Dreaded raid in the dead of night

IT was a terrifying moment for Dr Chee Heng Leng (pic) when they came for her in the middle of the night.

The 62-year-old retired Universiti Pertanian Malaysia (UPM, now Universiti Putra Malaysia) lecturer and social activist was pursuing her PhD at the time of the crackdown in 1987 and remembers the ordeal as a time of fear and anguish.

“The Special Branch police knocked on my door in the middle of the night. It was 2 or 3am and I was terrified. I had no idea why they could not come during the day instead.

“I opened the door for them as I did not know what my rights were then. They ransacked my library and spent hours taking down the titles of all my books before bringing me to the police station.

Dr Chee said she was first taken to a police station lockup in Petaling Jaya after being arrested at her home.

“I cannot remember how many hours I was there in the lockup, but eventually I was transferred to another undisclosed location in a Black Maria, blindfolded,” she said in an interview at The Star Pitt Street in Penang.

Dr Chee said she was refused her right to make a phone call despite repeated requests.

“When they finally allowed me to do so much later on, I rang my aunt and sister. They were, of course, livid and upset with the police and very supportive of me.

“There was a climate of fear then and family life was disrupted with the arrest of so many detainees. It was a traumatic time,” she added.

Dr Chee recalled that she was made to change into a uniform without any underwear and was made to stay barefoot at the location unknown to her. She spent the 60 days in detention there before being moved to Kamunting Detention Centre.

“I was interrogated for 72 hours. They wanted information, which they could easily have gotten without interrogating us. All our activities were done in the open. I was amazed at myself that I could stay awake for that long. You could say it was a torturous condition,” she said.

Dr Chee was among four leading women activists who were detained during Ops Lalang. The other three were Lim Chin Chin, Irene Xavier and Dr Cecilia Ng.

Dr Chee, who was also attached to the Asia Research Institute at the National University of Singapore (NUS) for eight years after opting for an early retirement as UPM lecturer in 2003, was one of the first to be arrested under Ops Lalang.

She said she sufferred from sleep and social contact deprivation but it was the sensory deprivation that was most painful during her 60 days in captivity.

“In the windowless cell, I slept on concrete slab lined with plywood in the beginning. There was no blanket, pillow or even a toothbrush.

“Food was the least of my worries. At one time, they gave me a wrap-ped nasi bungkus to eat. It was wrapped in a newspaper and I read every single word on it.

“It was at that time that I realised I was so sensory-deprived. I was someone who read a lot,” she said. – Cavina Lim