A different kind of spirit and intoxication

These days, the right words used to describe me would be, zombie-fied and kelam-kabut.

In the last month, I have been completely engrossed in a project which has inevitably driven me to physical and mental exhaustion. Being sleep deprived, I have unwillingly arrived at work late in a dishevelled state. I’m almost always late for meetings held in-house and above all, I’ve committed one of the biggest and most embarrassing professional crime - giving the wrong name to a very important government minister while drafting a press statement!

I should be fired, but deep down I hope I won’t for two reasons. I’m psyched about what I’m doing and I’m driven by the pool of people working around this project.

A good marriage is really hard to come by these days but this article is not about marriage. It’s about team work and it’s as equally rare. Mom used to tell me this, “If you marry the right man, half of your life’s happiness is secured.”

In the context of a job, I would say that if you get to work with the right team, at least half of your day’s happiness is guaranteed. When combined together, I guess I’m a really happy woman despite the sleep deprivation and long hours of slogging.

Not too long ago, a fellow writer informed me that she doesn’t believe in Committee. She told me that it’s easier to get things done by herself. I do agree with her because there have been many occasions where I end up doing a job on my own simply because it takes too long to wait for others to act, especially if they are unreliable. Also, when there’s more than one person, it usually involves having more than one opinion and this means more time needed to take a collective decision.

In a marriage, it takes two to tango. In a team, it takes a whole troop to perform that awe-inspiring Shaolin acrobatic formation. All members need to lean on each other for support, be willing to take a fall and last but not least to sweat it out together so that their goals can be achieved.

However, these are not just the essential ingredients. It takes much more to become an exceptionally good team.

The spirit of team work was first introduced to me when I worked in Afghanistan. My wise Italian friend taught me the first lesson of being in a team: loyalty. Loyalty in his case does not mean to submit to one’s leader blindly and unequivocally. A team needs to be challenged. Otherwise, how would you know that it’s truly a good one when everything works like a bed of roses?

Loyalty here means to sort out disputes fairly and transparently, without backstabbing one another. If things get really difficult, you don’t just jump ship. You stay and work things out together.

I remember when I had just become the newest member of an electoral team in Bamyan, I did not appreciate our Coordinator. We had different working cultures which made it difficult for me to adapt.

Whenever I expressed my dissatisfaction towards the Coordinator, my Italian friend would remain impartial, refusing to partake in any of my personal observations. Instead, he would provide objective views and advised me to communicate my frustration to the Coordinator.

I find this to be a constructive and effective method of solving professional disagreement. If anything, it improves and builds working relationship because of better understanding through open communication.

Secondly, to be a truly good team, it goes beyond showing professional commitment. Since, we’re essentially human beings, we all come with emotional baggage. We all have needs to feel included, appreciated and respected. We don’t just value ourselves as a worker, but also a human being, deserving of respectful and dignified treatment.

Bamyan is one of the coldest districts in Afghanistan. During winter, the temperature often drops to minus 30 degrees celcius. Again, being new, I was unable to adapt to such harsh condition and subsequently fell ill with mild pneumonia. My colleagues quickly took to the task of nursing me back to health.

During this time, my health condition had been brought to the attention of those working in the headquarters. In order not to further jeopardise my health, decisions were quickly made to offer me a transfer to a warmer district in the East of Afghanistan. Resisting the tempting offer, I decided to stay on in Bamyan and it was the right decision I made.

I would eventually brave winter together with a group of colleagues whom by then had become friends. We would huddle together, all wrapped up in thick fleece jackets, scarves and mittens, sharing a simple meal while being fuelled by a solitary burner situated in the middle of a poorly equipped kitchen. Everything else was frozen in the kitchen but our spirits were kept sizzling hot by the solidarity we had for each other.

Last but not least, when the going gets really tough, good team members support each other despite the adversities and risks they have to take, even if it means compromising themselves.

After about six months in Bamyan, we had a shocking but pleasant surprise. A Japanese colleague of ours brought her baby boy from Japan to Bamyan. The whole adventure of how she managed to bring her baby there was a different story altogether. Suffice to say that her act was in breach of the United Nations’ employment contract. As an unaccompanied duty station, all staff were not allowed to bring their partners or children to Afghanistan, unless they were being employed by the UN or other organisations, in the case of their partners.

Being a single mother and combined with other undisclosed reasons, she had to bring her child there. We knew that it was not the best decision made, bringing a child to a war-zone country. However, we understood that whatever reason that had prompted her to do so must had been difficult and perhaps necessary.

In the end, what we did was to support her. We welcomed her baby into our humble home and treated him as if he was a part of the family. We were fully aware that if the baby was discovered by the UN authorities, we would all risk disciplinary action and our Japanese colleague, her job.

It hit upon us that it was difficult trying to conceal a baby in a small district like Bamyan. Eventually, our colleague had to pack her bag and leave the country but the memory of that moment we shared together will continue to stay with all of us for the rest of our lives.

Perhaps I would never get to experience such surreal circumstances again but I am fortunate enough to relive the joy of working in a team where all of us grow together and feed on each other’s enthusiasm, strength and encouragement to cross that finishing line.

The writer would like to dedicate this article to those working on the MyConstitution Campaign, as well as those who have been supportive and understanding of her during her moments of zombification and kelam-kabutness.

This article was first posted on The Malaysian Insider on 15 November 2009 under the same title.

The fight for justice

I used to work for the Presidential elections in Afghanistan and hence still have a lot of concerns and passion for the electoral operation there. In the midst of all the preparation for the Parliamentary Election in September 2005, I was filled with a sense of fear.

I chose not to renew my contract with the Joint Electoral Management Body (JEMB), a body which is part the UN and part the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) of Afghanistan, last year simply because of my intolerance towards the practices of nepotism and corruption within the electoral management in the region I was responsible for.

Despite a long and carefully articulated letter to the headquarters backed with facts and cases, my effort to make a change in the system fell on deaf ears.

The only response I received was, “You write beautifully!” which of course was an insult to me.

By then, I realised that nothing I did would ever change the system particularly when those who were in the position to make decisions did not seem to care much about the integrity of the process. I guess when you can’t beat them...my own position is not to join them.

This year, things are different although not without fear. I am finally a human rights officer being assigned to the Political Rights Verification Campaign (PRVC), a joint United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) and the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission project. The project is aimed at verifying whether there is a conducive environment for a free and fair election in Afghanistan.

In a country where intimidations from local commanders, anti-governmental entities, pro-Taliban supporters and corrupted senior governmental officials are just part of an Afghan’s daily affairs, it is indeed a very difficult operation but no doubt a much needed one.

From working for the election previously to assessing the credibility of the election, I was very excited.

It is my duty to collect information of those who violate the principles of non-intimidation, non-partiality and non-discrimination.

Thankfully the people I am working with are true human rights defenders with great principles and true sense of integrity. So, my work is not really something I fear for.

My fear is this. Given the new electoral system and laws, each province is given a specific number of seats depending on the size of the population.

According to the constitution and the electoral laws, women are required to fill at least 25 per cent of the total seats, which of course is a huge step for a country like Afghanistan. I doubt that women actually fill up more than 10 per cent of the parliamentary seats in all established democratic countries.

Due to the Single Non Transferable Vote (SNTV) electoral system, only independent candidates are allowed to contest in the elections and not political parties.

The candidates can belong to a specific political parties but he or she is not allowed to contest under the political party’s name.

With the recent completion of the candidate nomination period, the Joint Electoral Management Body (JEMB) has registered more than 6,000 candidates. There is yet a vetting process to be carried out in order to produce the final candidate roll.

The only criterion for a candidate to be deemed ineligible is if he or she has been or is convicted of a crime by a competent court. The culture of impunity is well known in Afghanistan due to the weakness of the rule of law institutions.

There are still many provincial courts in the country, which are not functioning at all due to the lack of qualified judges and prosecutors. Most judges are trained in the Sharia Law and have no in-dept knowledge of civil and criminal laws or procedures. In addition to that, the judiciary system is reputable for being corrupted.

Having said all this, it is not difficult to deduce that the vetting process for electoral candidates will not provide any impact and on the extreme, means nothing at all.

It has been more than a week since the end of the candidate nomination period and a few hundreds candidates have somehow gave up on the contest even before it has begun. There are only two explanations for this.

Firstly, some of the candidates must have been intimidated or threatened by stronger candidates backed by dominant political parties.

There have been many unverified reports of intimidation and self-censorship all over the regions and although the UN has no credible evidences to back these allegations up, nobody who has stayed in Afghanistan long enough will dispute them.

Secondly, due to the specific number of allocated seats, the exercise of “pre-selection” of candidates has taken place in many places. It is not difficult to assume that in certain regions or provinces, the political race will run along the line of ethnic groups.

For instance, in order to have “favoured” candidates win the election by default, it is logical to intimidate other candidates into withdrawing their nominations.

So, these are my fear. Sometimes I feel that my effort and time are wasted here. Many times I fear for the Afghans who truly want to see their children grow up in a peaceful country without intimidation or discrimination.

With the recent bombing and killings of innocent Afghans in a mosque in Kandahar, my fear becomes magnified. If the Afghans do not start to pick themselves up, I doubt anybody else could. Those who truly want to make a change are often being killed or terrorised.

How then, could things change? Am I deluded to believe that things will change for the better for these people?

Yes, these are the reasons why I have been asking myself what the hell am I doing here. And what makes me think twice to stay? As Andrew Beckett, a character played by Tom Hanks in Philadelphia said, “What I love most about the law? I love most about the law is because not often but very occasionally, you are a part of justice being done.”

So, what has kept me here despite being frustrated and disappointed, is that the little faith left in me says perhaps, just perhaps, I might be a part of justice being done in Afghanistan.

I finally left Afghanistan after living there for 2 years. Although I managed to survive a death threat, I eventually succumbed to eczema. Unfortunately, I felt that I have left without leaving much impact.

This was first published in The Malaysian Insider on 27 March 2010.

Why we should vote

This was first published on The Malaysian Insider on 28 November 2010.

Democracy is a powerful notion.

It allows; an octogenarian black woman, a single-mother working on double shifts, a 40 year-old unemployed college drop-out, a life-saving surgeon, a homeless war veteran with one arm, a 19 year-old exchange student in Europe, a young beautiful stripper, Joe the gay plumber and Mary the unhappy housewife; to choose who they want to run their country.

It is perhaps the only rare time when every single person, who has not relinquished his or her civil and political rights, will ever be treated equally. Think about it: is there any other time when everyone’s voices are valued and measured in the same manner regardless of their socio-economic background? And because of this power and the sanctity of it, the State will try its best to provide each and everyone the means to exercise this inalienable right to vote.

Photo above: Robin Carnahan, a Democrat candidate for the Missouri State House of Representatives lost in the recent Mid-Term election.

Democracy can be a dangerous notion.

In order to wipe out competition; political opponents, women candidates and pro-democratic mullahs are intimidated or killed. Women who decide to shed their proverbial and literal burqas in order to have their photographs laminated on their voter registration cards are being threatened to death or killed.

For the lucky ones who manage to emerge unscathed, they will walk miles and miles to the polling stations in the harsh winter climate wearing only inferior Croc-style shoes on their freezing feet and determination on their faces already showing signs of pre-mature aging.

I was fortunate enough to witness how democracy was carried out in the United States of America (USA) and Afghanistan. Although their spirits are as different as night and day, the essence of the notion remains the same. Hence, for the precise reason that democracy is such a powerful notion that many Afghans are being persecuted for embracing it. To me, this is the first reason why we should vote.

I love elections. There is nothing more exciting and inspiring than watching regular citizens from any given layer of society share one common belief that each of them has the opportunity to be a part of that intricate fabric that will one day adorn their government.

When I am at a polling station, I am amazed and comforted by the thought that no matter how insignificant one is in the scheme of things, his or her vote will be counted. No matter what the election outcome is, that person’s existence that day has mattered greatly. Sadly, it is too rare to witness such a sense of importance and purpose in regular people throughout our daily lives, but when such opportunity presents itself, it is truly an honour.

When my alarm clock went off at 4:30am on 2 November 2010, I jumped off my bed and was ready in advance of my 5:30am pick-up. John Chasnoff, the Programme Manager for the American Civil Liberties Union for Eastern-Missouri (ACLU, E-M) (insert hyperlink: http://www.aclu-em.org/), pulled up at the entrance of my hotel on South-Jefferson Avenue, St. Louis City, a few minutes after 5:30am.

Photo above: Volunteers at the legal command centre of St. Louis. It was still dark outside. Polling stations open at 6am in the United States on Election Day.

Photo above: Finally things got a bit more exciting as the day progressed. Volunteers gathered together to discuss a complaint.

It was still dark and the roads were completely deserted when we arrived at a Reformed Judaism temple serving as the legal command centre for St. Louis’s Voter Protection Programme (insert hyperlink: http://www.advancementproject.org/our-work/voter-protection) that day. The programme was run by Advancement Project with the help of a coalition of non-governmental organisations such as ACLU, National Disability Rights Network, etc.

We were greeted by Denise Lieberman, a civil rights lawyer, who had just arrived at the center with her arms full. I quickly established that she was the team leader as she wasted no time in turning on the lights and coffee machine, setting up the centre, getting someone to pick up assortments of bagels and cream cheeses and organising the volunteers who were beginning to trickle in to the centre.

Most volunteers were lawyers on standby to address complaints of electoral irregularities. The day started off slowly and I was beginning to feel convinced that voters in America do not need protection after all and the existence of such programme was merely a frivolity and not necessity.

Throughout my trip in the USA, I asked some Americans whether electoral fraud is a concern in the country. Most of them smiled politely as if it was the most ridiculous question they had ever heard. According to many, it would be extremely difficult but not impossible, to find someone trying to vote twice since the real challenge is actually to get more Americans to vote. Apparently, the USA is notoriously known for low voter turnout, except for the last Presidential election when throngs of young voters turned up to vote.

What intrigued me the most was the absence of photo ID as a requirement to vote. When I pressed on about how such a system could potentially become a target for abuse and fraud, most of them just shrugged and said, “You just need to trust.” It was my turn to smile politely.

While refilling my third cup of coffee that morning, I stroke up a conversation with another volunteer. According to him, many Americans do not have any form of photo identification since not all Americans possess a passport or driver’s license; the two most common documents with photos attached. As such, it makes it virtually impossible for the electoral law to include photo ID as a requirement to vote. He believes that one of the main reasons why some Americans make this into such a big issue is to prevent certain voters from voting for the opposition.

Sure enough, one of the complaints which subsequently came in that morning was of a polling officer who insisted that a voter must present a photo ID in order to vote. Later on, John and I were sent to a polling station to investigate a complaint against a Republican challenger who was allegedly telling polling officers that the voting machines were faulty and in order for a republican vote to be registered in the system, voters must press the button for the Republican candidate repetitively. Another complaint received was from a blind voter who was concerned that the polling officer might not have read out the whole list of candidates and propositions on the ballot paper.

Once we determined that the day was not going to get more exciting, John was ready to cast his vote at the polling station where he registered. As long as I am not John’s employer or labour union representative, I was allowed to accompany and assist him at the voting booth, in which I did. Since USA is pretty much a country that seems to rely heavily on trust, nobody bothered to question whether John genuinely needed my assistance in the first place. I also noticed that there was no police presence in most of the polling stations we went. The only time when we actually saw them was when they came to collect the ballot boxes.

 

Photo above: John Chasnoff distributing electoral materials at one of the polling stations. We had to make sure that we were at least 25 feet away from the entrance of the polling station. A voter arrived at the polling station with his granddaughter.

When I talked to John about my experience in Afghanistan as a Civic Education Officer and Political Rights Verification Officer, I was reminded of how different the atmosphere was on election day in Afghanistan. At the end of the day, we would have witnessed or received countless of reports on the number of fraud, intimidation and violence committed all over the country.

I think there are many reasons why some people do not vote. It could be because they have lost faith in the whole democratic process. It could also be because they do not know who to vote for or care enough for what the candidates stand for. It could be because they are not physically or mentally fit to vote. But there are also many who do not vote simply because they think their votes do not matter and election period is just another day for politicians to hurl malicious accusations at each other in public. For these people, here’s news for you.

Democracy is not free but often comes with a huge price. It is not handed down to us on a silver platter but one that is often filled with blood and difficult compromises. For many of us who live in relatively peaceful and politically stable countries, we have become myopic of how our fore parents had fought hard for it many years ago. It would appear that the more democratic a country is, the less interested her people are in her political affairs. For isn’t this the ugly side of human nature that it is when something is taken away from you that you will only come to value it the most?

So vote while you still have the right to do so.

The Media’s Role In Portraying Women And Building Negative Stereotypes

The shorter version of this article is published on Leaderonomics on 10 November 2017.

At a training-of-trainers workshop I attended, the participants were broken into groups of five and asked to present a 25-minute human rights training session targeting law students and young lawyers. We were encouraged to think outside the box by staying away from conventional lecture-style training model to promote effective learning of what is usually considered as a heavy subject.

Selecting a human rights topic was easy but deciding on the training style was much more challenging than I had anticipated. Being competitive, my group wanted to impress the trainers who would be assessing our performance. 

After brainstorming for hours, we decided on emulating a popular American talk show as the medium of training. The talk show host would be asking a panel consisting of four distinguished state representatives from Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, Australia and France respectively, on a specific issue that relates to freedom of expression. The purpose of selecting four culturally diverse countries was to illustrate the spectrum of the universality of human rights; i.e. how different countries in the world take into account local cultural influences when it comes to adopting universal human rights principles. 

The spectrum was represented by Saudi Arabia on the far left, being the most radical when it comes to defending cultural practices, to Malaysia and Australia in the middle, and finally France on the far right where cultural practices are often compromised to give way to universal human rights policies.

In the spirit of showmanship, we thought it was important for each role to be played out as convincingly as possible. As individuals, we ramped up our own performance by adopting the appropriate accents and mannerisms which we had identified of the respective nationalities.

When our turn came to present, we gave our best. I felt energised as I watched the participants laughed and applauded, clearly entertained by our performance. I was in high spirit when the participants gave glowing feedback, many of whom reported that the four state representatives’ viewpoints illustrated the spectrum effectively. 

Just as I thought we had nailed it, my ego was immediately deflated when the trainer delivered her assessment. She said it was extremely painful to watch us and was appalled by how we “poked fun” of the state representatives from Saudi Arabia and Malaysia by portraying them as “uneducated” and “unrefined” while the Australian and French, were depicted as “intelligent” and “progressive”. The trainer’s criticism of us was not on how we presented each country’s political views but on the way we played out the stereotypes we held for each character. She said as human rights defenders, we have the responsibility of not perpetuating negative stereotypes and must be critical of ourselves when developing content for public consumption.

I could sense a sudden shift in the training room’s atmosphere, from joyous euphoria to sombreness as we sat listening to the trainer’s critique. The immediate thoughts that came to my mind were, “how could I not have seen this?” and “what does that say about me as a human rights defender?” 

I understood instantly that our zealousness to deliver an entertaining performance (what the trainer termed as “gimmick”) had clouded my judgment.

Later, I talked to a colleague about this. We rationalised that a key factor of why we failed to recognise this faux pas is attributed to how we, as a society, have been exposed to these stereotypes through the media so much so we that we have become immune to them. If the trainer had not called out on us, we would have replicated the group assignment in a real training session, oblivious to the fact that we would have perpetuated these stereotypes to a group of young impressionable lawyers, who would then move on to ensure the cycle continues.

I went into detail about this story simply to illustrate how powerful visuals are when it comes to reinforcing stereotypes. So powerful that even people who are supposed to be the bulwarks of human rights values fall short in their quest for entertainment.  

The more constructive question to ask is this: if the media is so powerful, can it be used to reverse these stereotypes? Let’s examine how the media has been portraying images of women in the past decades. 

Most of us would have seen hundreds of advertisements on the newspaper, magazines, television and Internet. How often have we come across images of women posing with kitchen utensils, foodstuff, cleaning products, baby diapers, jewelleries, slimming supplements and beauty care? It seems that the media is convinced that women spend their lives cooking, cleaning, taking care of the baby, primping (and not forgetting longing for that diamond engagement ring), essentially reinforcing the gender stereotype of women being domesticated, materialistic and superficial.

Thankfully, women’s rights movements all over the world is slowly changing this by forcing the media to change the way they portray women. One of the best examples of this is Getty Image’s collaboration with Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In initiative in 2014. 

Getty Image is one of the biggest providers of stock photography with 2.4 million customers from across the world. This collaboration entails a Lean In Collection, containing more than 14,000 images of “female leadership and equal partnership in contemporary work and life”.

Scrolling through the collection, you will see photos of women of different ages, colours, shapes and sexual orientation performing various activities; working in different jobs, playing sports, leading group discussions, repairing machines, etc. Of course, there are still images of women as mothers, but they are often accompanied by their male partners, depicting a shared parenting lifestyle.

According to Getty Image, the top selling image of women in their library in 2007 was a naked woman under a towel. Ten years onward, it was an image of a solo woman hiking on a mountain, triggering key words like independence, power, confidence and freedom to viewers. 

One of the collaboration’s success indicators is a leap of 47% in search result for images of “female CEO” from last year. Combined with the democratisation of the media space made possible by the internet, Getty Image said that social media users are pushing marketers to portray people in more realistic and diverse ways, thus demanding brands to make women with diverse range of ages, appearances and abilities more visible.

How are we doing in Malaysia? While I do not have any data on photos of women being portrayed in the local media, a 2015 report conducted by the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) provided insights to how women are represented in the news.

In the report, several female journalists exposed the entrenched sexist culture practised by the local media when it comes to featuring stories on women. One recalled that whenever she proposed stories related to women, the immediate questions asked by her editor were, “Is the lady pretty? Is she sexy?” If her answer was no, her story pitch would be shot down no matter how interesting the subject was.

A female sub-editor said that discussions with her male editor and colleagues on health issues relating to breastfeeding would always turn sexual. What was most insulting to her was her editor’s decision to assign the story to her male colleague simply because he felt that a man would be able to create “excitement” to the story. 

The IFJ report states that the top four depictions of women in the Malaysian media was family figures at the top, followed by victims, sexual objects and lastly, leaders.

One way of reversing these negative gender stereotypes of women in the media is to have more women in the decision-making positions as the current media industry is overwhelmingly male-dominated. One journalist said, “If a woman’s issue is covered by the media, it is almost always from a patriarchal perspective, with little to no presence of a female voice or viewpoint. Instead, only superficial or scandalous stories related to women receive significant attention.” Another journalist said that this can be curbed “with women who have the authority to influence or over-rule questionable decisions based on gender bias.”

Drawing back to the earlier story I told, normalising stereotypes of any kind as result of media conditioning is dangerous because it stops us from seeing a person for who they are and instead, boxing them into specific identities often shaped by dominant power-holders such as men and the West. 

Thankfully, with the internet, printed media no longer monopolises social narratives and the younger generations are becoming more aware of rights-based values such as gender equality through more diversified information found online. Gone are the days when the onus remained on women’s group to call out on sexism in the media. For example, AirAsia had to remove a recent Facebook advertisement after being criticised by netizens for sexism. With this, hopefully our society will continue to push advertising companies to become more responsible and accountable.

Finally, while I was writing this article, I can’t help but wonder whether in our zealousness in reversing gender stereotypes, are we running into the danger of stripping away certain gender qualities such as the femininity of the female form or perhaps, asexualising women altogether? Should we create a society that would now perceive women who are homemakers or sexy as wrong? 

Betty Yeoh, a seasoned women’s rights activist said that the media does not need to go overboard portraying empowered women by making them dressed or behaved like men. She said the real danger is when the media shows women performing incredible multi-tasking as that will create unrealistic expectations on women.

In conclusion, the media must evolve with time. It needs to harness its power towards changing society’s perception of women and in doing so, must be sensitive enough to strike that balance of portraying women in more diversified roles and capacities. We are not saying that women should not be homemakers or be sexy, we are saying women can be anything they want to be.

Four ways regional engagement can benefit a human rights defender

Early last year, I disclosed to a small group of people at work how unstimulated I have become. One of the terrifying words I had used at a group coaching session was “blasé”. I used it to describe my inability to be moved by the things that are happening around me. Identifying the reasons why was not exactly rocket science.

I have been working in the same non-profit organisation in Malaysia for close to six years. Serving in a senior management position inevitably means most of my worries revolve around grant applications, financial management and human resource development. It was only a matter of time before I put my concern over how my organisation is going to survive another year of budget cuts first before addressing real human rights violations.

My biggest suspicion of the real culprit, though, was how my worldview has become so insular as a result of working and socialising with the same like-minded people in the past six years. So much so that I have hit a plateau where three other terrifying words reside: “unstimulated”, “unchallenged” and “cynicism”. They toast with Cosmopolitans every morning when happy hour starts as soon as my alarm goes off. As I hit the snooze button and toss over, they plot against each other, competing to see who wins that morning.

Some days, they all win.

While these demons fight amongst themselves, I soon learned that another terrifying word (perhaps most terrifying of them all) has slowly crept in. It wasn’t until last July when I attended the internet governance workshop for women human rights defenders (WHRDs) organised by the Association for Progressive Communications (APC) and the Asia Pacific Regional Internet Governance Forum (APrIGF) 2016 in Taipei, that I began to realise that I could be harbouring a dangerous word within me – “radicalism”. The thought that “this is my view and since everyone around me agrees with me, therefore it must be the only right view to have” is unfortunately what many human rights defenders have succumbed to, without realising it. (Thank you, Jac sm Kee, for articulating this at one of your panel sessions at the APrIGF on radicalisation of the internet and how to counter online extremism.)

My worldview was rocked momentarily when more than 20 WHRDs from Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, the Philippines and Malaysia gathered for two days at the APC workshop to discuss how internet freedom is experienced and applied in the context of gender, which was then used by APC as an advocacy strategy at the APrIGF.

This experience was illuminating to say the least. Something I have always suspected about what has been missing in my work life but never confronted finally hit me – the joy and fulfilment of working with people from other countries.

I am forever grateful to EMPOWER for extending the invitation to my organisation to attend the workshop and forum, as it came at a time when I needed a stimulation boost. Although this blog post speaks of only four of the many ways I have benefited from my time in Taipei, I hope it is useful for other activists who may be going through the same phase as I am.

1. Being challenged by new people outside my own circle

Working in the field of human rights since 2000 would probably qualify me as an “old timer”. Most of my human rights knowledge and skills were first honed from an academic and Western Eurocentric perspective in the late 1990s. Most of my peers come from more or less the same background.

At the internet governance workshop, I met many WHRDs whom I would term as a “new breed” of human rights defenders – activists who see rights and freedom as absolute and any form of protectionism or restriction is to be rejected. I can understand why, because many come from a place of complete distrust for governments and state actors. Their unbridled idealism and passion amazed me and they forced me to ask myself whether I am outdated in my own understanding of human rights and its philosophy.

I may not have succumbed to this school of thought yet, but it shows me how important it is to engage with younger human rights defenders regularly to nurture and grow my worldview of human rights.

2. Being inspired by people who are optimistic and see the glass as being half full

I often feel beat, beaten and bitter. Lately, it has become more bitter than anything else. Bitter for working hard yet not having a secure retirement plan, and then resenting myself for feeling bitter about it.

At the workshop, it was refreshing to meet young women who aren’t burnt out, cynical or believe that the United Nations is an ineffective institution. They have energy, passion and thirst for a better world, and they are infectious too.

3. Being humbled by strong women who are working in worse conditions

Sometimes, it is easy to feel like I am the only person who is doing good when other people have failed to deliver on their promises and deadlines. The feeling of being a rescuer and victim all at the same time can certainly put me in a self-pitying but arrogant place where I’m convinced that I am the only person who has made sacrifices while the rest are doing nothing.

Guess what? After talking to the women from India and Pakistan, it dawned on me that what I’ve done so far and the challenges I’ve faced are nothing in comparison. NOTHING.

4. Learned new skills and strategies

I begin to see why donors are keen on local organisations that do regional engagement. At the APCworkshop, I picked up a few new strategies from the group of regional WHRDs on how to advocate issues at the APrIGF. The level of focus, direction, organisation and dedication these women demonstrated made me see what is lacking in some of the local NGOs in Malaysia. At the end of the day, it is easy for NGOs to want to do something, but it is the mapping out of the direction and actually going down the road map that is the challenge where many NGOs have failed.

Watching and learning these skills and strategies from other people confirm how little I know and how much more I have to learn, and here’s when I start to feel a little challenged.

*This post was written for the Association for Progressive Communications (APC) on 5 Sep 2016. The original post can be found here.

"Don't let your friends come. Don't want your friend to go through all this."

My first memory of her was how small she was.  Her pale and blemish-free skin looked as if they had not seen a day of light. Her colour-treated hair was always held back neatly in a high ponytail.

She was well-groomed as how aestheticians should be - her eyebrows were shaped perfectly and her eyes enhanced with kohl and eye shadow. I was pretty sure I had the right visual when her name was brought up by Megan, my aesthetician.

"Poor Kathy. She looked the type who never had to do a day of hard labour.  This must be really hard for her," I said to Megan. I was lying flat on my back with my eyes closed while Megan performed my monthly facial treatment in her home in Petaling Jaya.

I normally loath the idea of participating in perfunctory conversations with my hairdresser and manicurist but for some reason, I like talking to Megan. Perhaps she comes across as someone who is sincere and not exploitative like many other professionals relying on commission.  That day's conversation was particularly interesting and I couldn't take my mind off it.

"She told me that short of being whipped and chained at the ankles, it was exactly like those slaves you watch on the movies. I mean, can you imagine this happening now?" I could sense repulsion in Megan's voice as she moved on to give me a shoulder massage while the mask on my face slowly hardened.

Kathy and Megan used to work together at a beauty spa in an affluent neighbourhood in Kuala Lumpur. I got to know Megan when I used to patron the spa and she was my aesthetician.

Slightly more than a year ago, Megan made a leap of faith by leaving the spa to set up her own beauty parlour at home. She said she had enough of slogging away six days a week for someone else.

Her former boss used to go around asking all the commissioned aesthetician what they thought of the five-digit Rolex watch she had just bought on a shopping trip to Hong Kong.

I left the spa and followed her.

The conversation about Kathy came about when I asked Megan whether she had heard of those farming programmes in Australia where people go pick strawberries and apples. "They seem to be really popular," I said.

She gave my face a quick inspection after she completed her usual cleansing routine. "You're not getting enough sleep and you need to drink more water," she said before she proceeded to answer my question. "Uh-huh. Why? Are you interested?"

"Oh no. I have a friend who's thinking of taking a year off from work to do this. Someone else I know wants to do the same thing too. It's just funny that two people said the same thing to me in less than a month." I grimaced as she extracted the acnes on my forehead.

"Do you remember Kathy? She was one of the aestheticians at the spa. The really small girl, fair skin? She's working in a strawberry farm in Australia now."

I was expecting Megan to tell me how Kathy was enjoying the farm fresh air and stuffing herself with strawberries as big as cikus while plucking them. I was wrong because for the next hour or so, Megan revealed the harrowing story of how her friend had left Malaysia to work like a slave in a foreign country.

According to Megan, Kathy left with a group of friends. She wasn't alone. Like Megan, Kathy was probably fed-up with her work at the beauty spa and wanted something more lucrative.

An agent told them they could each easily earn RM10,000 a month by just picking fruits from a farm in Australia. Such opportunity seemed too good to pass and they weren't really convinced until they were shown photos of the farm and accommodation. Everything looked lovely and sounded easy.

Working in Australia meant they had to obtain a working visa and this was where the agent came in. Apparently, each of them paid about RM7,000 to the agent to sort out their paperwork.

It seems that a few days before they were to depart to Australia, they were told that their working visas were not ready and they would have to leave on a tourist visa while their agent would continue to work on getting them the correct paperwork.

Perhaps they did not want to waste their plane tickets or perhaps they did not want to postpone an opportunity for a good income, as many of them had by then presumably quit their jobs and were left with no income. I could only presume such an investment might have cost some of them their life savings.

Whatever reason it was, they left for Australia more than four months ago. Before leaving, they were told to delete the agent's phone numbers from their phones.

"Kathy told me she has muscular legs and her skin is tanned now. She said she's ugly now. She has to squat on her feet to pluck strawberries for about ten hours a day without much break and under the hot sun. She sent me photos of the farm and you can't see the end of the strawberry beds. It's that far. She said it's very tough for her. She cried every night for a month when she first started," Megan told me. "Kathy said she never thought something like this would ever happen to her."

I know.  Normally you only hear of such abuses happening to Cambodians, Indonesians and Burmese. Not Malaysians.

Kathy told Megan that when they arrived at the farm after hours of driving from the city, they were brought to their accommodation. They were shocked by the condition of the place.

It was filthy, smelly and filled with all sorts of junk. It was obvious that decent living condition wasn't part of the deal. They spent days cleaning and clearing up the space to make it habitable. By then, the thought of being victims of a scam had slowly crept in since the reality of the place did not match the photos that were shown to them back at home.

For the first month or so, they could not pick the strawberries because it wasn't time for harvesting yet and because they would only be paid for each basket of fruits picked, they were not able to earn any income right away.

On top of that, they had to pay for their own lodging and food. Apparently, mattresses were rented out at A$3 per night by the farm owner. Kathy said that this information was never disclosed to them by their agent. With no income, their expenses accumulated quickly and soon enough, they found themselves in debt. On a tourist visa.

"Why don't they report this?!" I sounded angry and to be honest, a tad judgmental.

"Kathy said she doesn't want trouble. In the beginning, when they complained to the owner, he told them that they are free to go as long as they pay off their debts. Kathy said she has no choice but to wait and pick as much fruits as she can so that she can earn some money, clears her debt and leaves the farm. Also many of her friends want to earn back the money they had spent to pay the agent," Megan said.

"Kathy told me that most of the workers there are Malaysian, Chinese and Thai. Apparently, the owner doesn't want to take anyone from Hong Kong because they are known to be vocal and they will stand up and fight. You knowlah, we Malaysians are quite submissive. Always too scared to cause trouble."

I couldn't help but think that the combination of not wanting to worry her family and the fear of humiliation and being judged by them could partly be some of the reasons why Kathy had kept this from the authorities. I wondered whether I would have done the same if I was stuck in a situation like this.

Before we ended my facial session, I asked Megan to get information from Kathy on the agent and the farm. "I want to warn my friends about them," I said. Megan nodded in understanding.

On the same night while at home on the internet, I found out that the Australian High Commission is aware of such scam. They had posted a warning against fruit picking/harvesting scam on their website.

According to them, you can detect a scam if you are promised a quick working visa, if you receive an email (especially one that does not address you specifically) offering you either a guaranteed income or job, if a job advertisement requires you to send a fee to receive your start-up materials, if an advertisement only gives you a post office box address, and if the fruits do not coincide with the harvesting season.

Later that night, I received a message from Megan. Kathy had given her some vague information on the agent and the address of the farm, which appears to be situated in Western Australia. No useful information turned up when I did a search of the agent's company and the farm address on the internet.

Before I called it a night, I received another message from Megan. It read "Kathy said don't let your friend come. Don't want your friend to go through all this."

If you suspect you might have been a victim of such scam, please report to the local police or at www.scamwatch.gov.au.

*All names have been altered to protect the identity of the individuals mentioned on this article.

11 private information that should not appear on your resume

Malaysians have a tendency of offering too many private information on their résumé without realising that in this instance, less is really more.

It is one thing to write pages after pages of academic qualifications and work experiences that are irrelevant to the job you are applying to, it is quite another when you give away personal details which may do you more harm than good.

Just like how lawyers who often prep their clients to refrain from talking too much while being interrogated by the police lest they give away potentially incriminating information, this is the same.


The more personal details you offer, the more you are exposing yourself to the possibility of being discriminated. A racist employer is likely to toss away your résumé without even looking at your qualifications if he or she knows you are of that particular race he or she finds undesirable.

Here are 11 private information you should not give away in your CV:

1. Photograph

Why would a photo of yourself be relevant unless it is a headshot for an acting role you are applying to in an entertainment industry? Your photo will also give away clues such as your race, gender and religion and let’s not even start on employers who have the tendency to hire based on looks.

2. Race

Apart from the obvious reason of subjecting yourself to racial-discrimination, there are employers who get completely put off by applicants who feel the need to reveal their race and/or religion. They wonder whether these said applicants are hoping that they would be racially-biased enough to select them for being the “right” race. 

3. Religion

Unfortunately in Malaysia, just your name itself is often enough to give-away your racial identity.

4. Gender

Unless the job you are applying to can justify why it is necessary to be gender-specific, there is really no need for the company or organisation to know what gender you are.

5. Date of birth

Someone said this, “Hiring managers need to know what you can do for them, not how many years you have managed to stay alive.” Unless you really want to be discriminated for your age, this information is completely redundant.

6. National registration identity card (NRIC) number

Malaysia is a country obsessed with NRIC number. Whatever registration forms you fill, may it be for a membership programme offered by a pet shop, or a package you bought at a health spa, you are asked for your NRIC number.

So much so that many Malaysians think it is perfectly alright to give away this private security number to anyone.

Please don’t because not only are you exposing yourself to the possibility of being a victim of identity theft, there is absolutely no need for these pet shops or health spas to have this information.

They have absolutely no right whatsoever to have this private data of yours.

7. Height

Same as number 1. And frankly, whatever for?

Note: Some studies have shown that taller people are more likely to secure a job than those who are vertically challenged.

8. Weight

Same as above.

Note: The same studies above have also shown how thin people are more likely to secure a job than those who are overweight.

9. Marital and family status

It used to be the case many years ago when employers assumed that a married woman with children could not be relied upon to do the job because “having a husband and children means they are not able to dedicate their lives to the company.”

Things have changed for the better albeit slowly as we see more and more family women in the work force. However, please note that these are some of the information an employer should never ask at an interview.

10. Home address

Well, for the fact that it is private information and it concerns your private security.

11. Political affiliation

Kudos, so you know you are entitled to have a political opinion and association, but does your potential employer know that?

In a country where expression of political views can be so sensitive and controversial, the chances of having an employer who tolerates or understands the importance of your political participation are very low.

Anyway, while everyone is entitled to political association, your political activities should never interfere with your job. So why should this information be relevant?

Finally, you should know that having the perfect résumé may not secure you a job because you can still screw up an interview.

The hiring manager may still judge you unfairly upon learning all sorts of things from you at the interview.

The sole purpose of making sure your résumé is free from any potentially-discriminatory information is to ensure that you are entitled to any job opportunity based on your qualifications and on an equal footing right from the start. 

There are only three personal information which are relevant and useful in a résumé. They are your name, telephone and email address because the only thing the employer needs to know is how to contact you if they want to interview you. That’s all.

This was first published here.