My speech presented in the Memorial Night of Fan Yew Teng on 5th January 2011 at YMCA Hall, Brickfields, Kuala Lumpur
I have known Sdr Fan Yew Teng since the early 90s when I entered politics and became more involved in human rights issues as well as activities in SUARAM.
In those days, many of the activists who involved in human rights and social justice issues in SUARAM were young people who do not have that high social standing. So whenever we organized public forums, protests and demonstration against issues of injustice and violation of human rights that happened in foreign countries, be it campaign of Free
Burma or Free Aung San Suu Kyi, Free East Timor, Free Palestinian people, Justice for Sri Lankan Tamils, Freedom of expression in Singapore etc, we will always invite Fan Yew Teng to be the spokesperson because he is not only well versed in many international issues but he also has the name and the standings in the eyes of the media, as well as in the community.
All these qualities of Fan Yew Teng have helped us to achieve our purpose to highlight the issues and the causes.
In fact, from the various issues that were brought up by Fan, we can see that Fan was not only concerned about the issues in Malaysia but his passion for human rights and justice actually cut across borders, race and religions. From the articles and books that Fan had written, we can see that he had been very genuinely passionate about issues on human rights, justice and people who are weak and marginalised.
In my experience of working with Fan, the most memorable one is the demonstration against Burma being accepted as member state of ASEAN during the ASEAN foreign ministers summit that was held in Kuala Lumpur in 1997. There were only about 10 of us in the demonstration outside the hotel of foreign ministers’ summit. When the police came
to take away our placards and stopped our demonstration, Fan, angered by this, shouted at the police and challenged the police to arrest him in front of the media and foreign dignitaries. We were all promptly arrested by the police and put into lock-up for a day, thank-you very much Sdr Fan. 🙂
I do not know how many times Fan had being arrested by police during demonstrations, but that was the first experience of spending a night in the police lock-up for my few other colleagues and I. I should say it was a valuable experience for me to stay in the police lock-up for one night as the experience has opened my eyes about the condition in the police lock-up and it helped me to amend the law when I became a member in the Parliament Select Committee that review Penal Code and Criminal Procedure Code many years later.
So, thanks to Sdr Fan Yew Teng again.
During the 90s, I never expected Sdr Fan will come back to the DAP despite working together with him for a few years in the NGO circle.
But the main reason that made Fan Yew Teng come back and active in the party was due to the unjust charges and sentence against Lim Guan Eng. Fan Yew Teng has been the one who openly spoke up for Lim Guan Eng in all the Sympathy, Support and Solidarity with Lim Guan Eng Campaign, he even joined the Marathon hunger strike after Guan Eng was sent to Kajang Prison.
These moves showed that Fan’s belly was still full of political fire. Rank and file of the DAP appreciated Fan’s commitment in the Support Guan Eng’s Campaign and appreciated his return to the party very much, and his popularity with the grassroots led him to be recommended by the DAP Perak leadership to contest in the 1999 General Elections.
After his unfortunate loss in the 1999 General Elections, Fan told me that he wanted to concentrate on writing and he eventually became less active in the civil society activities.
Sdr Fan’s heart was always in the right place. He had a lot of love and passion and always stood up for the weak, oppressed and marginalised. I will always remember him with fondness and admiration for this.
His passing is a great loss to civil society. He is a man for us to emulate and he will continue to live on in our memory.