From lawbreaker to lawmaker - The Star

April 20, 2008 by June Wong and Chin Mui Yoon

He is one of Malaysia’s best-known activists for human rights and political reform. Yet little is known about Tian Chua, Parti Keadilan Rakyat information chief and newly elected MP for Batu. He shares his life’s story for the first time.

ON April 14, 1999, images of a young, scrawny Chinese man sitting defiantly before a Federal Reserve Unit water cannon truck sent to disperse pro-Anwar Ibrahim protestors were flashed around the world.

In Malaysia, people wondered who this strange man was. They soon got a name to the face: Tian Chua.


As an activist, Tian Chua has had many brushes with the law, as this 2005 file photo of him in a police truck after a demonstration at KLCC shows.
In the years before and since that incident, Chua – whose real name is Chua Tian Chang, meaning “to fortify” – has consistently fought for justice and human rights, including throwing himself into protests and demonstrations.

In the eyes of the authorities, he was a law-breaker and he was duly arrested countless times, bashed about and even imprisoned.

But all that changed on March 8, 2008. Chua found himself catapulted onto a national platform and respectability when he was elected Member of Parliament for the Batu constituency with a 9,455 majority.

Up close, Chua, 44, displays none of that aggression and indignant anger one would expect in a rebel with plenty of causes. He is still reed-thin and boyish-looking, mild-mannered and soft spoken. He seems more at home buried in some dusty library instead of facing off policemen on the streets.

“I don’t get heated up easily!” Chua says earnestly when we meet in Petaling Jaya over dinner. “And please don’t call me YB (Yang Berhormat). I’m extremely uncomfortable when people address me by any title. Just call me Tian.”


Now that he is a Member of Parliament for Batu, will he give up street demos?

He may be an honourable MP now but his troubles with the law have not ended. He has several cases pending, including a charge captured in local dailies; Utusan Melayu’s headline on Dec 12, 2007, screamed: Tian Chua gigit polis (Tian Chua bites policeman.)

That dramatic scuffle with the law took place on Dec 11 last year while Chua was trying to deliver a memorandum to Parliament to protest a Bill to extend the Election Commission members retirement age from 65 to 66.

Just how did a middle class Malaysian Chinese boy grow up to be such a non-conformist?

Early years

The eldest of four siblings, Chua was born on Dec 21, 1963. The family home was a single-story house in a working class neighbourhood in Malacca.

His father, Chua Neo Lai, 71, is of Hakka descent and was a rice wholesaler. His late mother, Chan Yuet Chien, was a Chinese schoolteacher.

His brother Tian Chien, 43, is married and owns an IT firm. His sisters, Thien See, 38, is an independent film maker while Thien Ting, 35, is currently studying and working in New York.

From young, the family was caught up in the ideals of democracy and socialism; Chua describes his parents, especially his mother, as “socialist-conscious”.

His father remembers Chua as a calm and steady bookworm who didn’t excel in sports.

“But he is very stubborn; when we asked him not to confront the Government, he replied that he was fighting for our rights. Still, he would walk away rather than argue with us.”

Chua studied at Siang Lin Primary School and Malacca Catholic High School. After Form Six at Gajah Berang High School, he went to study Agricultural Science in Sydney University, Australia.

“I wanted to be a scientist and invent things, like Edison. I got interested in the agro-sciences as I wanted to study things that could be useful,” recalls Chua.

But in his third year, he switched to Philosophy at the University of New South Wales. Australia in the 1980s was a hotbed for student activists. “My father had hoped I’d study law for good future prospects. But I became exposed to peace movements, environmental issues, and human rights situations around the world.”

He became an active student leader and his mates included Steven Gan and Premesh Chandran, co-founders of news website Malaysiakini.

Together, they protested against the imposition of university fees on foreign students started by Bob Hawke’s administration in 1985.

Chua had his first taste of arrest when he was locked up after a demonstration in Sydney. He was also recruited by East Timor then leader-in-exile, now president Ramos Harta to help prepare newsletters.

Upon returning to Malaysia in 1990, Chua joined the NGO Suara Rakyat Malaysia (Suaram) to campaign against the Internal Security Act (ISA).

Two years later he left for the Hong Kong based Asia Monitor Resource Center (AMRC) as a researcher on regional labour issues.

He then received a scholarship to do his Masters Degree in Employment and Labour Studies at the Institute of Social Studies at the Hague, the Netherlands.

After his studies, he took the long way home via an overland route. “I took trains, buses, whatever. It took me three months. It was the most enjoyable and freest time of my youth,” he recalls fondly.

The rebel

Upon his return to Malaysia in 1996, he was immediately caught up with the East Timor movement. Then the 1997 Asian financial crisis started.

“In Malaysia, we grow up and live in a culture of fear in the shadow of May 13. That fear has been built into our political system and has remained a part of our psychology.

“At the same time, our model of development had made us uncompetitive by the late 1980s. Yet, while Asian countries were suffering from the global financial breakdown, Dr Mahathir and Anwar Ibrahim told Time magazine that everything was fine. It was ridiculous!

“Then cracks started showing in their relationship but we never expected Dr M to take such drastic measures,” says Chua who was then writing research papers on labour conditions for trade unions and was in the Suaram secretariat.

Anwar’s subsequent sacking from Umno and ISA detention were just what the alternative parties needed as a unifying factor to confront the Government in the 1999 general election.

“NGO activists brought DAP and PAS together and the Reformasi movement was born. It was bigger than we ever expected.

“You’ve never seen so many Malays wanting change. It was a mass movement. People wanted change for economic and ethical reasons.”

In 1999, Tian decided to join the newly formed Parti Keadilan Nasional headed by Anwar’s wife, Dr Wan Azizah Wan Ismail, and was elected national vice president.

“It was not so much because of Anwar but the principle of opposing the use of ISA that I became actively involved in the Reformasi movement,” Chua explains.

“The Government needed to be changed and we had to start somewhere. If Anwar was ready to do that, then I was prepared to join him. I met him just once in his house before his arrest. I had no chance to see or talk to him after that. I joined Keadilan as the token Chinese member!”

Chua is frank that “while he (Anwar) was in government we didn’t think much of him” but believes he is a changed man.

“People go through different stages of life. I knew him when he was totally down. It’s the people who have made Anwar who he is now.”

(Interestingly, Anwar was the first person Chua called after he won his Batu seat.)

In 2004, Keadilan merged with Parti Rakyat Malaysia to form Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR) and Chua was appointed its information chief, a post he has held since.

By then, he was quite famous – that photo of him defying a water cannon truck had stuck in many people's minds.

He is surprised when asked if it was a tactic to attract attention. To him, what he did was nothing new; he was doing what other activists for change before him had done.

“I merely followed the peaceful protest and non-confrontational approach as practised by Martin Luther King and Mahatma Gandhi.

“We need to confront the powers-that-be but avoid violence yet at the same time. “The objective is to appeal to the human goodness in even a very agitated opponent.

“(By sitting down) it enables the aggressors to see that we’re not running around and there is no need to fear us. I was confident the truck driver would not run me over. He is after all a human being too.”

But his confrontational style can be, as MCA Youth vice-chairman Chew Kok Woh says, disturbing.

“Tian Chua is a radical. Most Malaysians find his style disturbing. He lost previously but because of the euphoria this time, he has been elected,” observes Chew.

Chua's tactics have also not gone down well with others as well: He's been described as a “real nutter” and a “drama queen”. One blogger felt that Chua's Dec 11 arrest was a publicity stunt (http://obscure-thoughts.blogspot.com/2007/12/tian-chuas-arrest-he-wanted-it.html),

This blogger wrote that he was initially shocked at the level of “physical action” required to arrest him. “However, only after viewing the full unedited video, I (have) come to the conclusion that Tian Chua himself wanted the arrest and the subsequent publicity.”

Imprisonment

On April 10, 2001, Chua was arrested under the ISA and sent to the Kamunting Detention Camp for two years with five other activists – Ezam Mohd Noor, Hishamuddin Rais, Saari Sungip, Dr Badrul Amin and Lokman Adam.

At Kamunting, Chua kept himself busy by dabbling in his love for drawing and painting.

He drew the insects that entered his cell and made over 100 Hari Raya and Chinese New Year cards for friends and family. He had much time to read (including heavy tomes like Homer's Iliad, says Ezam who remains on very friendly terms with Chua after his departure from PKR), and learnt Thai, Norwegian, Arabic, French and Sanskrit, which he has mostly forgotten now.

“Honestly, we hadn’t anything to worry about. It was a good rest. Once we accepted the basics, it was okay. It was just the denial of total freedom that was hard to accept. We had to ask for permission for every single thing,” says Chua.

“When we started adapting to the conditions, the authorities asserted the fact that we were completely powerless. One day we decided to plant vegetables. As the plants were growing, they destroyed the plot.

“Kamunting was a test of my patience but I totally believed that one day I would be freed. It was this belief that kept me going. My father took my detention with some humour. When he visited me he said, 'At least now I know where to find you!'

To Chua Senior, his son's imprisonment came as no surprise:

“I always knew the day would come when he would be detained. When it happened, I actually felt it was safer for him to be in detention than leading demonstrations everywhere!”

Lonely warrior

Chua was released on June 4, 2003. Once out, Chua was back in form again. In February 2004 he was detained for being in a rally calling for police reforms and an inquiry into the deaths of detainees.

In March of that year, he stood for the Batu constituency in the general election but lost to Gerakan’s Ng Lip Yong by 11,000 votes.

Four years on, it's a different story. Since his election as MP, Chua has been besieged by calls for help from the people. An irate lady phoned to ask for her neighbour’s cat to be relocated as she couldn't stand the stench anymore.

People whose problems have not been dealt with for 20 years suddenly demand for them to be solved in two weeks.

But perhaps Chua welcomes it. One of the biggest casualties of his incarceration was his relationship with his long-time girlfriend and fellow activist, Mabel Au Mei Po. After his arrest, she was blacklisted and deported back to Hong Kong. They have remained apart since.

(In article posted on Aliran's website, Au writes how she asked Chua if there was anything special she could do for him in the event of him being a political detainee:

“Tian thought for a while and said, 'Nothing. I believe you can take care of yourself. I shall be happy as long as you enjoy a happy life'.”)

His home – a house in Bandar Utama, Petaling Jaya, that his mother left him after her death from cancer in 2000 – is a true bachelor's pad.

It is sparsely furnished and there are watermarks on the walls from years of unchecked leakage during his detention.

Chua's dining table is buried under a mountain of paper and unopened letters and baskets of dried jasmine garlands presented by his constituents. A lonely looking catfish curled inside an aquarium in a corner of the living room is his only companion in the silent house.

Built-in bookshelves dominate the space upstairs. There are reams of fading, yellowed Chinese books and English titles ranging from Crime of War, What the Public Should Know, to 700 Years of Dutch Cartography and a beautiful leather-bound copy of the Quran.

His dressing table is heaped with hairbrushes, peanut crackers and a large tube of muscle relaxant cream for his frequent back pain due to a fracture he suffered during his detention.

Chua shows us several sketchbooks filled with penciled drawings of bugs, beetles, praying mantis and other winged creatures that visited his cell in Kamunting.

The finely detailed drawings include notations on the creatures’ anatomy and observations of a person who, frankly, had nothing else to do with his time then.

On June 24, 2001, he records, “8am, this Pelesek Grasshopper was spotted resting on a window frame.

“The next day, the creature had a “strange, sudden collapse at 9pm last night after struggling weakly. It stayed motionless when fed with a cricket.”

Others were quick sketches made during his travels, like Angkor Wat and Bayom temples of Siem Reap, and traditional dancers performing in Ubud temples in Bali.

“I really don’t have time for anything anymore,” Chua replies with a laugh when asked about his hobbies. He writes in a diary jam-packed with appointments and notes the old fashioned way with a blue ballpoint pen.

“All my assistants and secretaries left me after they too won in the general election! I’ve lost two PDAs so I have to resort to using a diary,” he explains.

MP Chua

In a constituency with the most number of Project Perumahan Rakyat (PPR) flats sprawled across problematic old areas like Selayang and Jinjang, will Chua be buried under a growing mound of petty problems?

“It’s unfortunate that in the Federal Territories, an MP also has to handle local affairs,” Tian says. “There is little avenue to seek redress so I don’t blame Malaysians for turning to their representatives for help. I will have to balance between serving the people, speaking up in Parliament, and continuing to uphold justice.”

March 8 was only the beginning of change in Malaysia, Chua believes.

“We all need time to put aside our prejudices,” he says. “In PKR, we do not hide issues but we confront them.

“I wouldn’t say that PKR is the finest party but it is the best platform for us. It is all too easy for us to imitate BN, like letting PAS take the Malay heartland and similarly for the Chinese to control the Chinese areas.

“We need dialogue and debate. In the end, we still need to seek out solutions that may not please everyone but are the most acceptable.”

Although he has been imprisoned, injured and lost his girlfriend, there are no regrets, Chua says. His motto sums up his life’s philosophy, which he puts in his website: La vie existe grace aux choix, or Life exists because of choice.

“Life is what you choose to put into it – mine is a natural unfolding of the choices I’ve made. I believe I am part of a bigger society and movement. We all are and we either choose to stay away or stay in it.

“I consider myself lucky to be doing what I am doing. I have been given an overseas education with free access to information, my father gave me his car and my mother left me a house. Given such privileges, I’d be guilty if I don't do what I should be doing.”

Chua has said he won't change his ways but now that he can bring his issues to the Dewan Rakyat, will demonstrations be a thing of the past?

Certainly, MCA's Chew hopes Chua understands that he cannot continue to be rabble-rouser. “The MCA Youth hope that he won't bring his antics to the Dewan Rakyat,” he says.

Penang MCA Youth chief Ooi Chuan Aik expressed similar sentiments, saying Chua must realise that “his days of street politics” was over.

“He has spent a lot of time in the streets as a student leader and Reformasi activist. I hope he has grown up since the elections.”

But Chua's good friend, Premesh Chandran, isn't betting on it:

“I am sure we will see Tian drive his agenda in Parliament, but I am also sure his days of taking the fight to the streets are not over.”


Tian in their eyes
TIAN Chua, as his father and friends know him.

Chua Neo Lai, father, 71

My son has always been calm and steady. He never argued, fought or raised his voice. Often he gave way to his younger siblings.

He was a bookworm and didn’t excel in sports! He was a prefect in secondary school and he showed quiet leadership.

When we cautioned him to stop confronting the Government, he'd say, “These are our rights; I didn’t do anything wrong, they are wrong to arrest me without cause or warrant.”

He is so stubborn in his ways. I honestly do not know how I came to have a son like him who so adamantly fights for what he believes in! But my son has never stolen, harmed, robbed or killed anyone; he lives an honest life.

When he was detained under the ISA, I already knew the day would come and had prepared for the worst. At some point, I felt maybe it was safer for him to be in detention instead of leading demonstrations everywhere!

Now that he is an MP, I hope he will abide by the law. And yes, it’s about time he has a family of his own.

Dr Wan Azizah Wan Ismail,
PKR president and
Opposition Leader

Tian has always been a very sincere and earnest man. He has a strong passion for human rights in an unselfish way.

When Anwar was jailed, I could not ask for a more loyal friend. When he was detained himself, he patiently waited it out and during that time worked on his artistic skills, which I never knew he had. He is a man who has always been gentle but he dares to stand up for what he believes in.

Cynthia Gabriel,
regional director of an NGO

I met Tian when he joined Suaram after returning from overseas. He seemed a very ordinary guy! But as I got to know him, I realised he is just determined to see change and to work for it.

As a friend, he is warm and soft-spoken. It’s nice chatting with him as he always has many theories and ideas. But it’s not easy getting to know his private life. He is always very composed and takes stress well. Even repeated arrests do not bend his steely resolve.

If he has a weakness I’d say Tian has the tendency to take on everything; he can’t say no!

The situation was bleak after he was discharged in 2003. The war on terror had started and the democratic space was shrinking.

Many felt that the Reformasi movement had died down. But Tian was determined to make it work. He went all out to rebuild cooperation between colleagues, NGOs and political parties.

It was his courage, consistency and determination to see change that inspire us. Not once did he ever lose his belief and vision in a multiracial party. I think the detention had only strengthened his resolve!

Mabel Au, former girlfriend,
wrote in Aliran:

I remember Tian asking me what I would do if he became a political detainee one day. My answer was: “I will continue with my work and my life as usual.

Then you do not have to worry about me. You can do whatever you have to do for the Reformasi movement. Do you have anything special you expect me to do for you?

Tian thought for a while and said, “Nothing. I believe you can take care of yourself. I shall be happy as long as you enjoy a happy life.”

My heart sinks whenever I recall what he said. All I wish is that he can keep up his spirits and stay in good physical and psychological health, in order to continue the struggle.

(Au is former vice-chairperson of the Industrial Relations Institute in Hong Kong and programme coordinator for the Bangkok-based Committee for Asian Women. Her full account of her detention and deportation experience in 2001 can be read at aliran.com).