DAP Penang

Liew Chin Tong: May he not die in vain

By admin on July 18th, 2009

Media Statement by DAP MP for Bukit Bendera Liew Chin Tong on 17 July 2009, Georgetown:

Like everyone else in the DAP family and the wider Malaysian society, I am still grieving over the killing of Teoh Beng Hock, aide to Selangor Exco Ean Yong Hian Wah.

What happened on 16th July 2009 at the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission’s Selangor State Headquarters in Shah Alam is the most tragic day in DAP’s forty-three years’ history. Indeed, one of the saddest days for Malaysia as a nation.

Most of us who participate actively in DAP, other opposition parties and NGOs do not expect personal gains and are often somewhat prepared to face some form of oppression by the UMNO/Barisan Nasional government.

Many of our leaders went through hell in the form of detention without trial. Secretary-General Lim Guan Eng spent a year in jail as a prisoner of conscience for helping a young Malay girl.

But this is the first time one of us has been killed. One of our young is fallen victim to the old, corrupt and rotten system, eaten away by it along with so much of our hopes and dreams.

Photographs of him taken at the time when MACC personnel took him away were published clearly in the papers. And, the next thing we knew he was dead.

At once, his death reveals the most sinister elements of the UMNO/Barisan Nasional apparatus. In its attempt to implicate elected members of Pakatan Rakyat in Selangor for corruption, which would later pave way for another staged coup d’état a la Perak, MACC has started killing our young.

The line is drawn. Whether it takes a year, two years, or a lifetime, it is now our obligation to free Malaysia from UMNO/Barisan Nasional’s misrule and to see to it that justice is restored in our beloved nation.

Beng Hock’s unfortunate demise reminds us that the UMNO/Barisan Nasional government has not changed at all since 8th March 2008. It is time for those who want a better Malaysia, especially those in Pakatan Rakyat, to reaffirm our faith in new politics, and to remind ourselves who we are up against.

May Beng Hock not die in vain.

Liew Chin Tong