This essay recounts Kamal’s experiences after being brutalised and arrested by Malaysian police during the Sumud Flotilla protest last Thursday, where he would be detained along with another protestor, who prefers to be named “Tiada Nama”, or just “Nama”.
---
During the emergency protest to demand the release of the Sumud Flotilla detainees and to free besieged Gaza from the brutal U.S.-Israeli war machine, I was brutalised, choked, and dragged across the road by Malaysian police for attempting to defend protestors against police aggression. Efforts by my comrades to de-arrest me were futile, resulting in them also being dragged and violently pushed onto the floor. I was thrown into a Black Maria truck, barefoot, my hands cuffed to my back, with my feet covered in dirt and tar.
Along with Nama, we were held at Balai Polis Pudu adjacent to IPD Wangsa Maju for hours while the police blatantly lied to our lawyers, family members, and supporters waiting outside at the station, about where we were.
My parents frantically contacted police stations around KL including Wangsa Maju to ask about my whereabouts: they all claimed that there had been no record of our arrest.
In reality, we had been detained since 1pm inside a meeting room at the Pudu police station. Only a tinted black window separated us and the community of supporters who had come down to the station demanding police to tell them where we were.
For at least 7 hours, I did not exist on paper to the state. We were cut off from outside the world, with no way to tell our friends and supporters outside that we were here, inside.
No attempts were made to contact my parents or family: they found out about the news from watching the harrowing footage of my arrest on social media. Imagine if this happened to your own child or loved ones? To be lied to about their whereabouts with no way to contact them? To frantically scroll through sensational media headlines to get a faintest clue of what might have happened to them?
While we were detained in the meeting room, we were questioned and intimidated by a handful of investigators and officers, with no lawyer present. They taunted us about how useless our protests against the US embassy were. That it would be better to pray and not take action against genocide. That we should stop actions that threaten the “sensitivity” of the U.S. government. Some officers even threatened to check Nama’s phone and pressured them to delete the videos of their brutality, before being reminded they could not do so without a warrant.
The undercover cop that instigated the violence also came in and intimidated Nama. While another cop turned off the lights in the room, he squared on us as if to fight, yelling “Apa kau tak puas hati dengan aku eh?”. The cop only backed down after I had to remind him that we do not have to answer anything without a lawyer present. He then took back the handcuffs he put on Nama and cuffed my left hand to their left hand, making it impossible for us to move or sit comfortably.
Their efforts to break our collective spirit failed. The growing solidarity outside of the station had shaken the police. They were scrambling to find a way to transfer us to IPD Wangsa Maju, located in a separate building adjacent to the Pudu station, without being seen by the crowd. They had no idea what to do with us until they finally decided to haul us through the back of the Pudu station and tossed us into a getaway car, transferring us to IPD Wangsa Maju.
It would only be around 6 or 7PM that lawyers were finally allowed to see us at IPD Wangsa Maju. They denied our right to have privileged communication with our lawyers. The lawyers could only remind us to not sign anything we did not say.
After they left, the police proceeded with even more intimidation. They hurled all sorts of insults to break our spirit:“Korang ni ada akal fikiran ke tidak? Mana guna pendidikan kau? Korang ni memang nak ajak orang Malaysia berperang ke? Kenapa tak berjihad kat sana je? Masa kawan aku kena bunuh di Lahad Datu, takde pun orang kau protes?”.
In a bureaucratic nightmare of endless and confusing procedures, we were subsequently paraded from office to office around the station for “processing”. I was still barefoot, with my left hand still chained to Nama’s left hand, making it impossible for us to walk or move properly. Dust, tar, and sewage water accumulated under my feet.
At one point, they placed us inside the lockup while we waited to be questioned by the IO. I saw at least 10 other human beings crowded into a tiny cage like animals. I stepped in what was either piss or leaky pipewater. There were no toilets, no sanitation, no space to sleep comfortably, and for the religious, no clean area to pray or perform ablution.
One of them told us that they had been locked up inside there for at least 4 days. We told them about how we were arrested at a pro-Palestine solidarity protest. “Tolong bukak pintu ni, saya bantai diorang,” one of them said. “Salah tu, macam zionis pulak”, said another.
Our conversations reminded me that the struggle against imperialism and its zionist proxies is not only in the streets: it also persists among those invisibilised and disappeared behind our prison walls.
What stopped me from breaking was hearing the chants and drums of support by those who had picketed outside the police station walls for hours on end, including our comrades from Malaysia Protest 4 Palestine, GEGAR, and others. If it was not for the people who had dropped everything to protest outside the station, printing posters for us to be released, and refusing police orders to disperse at risk of their own arrest, we would have long been abandoned and forgotten.
My experience inside represents only a fraction of the brutality of the Malaysian prison system, and the entire oppressive system of policing and imprisonment that permeates our societies. I cannot help but think of the hundreds of men, women, children, and gender-diverse people who are disappeared by the state into the prison system everyday. Refugees, migrants, and other marginalised communities who are deprived of their voice.
I had the privilege of a supportive community that mobilised for me at one of the worst times of my life. Many people do not.
The events of last week laid bare the brutality of the U.S. imperialist machine and their proxies, including the Malaysian government, in its campaign to extinguish any form of resistance to its genocide, exploitation, and occupation.
Despite the pro-pig propaganda, the power gap between the state and the rakyat was glaring: it was Malaysian police forces – armed with guns, backed by legal impunity, with the support and knowledge of the U.S. embassy – against an unarmed, grassroots protest led by ordinary masses, mainly women, queer people, and elderly people.
Al-Aqsa Flood has taught us that the struggle to liberate Palestine is inseparable from the struggle to liberate prisoners. The steadfast people of Gaza and those imprisoned by our prison system are the first line in fascism’s relentless march. Thousands of Palestinians are still captured and tortured by the Zionist regime to this day. Many on the Global Sumud Flotilla are still being detained, tortured, and abused.
From Palestine Action prisoners incarcerated by the U.K., to Tarek Bazrouk, Mumia Abu-Jamal, and other Black and Brown freedom fighters in the U.S., to those revolting against imperialist-backed regimes in Myanmar, Indonesia, and the Philippines, our revolutionaries are being incarcerated across the globe for fighting the imperialist war machine. We cannot afford to forget them. We must carry on the flames of their struggle.
Our arrest is a reminder that only solidarity and community could save us from repression. From behind the tinted windows where we were detained, I saw how everyone handed out hastily printed solidarity posters to the crowd, gave out water and cookies to those who had been standing under the sun and the rain, and exchanged ideas and next steps. No one had prepared for how violent the police would be, but the solidarity committees and mutual aid networks that formed immediately after the protest reminds us how powerful the people can truly be.
It showed us that it is only through a people-led movement – from everyday workers to prisoners – which can build the organs of people power necessary to build a world free from oppression, free from the colonial divisions we call borders, and free from these torture dungeons we call prisons.
We cannot surrender to repression. We cannot surrender to the state’s propaganda. We must not cower against the state’s attacks.
Imperialism can only win if we are divided.