E Contrario

From Individuals

Umar Tan Soi Kow passed away on Thursday. Till now I still cannot accept he’s gone, he is not present in my life anymore. I still cannot believe he just disappeared from my reality. I lost not only a good friend, but a brother who guided me through these turbulent years.

The first time I met Tan was in the lock-up of Dang Wangi police station. I was arrested by the police during a demonstration. In fact, I was not one of the demonstrators. I went to Dataran Merdeka because I heard a gathering was broken up by the police outside the courthouse on Jalan Raja Laut. I rushed over and witnessed FRU and SB bashing people along the riverbank beside the court. Many were seized and assaulted. The policemen were beating and kicking demonstrators in broad daylight. When I tried to intervene against the blatant brutality, I too was apprehended and thrown into the truck. In the truck I was beaten up.

By the time I entered the lock-up, to my surprise, I found there were some 20-30 persons already in the cells. They cheered when I rebuked the police officers. In front of them, I resisted the police order to strip. Among the detainees, I got to know Tan. Through the bars, he told me his name and informed me that they had been arrested several days earlier in another demonstration.

I was released without charge early morning the next day—that was the day Anwar was brought to court for the first time after his arrest on 14 April. I wasn’t sure when Tan and the rest were released. I didn’t meet him again until much later, when the reformasi movement was better organized.

I believe that was the first time Tan was arrested. I believe like many of us, he went with an impulse to express his sympathy with Anwar, or perhaps his anger towards injustice. Tan was probably still holding a job as a cook in a certain high-class hotel then. Like thousands of others, reformasi changed his life.

I don’t know what force triggered him to join the struggle. Tan was just another ordinary person; he knew no Anwar Ibrahim, and had no stake in Anwar’s staying in power. But his life was totally transformed by the call for reformasi. Tan remained committed to this cause till the end. People like Tan also transformed the reformasi struggle.

I would say Tan was the most loyal activist in this struggle. Certainly I had met many committed reformists, but none was as consistent as Tan. All activists have their ups and downs: some drop out, some slow down, some go off temporarily to take care of our affairs (and return later), some are frustrated by the lack of success, and some betrayed. Tan was always full of conviction and confidence with the struggle. He had never merajuk, never despaired, and I would say he probably never missed a demo. He held the record for being the second most arrested person after Nasir Isa, his good brother.

In fact he was the one who led me in the struggle. He escorted me from north to south, from west to east, often he was my only companion, who relieved my hardship and solitude. On these journeys he shared with me the vast knowledge he had accumulated—about the people and places we came across. His memory was my resource book for everything: geographical location of ceramah, telephone numbers, personal history of each and every reformist, and so on. With his guidance, I never lost my way, literally and metaphorically.

I might have joined this struggle based on some abstract principles. Tan might not have expressed these principles with the same language as me. But he held on to something more real, more concrete—the simple sense of wrong and right, and of wholeheartedly defending one’s own convictions.

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Tan had taken good care of me. I feel guilty that i was unable to do the same for him. I grieve for not being with him during his suffering.

He fell sick during the Raya break. He was down with a high fever for 4 days in hospital. I was only told this by him during Anwar’s open house, days after his release from hospital. Last Wednesday (1 November) I got a call from him, from an unknown number. He said he was in Putrajaya Hospital and had left his handphone at home. He told me he had been hospitalized again the night before due to fever. He requested me to go to his flat to pick up his handphone, which he’d left behind as he was rushed to the hospital.

I went to the flat but couldn’t find the keys which he kept in a specific place. Again I spoke to him on the phone belonging to a friend who was visiting him. He gave another vague instruction for the location of the keys. I tried again but in vain. So I decided to sort it out when i went to visit him the next day.

The next day, I delayed my visit till the afternoon as I was caught up with an article deadline. By noon, a friend called to ask me to confirm whether Umar Tan had passed away. I dismissed it as rumour. In an hour’s time, another call came asking the same question. An omen surged in my head and I began to panic.

Finally, Nasir confirmed the bad news when he arrived in person at the hospital. I went blank and couldn’t believe Tan had departed so abruptly. I held my tears and sent out the message through ADIL sms.

By the time I reached Putrajaya it was 5pm. I came to know that Tan passed away at 4am in the morning, because of a heart attack. Until now, I still do not know what triggered the heart attack. Perhaps he didn’t suffer much pain. However, I regret not seeing him at the last. The fact that he was left dying alone in hospital saddened me enormously. And I cannot forgive myself for not bothering to find out about his well being for nearly 10 hours after his death.

Throughout his life, Tan Soi Kow selflessly contributed to the struggle. He wasn a comrade and fellow traveller to all of us in reformasi. The news of his death is like an eclipse, suddenly a light’s gone out in our heart.

I don’t know who can replace Tan’s role in the remaining journey of our struggle. He will be remembered for his resilient and relentless spirit, ever tirelessly working for the movement, till his last breath.

His body was taken out of the mortuary at 7pm. By 11pm on that very night, he was soundly buried in the cemetery in Bangi.

Tan and I walked along this path for 7 years. 7 years is not considered a long period. But in this short life, he was a shooting star that burned up its entire physical existence to emit light in the darkness.

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When we watch the sea of people in the protest, we sometimes forget each of these individual souls in the crowd, who have made this stirring and painful personal decision to be part of the struggle. They are not an emotive mob, blindly loyal to the command of some supreme leader. Among them, there might be a few like Tan, upholding a choice of their conscience, making their life a spark that could brighten the world.