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Obituary
Samad Ismail |
| Obituary SAMAD ISMAIL who died on Sept 4 2008 deserves a place in the history of this country. The modern Malay language was very much his creation. He joined 'Utusan Melayu' before the war under Kajai as a cub reporter at 16 and remained with the paper when Yusof Ishak became editor. Of him, Samad was to recall cheekily: "But he was illiterate in Malay, so I had to run the Ututsan Melayu”. The mad, nightly rush to translate Reuter resulted in a modern Malay newspaper language. In later years, his famous despatches to 'The Straits Times' while on a tour with Tun Razak of rural areas as minister of rural development were to show.that he had also an excellent command of the English language Utusan became a leading anti-colonial paper after the Japanese surrender and Samad its fluent spokesman. So much so that when Utusan opened an office in KL Ishak had to tell him, "I'm sorry, you can't go to Kuala Lumpur. If you go to Kuala Lumpur, Tunku will close down my paper." So Samad was packed off to Jakarta. He came to know many people. They included Ibrahim Yaacob, the founder of Kesatuan Melayu, in 1938 and he joined Ibrahim's new organization, Kesatuan Rakyat Indonesia Semenanjung, or KERIS (Union of the People of Peninsular Indonesia). He became friends with Indonesian nationalist leaders such as Adam Malik, Sutan Sjahrir, Agus Salim and a good many others. The Indonesian ambassador to Malaysia also recalled how he and Samad had been gunrunners "smuggling arms from Singapore to Indonesia" during the revolution. That Samad contributed the cause of Indonesian independence became public knowledge when President Sukarno mentioned him during a speech in Singapore. He was a strong supporter of the AMCJA-PUTERA, the great alliance of all pro-independence parties that adopted the People's Constitution to oppose the British deas for a neo-colonial constitution. (The citation for the Ramon Magsaysay Award incorrectly says he took part in the drafting). He mixed easily and had a wide influence among the Malay intellectuals. He was the moving spirit behind the ASAS 50, the group made up of Kris Mas, Tongkat Waran, Mansuri SN, Abdul Wahab Muhammad and other writers committed to merdeka, art and society. His excellent short stories speak of the Malay language and culture, nationalism, journalism, lives of ordinary Malays, Chinese Indians, |
| of economic
circumstances dictating a person's view of life. They speak his opinion
that people should not be saddled
by
their past associations, that tolerance
must be embraced and
practised. We are also told he did some translations from Tolstoy and
Chekov. He was interned by the British under the Preservation of Public Security Ordinance (the forerunner of the Internal Security Act) at St John’s Island from 1951 to 1953. They accused him of being a member of the underground Anti-British League. In conditions inimical to happiness his insouciance revelled in singing songs and making light of a stifling imprisonment, much to the amusement of his fellow prisoners who included John Eber and P V Sharma, the leaders of the Malayan Democratic Union. In 1954 he formed the PAP with James Puthucheary and Lee Kuan Yew, naively taking him for a progressive, anti-colonial man. He soon left for Kuala Lumpur to work in the New Straits Times. In the seventies he employed Ambrose Khaw of the banned 'Singapore Herald' much to the annoyance of Lee Kuan Yew. His co-worker in the Straits Times, Lee Siew Yee, a hard bitten journalist with a dour outlook on life and sparing in his praise, thought very highly of him. He told me Samad was one of the very best. In June 1976, Lee Kuan Yew arrested Hussein Jahiddin, the editor of Berita Harian in Singapore and Azmi Mahmud, a Berita Harian reporter with close family ties to Samad. They had written editorials critical of Singaporean policies.Hussein and Azmi confessed to being party to a communist plot to undermine the governments of Singapore and Malaysia; they implicated Samad. "But Harry thought these fellows wouldn't dare write these articles without my encouragement," said Samad. "He thought I was still in control in Singapore. So he had these fellows arrested. He made these fellows confess that I was behind it all." In 1976 Tun Razak died. His successor, Tun Hussein Onn, chose Dr Mahathir to be his deputy, to the disappointment of Ghazali Shafie. Syed Husin tells us that in July 1986, already in his 18th month of detention, he was told to confess that he was an intermediary between Dr Mahathir and the communist underground. The proposed statement was part of a plot hatched in revenge by Ghazali Shafie, who had failed to reach the No 2 position in government. Tun Hanif Omar was then the IGP. Samad was 52 years old when he was together with others close to Tun Razak, Abdullah Ahmad and Abdullah Majid, both deputy ministers in the PMs department, Kassim Ahmad, chairman of Partai Socialis, were detained, accused of being communist. He was locked up for 5 years, a testament to the viciousness of UMNO politics. He and others were to appear in a well rehearsed tv series orchestrated by Ghazali Shafie. He confessed that "he had for years infiltrated and influenced the top leadership of the United Malays Nationalist Organization under the direction of a Jakarta communist". Samad tells us that "When Dr. Mahathir Mohammad was well established he insisted that I should be released". But he had to make a second televised statement admitting to having been led astray by communists and to having now seen the light. Home Affairs Minister Ghazalie Shafie triumphantly announced: "Samad Ismail has responded satisfactorily to rehabilitation and has turned over a new leaf." And he was released. Samad was a brave man, an intellectual who towered above the others. Brilliant, scatalogical, bursting with bubbling conversation he was good company indeed. He was a blithe spirit. He did not bend on St. John’s. |
| His Gazalie
confessions were a joke in which theatre of the
absurd he played a
willing part, aware that the public would see it all as a hoax. He was
a simple man whose wants seemed to be confined to the glowing cigarette
hanging from his mouth while he banged away at a typewriter. He was a
humble man. He did not write about himself. He would leave it
to the world to judge him. I for one who knew him would rate him very
high indeed,# Lim Kean Chye |
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CLICK Food guide Gold in the South (5) J B Jeyaratnam Lau Tat Hong Penang ABC Redressing imbalance Samad Ismail Unknown history - exhibition |
| _____________________ The Penang File Issue 62 |
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