It's been several days since my last post. Life's been busy at Malaysiakini with some ups and downs. The ups have been providing news coverage, the downs have been 'human relations' -- and here, I don't think I shall need go further.
Covering the Kampung Berembang demolishing was quite exciting perhaps because of a number of anxious moments when things were quite unruly and getting out of hand. At the height of tensions and skirmishes one can easily be a victim of police brutality and for the first time, I have seen with my own eyes the eagerness with which the enforcement unit of the municipal councils, the police and the Federal Reserve Unit use force to subdue demonstrators and people who feel they were protecting their homes and belongings.
What bothered me with this incident was the exposure people were willing to put their children to to violence.
They left their children in the surau and to me this was like a human shield. I had gone into the surau where children as young as three or four years old were left. They felt the tensions outside, they say the fights from the first floor of the surau and they were scared. Children were crying.
I think it was immoral of the villagers to have done that to their kids. They should have been moved out as soon as the FRU arrived. And I had asked Ghani, a villager I had known during my time at Asia PR Publishing, to tell the parents to move their children out.
Minang is 'Minangkabau', a clan in Sumatra. The clan has a symbiotic relationship with the buffalo, or 'kerbau' in Malay or 'korobau' or 'kobau' in the Minang dialect. 'Minangkabau' is derived from 'menang kerbau' -- win buffalo. The Sumatran clans pitch their buffalos against each other, and the Minangs have the reputation of having the fastest buffalos in Sumatra. This blog isn't much use to anyone else though. There are no revelations and no discussions -- just a Minang's folly.
