A constitutional state in Malaysia
How a voice of thanks can be encouragement

by Andrés Alsina

One day, less than twenty years ago, Meena Raman discovered that her law studies really had a lot to do with the lives of people who did not even know that the law existed. Those people found out about the existence of lawyers when they had ceased to be, when their daily lives, based on the goods of nature, like their forefathers’, were extinguished. Death took the form of dams, deforestation, industrial waste poisoning the waters, and of multinational corporations as ethereal as gods. That was when this young woman decided to become the voice of those who had no voice in the courts, and the powerful learned to repent.

At that time, in 1981, when Meena Raman was a young law student living in the university city of Kuala Lumpur, she learned that a Consumers Association from Penang, CAP, had approached her faculty to propose that the training of lawyers should not be restricted to the legal needs of corporations, but that the teaching should be opened to other subjects, to make students aware of issues of great public interest like legislation relating to daily life and to the environment. It was one of those medium-term projects the general effectiveness of which is questioned even today. But change is possible, and, in fact, opening up windows to other subjects let in a breath of fresh air.

Broadening the scope of her studies to include other emphases changed Meena Raman’s vision and that of many others, and this in turn caused quite a few changes. She became involved through this process. “The first thing I began to understand was that what I knew was only one side of the picture. I liked what I learned very, very much. It was not only about economic growth.” People stopped being abstract and their problems stopped being just theoretical and mere case studies.

She visited work places, and a sense of embarassment keeps her from relating the enormous impact this had on her, although you feel it through the tone of her voice. “I saw industries rapidly developing and at the same time affecting, by industrial waste runoff, the economic life of fishermen to such an extent that they lost their livelihood.” Not only were jobs being lost, but the very shape of their lives was being distorted. People who had lived for generations in one way had to change, because the poisoned water no longer allowed fish to breed. This was unthinkable four generations ago, and these fishing villages had been established a lot longer than that. Then she visited and got to know the situation of small farmers displaced by the construction of an airport. “This opened up my eyes,” she says, and she opens them, shining, penetrating and human.

On finishing her studies in 1982, she had already decided to joint CAP, and “we established the first legal firm dealing with consumers.” She and her colleagues achieved a lot - a great deal, according to the stories going around, but when she assesses what has been done, Meena Raman is cautious, weighing her words. “It is not easy to change things. What has evolved is a movement of awareness about the issues of health and environment at the grass roots level.” The direct result was that there were more people fighting against the foreseeable effects of industrial malpractice.

This is sorely needed. Malaysia is the main world exporter of tropical wood, a market with increasing demand from industrialized countries. Today, only half of its tropical forests remain – of the original 305,000 km2, they are down to 157,000 km2. In 1991, British plans for construction of a hydroelectric dam on the River Pergau were approved at a cost of 350 million dollars. This would cause severe ecological damage to forests and cultivated lands and provoked a strong reaction from civil society. As part of the contract, Malaysia committed itself to purchasing arms from Great Britain for the sum of 1,500 million dollars, which the British would call “a jolly good business.” And there are many more examples.

But Meena Raman recognizes that “something has been achieved. For example, we managed to prevent the Mitsubishi corporation from keeping a factory that had radioactive waste affecting 10,000 people. The gigantic battle included demonstrations, many of them illegal and, despite the support of the Malaysian government and state for the Mitsubishi project, including a Supreme Court ruling in favor of the international corporation, Mitsubishi decided to withdraw, in view of the enormous public pressure against it. Meena Raman says the pressure included “our international connections, mainly in Japan.” This energetic woman, who spends her life taking action against the state and the government for one thing or another, in a country where democratic regulations are not well established, is staking everything on the rule of law. If this is not so, she is betting on the need for it to be.

The lesson seems to be that things can be achieved if the opponent is not in the right, and this becomes known. In addition, mass movements have to be combined with legal action and the conditions have to be right to enable pressure to be put on the whole power pyramid up to and beyond the government itself, all the way to the den of globalization.

What is being faced “is no longer a situation in which you can work exclusively in your own country. Globalization demands, imposes the need for international work.” Part of that work to establish and broaden international links explains the presence of Raman in Rome, at the Social Watch Assembly last November. Monitoring the indices of improvement of the social situation in Malaysia “is interesting, as we do not have the mass poverty of other Asiatic countries such as Indonesia and the Philippines, but in spite of this, there is increasing inequality. Of course, through our work, we concentrate our research and analysis on health and education. Thus the link with Social Watch arose naturally.”
What’s more, “if there are problems of poverty, it is important for CAP to know their origins and to be able to fight against their structural causes, particularly the non traditional ones. For example, we export rubber, but there are poverty pockets precisely there.”

Rubber is a non traditional product in Malaysia and its short history links the habits of globalization with those of colonialism. At the end of the nineteenth century, the British smuggled some rubber plant seeds out of Brazil and took them to Malaysia to start plantations. In this way, they ended the “rubber era” in the Amazon region and promoted a strong migratory current of Tamils from the south of India to Malaysia to work in the new plantations. Thus, from a territory they ruled, the British were able to take part in this trade opened up by the incipient automobile industry.

However, Meena Raman is not concerned by these stories, but by those of today. There are no minor battles. Small communities and individuals have launched disputes over dangerous drugs, “and, by lobbying and doing research, we managed to prevent them from being put on the market.” Here there would seem to be something else to be learned: to fight, yes, but not to break off relations.

To achieve all this, Meena Raman recognizes there are no set working hours, but she justifies this immediately. “You have to respond to people’s needs. It is true that sometimes we do not even have Sundays off. The life of an activist is full of challenges. But it is very gratifying to see that our ideals are appreciated by the people. It is very encouraging for me to know that a fisherman is thankful for having heard our voice together with his own.”