Saiful was SEVEN

I am four eleven and a half.

In the past 10 years I have hovered around 42kg. I am small for a Malaysian woman.

My eldest, Umar, is quite a bit over three feet tall and weighs 25 or so kg. He isn’t small for a five-year old Malaysian boy, and he is very strong.

Still, I can hold him down on the ground with one hand and a knee and pulverize him with the other hand, the remaining knee steadying our whole configuration. He would not be able to shield himself no matter how his free hands flailed.

After 13 minutes of intense pummeling, I could cause Umar permanent something damage. Heaven forbid I should even take that path.

At five, what wrong could he do that would warrant anything more than a stern, “Hep!” followed by a raising of the hand to oath-taking level. Maybe not even that high.

One tight slap on the bottom would make him cry, and then I would cry. So, no slaps necessary. Actually my Umar cries even when boycotted for a few minutes.

That 26-year old teacher in Arau? The one who is alleged to have repeatedly beaten seven-year old Saiful Syazani Saiful Sopfidee for two hours? And caused the boy’s eventual death?

That man was wily to turn himself in to the police, lest the kampung folk catch up with him first, and make kenduri of his carcass.

A full-grown adult beat up a child over a period of two hours for supposedly stealing RM7. How ever was that allowed to happen?

What body of authority qualified this half-baked adult monster to teach, take charge of, and discipline children fresh from kindergarten?

A seven-year old boy, whose innocence need not be proven to absolve him of blame, is purportedly beaten over a two-hour period, wrists cruelly tied to a window.

I am imagining he was also made to stand, so his wrists may be raised above his head, to be tied to said window.

Saiful’s jenazah seen on television showed he appeared small for his age. So, reasonably, he must have been made to stand for the two hours.

Initial reports put head injuries as among probable causes of death. That, and heart complications. A nation braces for more troubling truth.

Heart complications at seven – are we perplexed yet? Between the fear and the pain, Saiful Syazani Saiful Sopfidee’s experience was so intense that it sent him into cardiac arrest.

Even minors get clemency in murder cases. The child Saiful Syazani was pre-pubescent.

In 1993 two 10-year old boys from Liverpool who tortured and smashed the head of a two-year old toddler, became the youngest convicted murderers of the 20^th century.

For a killing so cruel and gruesome, their sentences during which wardens tried to nurture them into humanity, lasted only eight years. The Crown apparently spent thousands and thousands of Sterling Pounds to defend and protect the young murderers.

When considering the amount Saiful purportedly stole, his life was worth one ringgit a year.

The night before I read about the death, I was falling asleep to the late night news about what sounded like another bullying case in some boondock secondary boarding school.

Admittedly, I was only disconcerted then. I thought another 16 or 17-year old had been beaten to death by in-house gangsters. No, the death wouldn’t have been right by any count, but many secondary schools nationwide seem to be suffering from gangsterism in varying amounts.

If these juveniles are stupid enough to get involved with gangs, or to tread on toes of gang leaders, what can I say. Juveniles are often stupid. Unfortunately, the innocents are often made to suffer for the stupidity of gang members.

Saiful was seven. He could not have known about gangsterism. Particularly not within the teaching faculty.

Stupid Brown. Stupid, Stupid Bown.

Clare Rewcastle Brown is the sister-in-law of Gordon Brown, a past Prime Minister of England. Post-Thatcher, Gordon Brown is the shortest serving British Prime Minister to date.

Clare Brown is 51 and was born in Sarawak while her British parents lived there, but returned to England when she was eight. According to the Evening Standard from England, she never visited Sarawak again until she was 46.

Oddly enough, Brown claims to have a passion for the rainforests of Sarawak.

But of course. I mean, she was born there and she lived there until she would have been in primary two.

That’s a life-long bond. That’s attachment. That’s Brown’s idea of passion.

She so loved the rainforests of Sarawak that when she visited Sarawak almost four decades after she left the state as a child, she was, “shocked to the core,” to see what she terms the, “degradation,” of her beloved rainforests.

Brown somehow calculated that 95 per cent of Sarawak's rainforest had been cut down and replaced by logging and palm oil plantations. New York City has a greater percentage of green, it sounds like.

About two months ago, Brown went public and internationally so, too, with her offensive on Tan Sri Abdul Taib Mahmud, Sarawak’s Chief Minister.

"I honestly believe that Taib is probably one of the worst environmental criminals on the planet and that he has taken huge amounts from the country of my birth,” she was quoted as saying, by no less a publication than England’s Evening Standard.

The country of her birth. My oh my. Such patriotism?

Two months ago was of course, also two months before the Sarawak state elections, what a coincidence. She said then, of her ‘David and Goliath’ struggle, “I think our reports are having a huge effect and that there's a groundswell for change,” adding, "you've got to take heart from what is happening in the Middle East to rulers who seemed equally immovable until just a few weeks ago.

If Hosni Mobarak had been just the worst environmental criminal in the country of a non-Egyptian’s birth, my guess is that he would still be Egyptian President.

Stupid Brown.

Tahrir Square in Cairo had approximately 225,000 protestors demanding Mobarak’s resignation in February this year, NOT for his cutting down of trees. In comparison, the triangular island in downtown Kuching can hold maybe 13 demonstrators. A 14^th person would get struck down by passing vehicles, that’s how small it is.

Did I say stupid already?

In any case, Malaysians will not take to the streets with parangs and keris. We will vote, and we will choose. Besides, we have probably the most influential bloggers per capita as proven in the 2008 General Elections. They were vigilant and sleepless in Kuching, recently.

Now Taib has won.

Abdul Taib Mahmud - lets dispense with titles since none of the Browns seem to have any, and level the playing field a little - is into his 30^th year as Chief Minister of Sarawak.

Taib, who was born in Sarawak to successive generations of Sarawak natives, was raised in Sarawak until adulthood when he went abroad to study. After obtaining a law degree, getting married, and having a first child Australia, Taib went home to Sarawak.

He began his political career in his home state, but soon after, spent many learning years in the seemingly more advanced Semenanjung, to the point of attaining various ministerial positions within the Federal cabinet.

Luxe and lucre were all but promised to Taib as a Federal minister yet, the son of Sarawak returned to his Bumi Kenyalang.

In the past 29 years, Sarawak has grown at a faster rate than the previous 29. Overall, the development and growth of Sarawak has benefited Sarawakians rather than not.

Refute that, Brown.

Sarawak’s timber-based exports at the end of last year came to RM7 billion and it wasn’t grown overnight. In terms of palm oil, Sarawak is expecting a 15% growth this year to 2.5 million tones of CPO.

What would you rather have, Brown?

For Sarawak to remain primitive? For Sarawak to be kept as a nature reserve, to compensate the world for the timber cut down over the centuries in the rest of the world, closer to yours? So you can come to Sarawak again in another 38 years and reminisce?

It appears that Sarawakians would rather have Taib.