Where Chin Peng failed, Zakir succeeded

Chin Peng was of no interest to the Malaysian government. It was Zakir whom Putrajaya could not resist calling a very wise man.
COMMENT

While there was nothing Chin Peng, the exiled guerilla leader of Malayan Communist Party, could do to convince Malaysia that he was a changed man and yearned to spend his remaining days back in his hometown in Sitiawan, there amazingly was little scandalous preacher Zakir Naik had to do to win Putrajaya’s heart and end up as a permanent resident of this country.

Till his very last breath, Chin Peng was viewed suspiciously by Putrajaya. This while history has it that it was the Malaysian government which offered Chin Peng the olive branch, promising him a safe passage home if his party called it truce and signed a peace accord in 1989.

Ironically, while the former communist head remained earnest, it was the Malaysian government that went on to betray the peace agreement.

Chin Peng’s many efforts to return home were rejected by the Malaysian court under the pretext that he failed to prove his citizenship. This despite Chin Peng claiming that the police seized his birth certificate during a raid in 1948.

Chin Peng never made it back to Sitiawan. He died in 2013 in Thailand, aged 88, spending decades living in obscurity.

Not only did the Malaysian government not honour the peace deal, it also played retributive, turning the tables on Chin Peng, accusing him of massacring some 10,000 Malaysians during his 12-year bloody campaign to establish a communist state in the country.

In fact, the government was determined never to allow Chin Peng back home, in any form.

Such was the hatred and lack of compassion from Putrajaya that even requests from Chin Peng’s family to bring back his remains for burial in Malaysia were to be dismissed.

“We will not allow him to be buried in Malaysia because of the black history he had created. Furthermore, Chin Peng is not a citizen of Malaysia.

“He did not want to be a Malaysian, so we don’t have any ties with him at all,” PM Najib had said.

While Defence Minister Hishammuddin Hussein quipped that Chin Peng ‘was no loss to the country’.

Supporting Zakir akin to backing terrorism

Then DAP national chairperson, the late Karpal Singh, however believed it was only humane that Chin Peng be ‘allowed” home, even after his death

“The government must be magnanimous after his death. They did not allow him to return during his lifetime,” Karpal bemoaned.

Still, Chin Peng was of no interest to the Malaysian government. It was Zakir whom Putrajaya could not resist calling a “very wise man”.

Having cheated Chin Peng of the chance to reunite with his family, Putrajaya instead found interest in Zakir Naik, a fugitive whose racially- inflammatory speeches have left many a nation troubled.

Despite Zakir’s home country India issuing a second arrest warrant and demanding that he return face questions over terror-related and money-laundering charges, Malaysia continues to double down on its reasons to offer Zakir refuge.

And unlike a repentant Chin Peng, the preacher took the cowardly way out, seeking shelter in Malaysia and refusing to return to India.

Putrajaya insists that Zakir is no threat to Malaysia’s peace and security. This outrageous claim could not be further from the truth, given that Zakir has unequivocally expressed his admiration for Osama bin Laden, leader of the militant group Al-Qaeda.

It is astonishing that the sincerity of Chin Peng, a former communist rebel who had called it quits and was willing to make peace with the Malaysian government, meant nothing to then prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad.

Has it not occurred to Putrajaya that by supporting Zakir, it is by all accounts supporting the terrorist outfit ISIS, the latter being an offshoot of Al-Qaeda?

Does it not perturb the Malaysian government that an insidious speaker like Zakir has no qualms radicalising young impressionable minds?

The Dhaka terrorists who hacked 20 people to death in cold blood in 2016 were ardent followers of Zakir.

So maybe it is no surprise that where Chin Peng failed, Zakir succeeded via “Islam” in also mesmerising prime ministe, gaining the premier’s full backing and earning permanent stay in Malaysia.