If I were to write my memoir, I would have a million and one stories to tell, especially as an investigative reporter.
And I must mention a few iconic journalists who guided and honed my writing skills over the last 47 years, namely New Straits Times (NST) news editors Felix Abishiganaden and Philip Matthews and five NST editors-in-chief Tan Sri Lee Siew Yee, Tan Sri Samad Ismail, Tan Sri Dr Noordin Sopie, PC Shivadas and Datuk Abdul Kadir Jasin.
During the 1970s, I was the typical enthusiastic gung-ho crime reporter — always waiting for an exclusive or ‘scoop’ and it was in Kuala Lumpur that I discovered my forte.
My first encounter with the police was when I was asked to divulge privileged information on two colleagues Samad and Berita Harian editor Samani Ahmad, whom some of the leading politicians wanted to jail under the Internal Security Act (ISA).
One day in 1976, I was asked to attend an interview with three Special Branch (SB) officers at Century Hotel, Kuala Lumpur to explain an article I had written on communist activities in Gua Musang, Kelantan.
Apparently, the SB wanted me to make a statement that Samad had influenced me to write against the government.
After the three-hour chit-chat, I told them I was responsible for whatever I wrote and did not want to implicate ‘Pak Samad’.
By then, the writing was on the wall and on June 23, 1976, both Samad and Samani were detained.
In 1981 after his release, Samad was appointed editorial advisor to New Straits Times Press until his retirement in 1988.
During this time, I was sent to Kuching as NST correspondent and in 1986, found myself in trouble again with the SB when I arranged for renowned Swiss environmentalist and Bruno Manser Fund (BMF) founder Bruno Manser to be interviewed by RTM in the jungles of Long Seridan.
On the same day after my investigative report appeared in NST, the SB seized the three-hour long RTM interview footage. As a result, the exclusive interview over RTM was scrapped while the SB continued to keep tabs on me. In 1999, the SB head held a meeting to charge me under the Official Secrets Act, but the police changed their mind.
My association with Manser was to have other implications as BMF attracted the attention of a British investigate reporter, Clare Rewcastle Brown, the sister-in-law of British Prime Minister Gordon Brown.
I first met Kuching-born Clare, the daughter of Sarawak Colonial SB officer John Rewcastle, when she arrived in Kuching to cover a seminar in early 2000s.
It was here that she heard the anti-logging blockades and about my 1993 book Bruno Manser — The Inside Story and may have thought about linking up with BMF.
In 2009, she failed to get an appointment to interview the chief minister on logging in Sarawak and so she was ‘smuggled’ into a timber concession where she wrote an exclusive on deforestation in Baram.
She returned to Sarawak for the Lubok Antu by-election and asked if I could arrange for her an interview with Pakatan Harapan’s Datuk Anwar Ibrahim but I was non-committal.
Clare managed to interview Anwar in Lubok Antu but before leaving Kuching for Kota Kinabalu, she was tailed by the SB on the way to Kota Kinabalu and called me for help.
As a fellow journalist, I contacted a very senior Sarawak BN leader, who ‘called off the heat’, enabling her to return to London via Kuala Lumpur without any hassle.
A year later, she had formed the London-based NGO Sarawak Report, reporting on the welfare of indigenous people followed by exposé on corruption scandals in Sarawak and Malaysia in general.
Over the subsequent years, Clare went one step further when during her investigations on corruption, stumbled on the 1MDB network.
Her exclusive reports were so effective that the BN government blocked her website.
But it was a little too late because her allegations had initiated the momentum that led to the downfall of Najib and BN.
Clare did Malaysia another favour when she wrote the book The Sarawak Report: The Inside Story of the 1MDB Exposé.
Even as the rest of the country awaits the outcome of the 1MDB scandal, I’m preparing to release my latest exclusive on the mysterious disappearance of Manser in Ulu Limbang entitled Who killed Bruno Manser?.
Hopefully, this will unravel the 20-year-old unsolved mystery.
The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the New Sarawak Tribune.
