArthur"
“We are not retreating. We are advancing in another direction.”
“It is fatal to enter any war without the will to win it.” “Old soldiers never die; they just fade away.
“The soldier, above all other people, prays for peace, for he must suffer and be the deepest wounds and scars of war.”
“May God have mercy upon my enemies, because I won't .” “The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his.
“Nobody ever defended, there is only attack and attack and attack some more.
“It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived.
The Soldier stood and faced God
Which must always come to pass
He hoped his shoes were shining
Just as bright as his brass
"Step forward you Soldier,
How shall I deal with you?
Have you always turned the other cheek?
To My Church have you been true?"
"No, Lord, I guess I ain't
Because those of us who carry guns
Can't always be a saint."
I've had to work on Sundays
And at times my talk was tough,
And sometimes I've been violent,
Because the world is awfully rough.
But, I never took a penny
That wasn't mine to keep.
Though I worked a lot of overtime
When the bills got just too steep,
The Soldier squared his shoulders and said
And I never passed a cry for help
Though at times I shook with fear,
And sometimes, God forgive me,
I've wept unmanly tears.
I know I don't deserve a place
Among the people here.
They never wanted me around
Except to calm their fears.
If you've a place for me here,
Lord, It needn't be so grand,
I never expected or had too much,
But if you don't, I'll understand."
There was silence all around the throne
Where the saints had often trod
As the Soldier waited quietly,
For the judgment of his God.
"Step forward now, you Soldier,
You've borne your burden well.
Walk peacefully on Heaven's streets,
You've done your time in Hell."
Altantuya murder: The cover-up is as heinous as the crime - Commander S THAYAPARAN (Retired) Royal Malaysian Navy
Wednesday, December 18, 2019
Malaysiakini : The executive cannot exert its authority because it needs rogue
elements in the police force and judiciary to do its dirty work, which
in turn compromises their own position.– ES Shankar, 'Altantuya – the Malaysian scene of the crime'
COMMENT
| In my column about the Royal Malaysian Police (PDRM) and its rather
ridiculous “Islamic/Moral” test for new recruits, I wrote: “Tradecraft,
ethics and enforcement are extremely difficult to navigate, especially
when political interference is the norm in tottering democracies like
Malaysia.”
Altantuya (above)
Setev Shaariibuu, the father of Altantuya (above),
said that Malaysia should come clean about the murder of his daughter.
Lim Kit Siang is correct when he likens the murder of Altantuya to that
of slain journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who was assassinated allegedly on
the orders of Mohammad bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, in terms of
brazenness and institutional complicity.
While
I do not want to distract from the murder of Altantuya, these
allegations by Azilah Hadri point to deeper and older concerns for the
public, non-governmental organisations, activists, former politicians
and, of course, former state security personnel of the massive
corruption and political interference in the state security apparatus.
When
Harapan first gained federal power, I wrote a piece that the first
thing they should do was to discover how deep the rot was that gave us
Wang Kelian. There is a reason why I thought this should be the top
priority of the government.
The first is that I never bought
into the propaganda that Malaysia was on the brink of collapse, and the
second is that the security apparatus of the state was the hand by which
all sorts of political and religious malfeasance were executed. If the
Harapan regime would get cracking on this most major of institutional
reforms, Harapan partisans would have the evidence that their faith was
not misplaced.
While Lim Guan Eng was going on about the so-called
“red files” that pointed to the corruption of the state, nobody,
certainly not the vocal Harapan government, showed much interest in
reforming the state security apparatus or the laws that enabled the
security apparatus and their political masters to operate without
oversight.
Covering up the crime is just as heinous as the murder
itself. What the cover-up does, is make it possible for more state
actors to carry out extrajudicial killings, embolden politicians to use
the state security apparatus in any manner they see fit, and further
destroy public trust in public institutions. All these are the
consequences of the Altantuya slaying and its aftermath.
We have
politicians from Umno, now part of the Bersatu establishment, who cannot
claim to be ignorant of what went down during the time they were part
of the Umno establishment. Not to mention the various pensioned and
still serving state actors who are suddenly part of "New Malaysia".
If
anything, the commonality between the conflicting statements from the
actors involved is evidence that the state security apparatus is so
compromised that various state actors collaborated with various branches
of the state security and judicial apparatus to carry out the wishes of
their political masters, who in turn turned a blind eye to the systemic
corruption that was plaguing the service.
Reading Azilah’s (above)
statutory declaration was a surreal experience for me, and probably for
other former state security personnel. Here we have someone who is
attempting to present himself as a patriot who loved God, King and
country and was merely carrying orders because it concerned national
security. I assume there are still procedures in place when it comes to
dealing with national security threats and a proper chain of command to
execute such measures.
What we have here is the allegation of a
covert state operator who got orders from proxies and the DPM to carry
out a hit on an alleged spy who has “kompromat” on the DPM, and who was
abandoned by the state and convicted of murder. This is the Harapan
narrative, and a convenient one at that because it does not address the
systemic dysfunction, only the connivance of a much-despised partisan
hate figure.
Never mind that trials of both accused were
mired in the kind of political and judicial legerdemain that any independent observer
would refer to as a farce. In my interview, with ES Shankar, who
has spent years meticulously researching this murder, he said what most
former state security personnel acknowledge – mostly in private – “There
is an incestuous relationship between the executive, the police and a
cowed and emasculated judiciary, all fired by ‘ketuanism’. This is how
Hitler, the Nazis and the SS/Gestapo came to power and triumphed for a
few years.”
The murder of Altantuya exposes the fascist core of
our political system and the unchecked, rampant corruption of our state
security apparatus. Unchecked, mind you, even by the Harapan regime. If
the allegations of former police commando Azilah Hadri are true and that
then DPM Najib Abdul Razak ordered the hit on Altantuya, then this is
an indictment not only on Najib, but on the very system that Harapan
refuses to reform.
This is political theatre, after all. If the
Harapan government is truly interested in discovering who killed
Altantuya, it would have immediately reopened the case. Instead, we had
emissaries from various political parties visiting Sirul – one of the
killers – doing God knows what, instead of attempting to reform the
system, using this particular case as the foundation for institutional
reform.
When Home Minister Muhyiddin Yassin says this, for
instance, about the formation of an Independent Police Complaints and
Misconduct Commission (IPCMC):
“They (PDRM) assume that with an IPCMC, the police will become the
target, that police are the ones who have done so much wrong and that
such a body (IPCMC) will punish them.”
What Muhyiddin is
really alluding to is the reality that the state security apparatus,
which for so long formed part of the triptych of political power,
criminal enterprise and state security collusion, would be subject to
independent oversight.
The ongoing tragedy of the Altantuya murder
is that not only is the former regime suspect, but the political
theatre of the recent allegations points to a disturbing axiom: nobody
ever truly reaps what they sow in this country.