I have read somewhere that the discourse on freedom started from two short dialogues in an ancient land. One dialogue shows that freedom is a privilege granted from on high by the sovereign for his subjects to enjoy on condition that they do not ‘misbehave.’ The second dialogue tells us that freedom is a right so fundamental that no sovereign can take it away for whatever reason.

Now don’t we all wish that the second dialogue holds true for all our life experiences and that all sovereigns recognize this? If it were so, indeed we would not have to gather here to talk about it. Alas, we are told time and time again that freedom can never be absolute and that for every right there is a corresponding duty. So when your freedom is taken away there must always be some justification. I am neither an anarchist nor a libertarian if by these labels we mean a belief in absolute freedom and minimalist government whatever that really means. But I do believe that certain liberties are so fundamental that no sovereign or state or power should be allowed to take them away.

Herman Hesse tells us in Demian that to get to the bottom of a story, sometimes one needs to go back not just to our childhood days, but even many generations before that. Well, we don’t have that luxury here. So, to recount my story about freedom, I will modestly go back to just about forty years ago when I experienced my first major encounter with the powers that be. This episode would be followed by another two, one more insidious and vicious than the previous ones. In this first encounter, the main thrust was the fight for social justice. We were championing the cause of the poor, against the rich and powerful. Unemployment was high and many families in the rural areas were so destitute that there was literally no food on the table. As the famine spread, riots broke out in the North and nation-wide demonstrations erupted.

When the authorities detained me for ‘activities prejudicial to the security of the state’, I knew at once that this was not going to be a simple case of going through the judicial process of them proving my guilt and I maintaining my innocence.

This was because there was to be no trial where I could defend myself against the charges. This was the Internal Security Act – a catch-all piece of legislation that allows for indefinite detention without trial. There was no need for a defence lawyer because I wasn’t going to be given the opportunity to make my case and get myself out. With the stroke of a pen, I was to be detained for two years. Freedom was to be replaced by incarceration. The ‘crimes’ that I had committed were meeting up with leaders of NGOs, giving motivation talks to student leaders, fraternizing with leaders of the Opposition parties and of course addressing the people in public rallies and demonstrations.

Without meaning to sound overly presumptuous, I would characterize this encounter as the first in a series of battles between the forces of freedom and the forces of tyranny.

The second phase began on September 2, 1998, two weeks after I was unconstitutionally sacked as Deputy Prime Minister. On that fateful night, a balaclava-clad gang of commandos armed with assault rifles stormed into my house while I was holding a peaceful press conference witnessed by thousands of friends and supporters. I was later forced into a van, blindfolded and taken on a terror ride without a clue as to where I would be taken or what was going to happen to me. Hours later, I was shoved into a cell still blind folded and handcuffed. It wasn’t too long before I heard footsteps approaching and getting louder. The next thing I knew was that blows were raining on me from left, right and centre. I passed out, and the rest, as they say, is history, though in this case the history will repeat itself in some other form which I shall recount momentarily.

So, in one fell swoop, the law as mighty as Leviathan banished me from the halls of power into the labyrinth of solitary confinement. It would be another six years before I could walk out a free man. Reading Hamlet’s ‘To be or not to be’ soliloquy would never be the same again; or Solzhenitsyn’s One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, or Ibn Tufail’s Hayy ibn Yaqdhan which had inspired Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe. The point is, even though I had graduated much earlier with a two-year diploma in the Science of Incarceration, deprivation of freedom is not something one can readily get used to. Yet, when contemplating the larger issues that went far beyond my own world, loneliness and despondence gave way to a renewed zeal and hope for better days to come.

Questions more urgent and more compelling such as why were we still stuck with a prison’s system almost a century old. What kind of criminal justice system do we have that sanctions a fourteen-year old boy to be kept in prison awaiting trial just for stealing a few cans of sardine from a supermarket? Or on what grounds could our law makers justify whipping another human being simply because he had worked in the country without a permit?

Now, mind you, this was happening in a so-called democracy where fundamental liberties are supposed to be constitutionally guaranteed. But here I had been bashed up by someone no less than the Inspector General of Police with the blessing of the Prime Minister, who then had the audacity to tell the world that my injuries were self-inflicted.

We are dealing here with a systemic breakdown of the rule of law, of governance and of accountability, and of the insidious abuse of power.

Then came phase three which began in the wake of March 8, 2008 when the people of Malaysia finally said that enough was enough by voting into power the Opposition to head five states in the State elections and denying the ruling party their long held two third majority in the Federal Parliament.

In this third phase, the assault on freedom is launched from all angles – full frontal attacks, flank encroachment and rear ambush. The entire state apparatus is employed, tax payers’ money used to promote personal and vested party interests and all other means utilized to perpetuate power. The organs of state power are exploited to the fullest. Bribery, corruption, intimidation, harassment and persecution are part and parcel of this ignominious process to maintain power. To give the powers that be the mantle of legitimacy in the eyes of the world, international lobbyists are paid millions of the people’s money, using the modus operandi not quite different from those adopted in propping up tin pot dictatorships and authoritarian governments not too long ago.

When the Federal Court, that is, Malaysia’s highest court of the land acquitted me of the frivolous charges in 2004, there was talk that this was exoneration for the judiciary; that indeed henceforth, judges in Malaysia were now finally able to decide without fear or favour. I expressed my doubts even then in as much as an acquittal for one man is no vindication of the entire judiciary.

And history repeats itself. The judiciary continues to be emasculated. The current charges leveled against me are again politically motivated and the judicial process is again flawed from day one. When the law is subjugated to the tyranny of politics, the administration of justice becomes both farcical and perverse. The judiciary is then transformed into principals in the destruction of the very process they were entrusted to protect. The Internal Security Act still continues to be used arbitrarily against those seen as threats to the ruling elite. Decisions favourable to the people are overturned on appeal to the higher courts as integrity and moral conviction are thrown out the judicial window. This is the crux of the problem. Under these circumstances, can we expect the judges assigned to try me to act according to the dictates of justice and good conscience and not the dictates of the political masters?

So freedom is not just about overthrowing colonial powers and foreign oppressors. Today, more than half a century after independence, many societies continue to fight oppression from within, to fight the tyranny of governments which have the trappings of democracy but are corrupt and self-serving at the core.

As we all know, this battle for freedom will rage on because freedom is so central that no society is devoid of its conception. At the same time, because of its centrality, freedom will continue to be under siege and remain a target to be hunted down and destroyed by those who are threatened by it. So they will enact laws, rules and regulations, conditions and pre-conditions in order to deprive us of what is our right. Indeed, as the great humanist Henry Thoreau once said, the law will never make men free. It is men who have got to make the law free.

Thank you.