I love the romance of rebellion; I could drink the beauty and glamour of courage for days. But lately, it hasn’t been enough. I don’t think it ever was, for me. I’ve started to think about resistance as slow, banal, steady work – stitch by stitch rebuilding, reworking, remaking. Jahit in Malay means ‘sew’, jahat… Read more
The hashtag #KitaLawan appeared in February, after Anwar Ibrahim was convicted of sodomy and sent to jail for the second time. In the beginning, I saw both #KitaLawan and #KamiLawan being used, which was interesting. ‘Kita’ and ‘kami’ are collective pronouns meaning ‘we’, but the latter is closer to ‘us’ – an other, i.e. a… Read more
I’ve wondered what it was like to be grown-up during Operasi Lalang. I was 7 that year – truly a child of Mahatir, who came into power in 1981, and ordered the government crackdown on political dissidents and activists in 1987. Over a hundred people were arrested under the Internal Security Act, and many of… Read more
