Malaysia

Last month, this Leader asked a pertinent question: Is the world serious about global warming? It does not believe so, because after much deliberation about what needs to be done, pretty much everything has remained the same.

Climate scientists have warned that efforts to limit global warming must be done now if we want to avoid a future of extreme droughts, wildfires, floods, tropical storms and other disasters.

We are already experiencing some of the disasters, the current Covid-19 pandemic, notwithstanding. Look around us.

BBC reports that at least 120 people have died and hundreds more in western Europe are unaccounted for after some of the worst flooding in decades.

Record rainfall caused rivers to burst their banks, devastating the region. The death toll in Germany and Belgium continues to climb. The Netherlands, Luxembourg and Switzerland are not spared.

Elsewhere in Turkey, more than 200 wildfires burnt 1,600 square kilometres of its forest in its Mediterranean region between last month and this month. The country’s leaders say it is the worst ever wildfire season in Turkey’s history. If all these are not indicators of climate change, what are they?

On Monday, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released the first part of its Sixth Assessment Report, Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis. The outlook is grim. The report warned the world was on course to reach 1.5°C of warming around 2030.

It said “the climate crisis is not only here, it is growing increasingly severe”. World leaders, green groups and influencers, according to news wires, reacted to the report “with a mix of horror and hopefulness”. The 3,500-page report is the first major review of the science of climate change since 2013.

Its release comes less than three months before the key climate summit, COP26, in Glasgow. The world needs to “cool down”. Governments need to mobilise experts in all fields to respond and give ideas about tackling climate change, and it must be done now. What has been done? Have current efforts met their objective? Admittedly, not enough, given the IPCC report.

Malaysia, too, needs to do more. Reportedly, Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin, when chairing the first meeting of the Malaysian Climate Change Action Council in April, said Malaysia would participate in carbon trading systems, but not allow them to affect the country’s own greenhouse gas emissions commitment.

Another development is the green recovery plan in which Malaysia becomes a green economy, services and technology leader, while fostering healthy green lifestyles in all walks of life.

Enough said. If there is one thing that Covid-19 has taught us, it’s that it requires global solutions. The Covid-19 crisis will not be resolved until all countries bring the pandemic under control through widespread vaccination, just as the climate crisis will not be solved until all countries swing into action.

UN secretary-general António Guterres said: “If we combine forces now, we can avert climate catastrophe.” The world was not prepared when the Covid-19 pandemic struck and how, in less than two years, it engulfed us and altered the pace, fabric and nature of our lives. The global death toll is devastating. We cannot afford another pandemic — climate change — which will change the world forever. We have been warned.

This editorial published by the New Straits Times, has been shared as part of World News Day 2021, a global campaign to highlight the critical role of fact-based journalism in providing trustworthy news and information in service of humanity. #JournalismMatters.

CLIMATE anxiety is real – and it’s going to get far worse according to the latest report published by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a body of scientists backed by the United Nations.

The report, approved by 195 governments in a virtual meeting early this month and based on more than 14,000 studies, confirms that the world is surely and irrevocably warming – even though some politicians and industrialists may still deny it.

More alarming is that, as the IPCC report points out, even if governments were to drastically and immediately cut carbon emissions today, we can no longer stop global warming from intensifying over the next 30 years.

Total global warming, says the report, is likely to rise by around 1.5°C within the next two decades and along with that hotter future comes its attendant effects.

This means that heatwaves, such as the one that slammed into the Pacific North-West of Canada and the United States and sent temperatures into the high 40s a few months ago, as well as wildfires in Europe, Nordic countries and Siberia, and deluges in Germany and China will become more frequent.

The most damning aspect of the IPCC report, however, is that humans are the only ones to be blamed for this hot mess we’re in, with the rise in global average temperatures being driven by countries burning fossil fuels, clearing forests and spewing greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and methane into the air.

If that isn’t enough, a paper recently published in the Nature Climate Change journal suggests that a crucial ocean circulation system in the Atlantic called the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (MOC), which helps to stabilise the climate in Europe, is showing signs of slowing down.

Although it is yet to be established if this is linked to climate change, the slowing, if proven true, further imperils the state of our planet.

In the words of the United Nations secretary-general António Guterres, this is nothing less than a “code red for humanity”.

Apocalypse now?

While Malaysia seems to have escaped for now much of the heat-induced stress – the south-west monsoon is even wetter this year so we are not expecting to see haze from Indonesia – global warming will affect Malaysia.

This is because much of the weather in Malaysia, particularly Peninsular Malaysia, is influenced by the monsoon system.

Universiti Malaya climate expert Prof Datuk Dr Azizan Abu Samah says Malaysia is on a maritime continent, an important component of the whole global circulation heat engine.

“We are also influenced by what happens – not only in the Northern Hemisphere, especially during the north-east Monsoon, but also by the Southern Hemisphere related to the south-west monsoon.

“So any warming or cooling in the mid-latitudes, especially during the Northern Hemisphere or Southern Hemisphere’s winter, will have an impact in weakening or strengthening our monsoons,” he says in an interview last week.

Should this happen, it will have an effect on the biological productivity of the Bay of Bengal and South China Sea, which are very much influenced by the monsoon.

Normally, a tropical ocean is less productive biologically compared with the colder oceans in the midlatitudes and polar regions – except for the Bay of Bengal and the South China Sea.

“This (effect on the monsoon) will have a grave consequence for the fisheries and the region’s food security,” explains Prof Azizan, pointing out that the marine ecosystem in these areas is already under stress from overfishing.

“Global warming will further stress these seas and the ecosystems,” he adds.

Prof Azizan, who is from UM’s Institute of Ocean and Earth Sciences, says being in the humid tropics, he does not anticipate prolonged drought in Malaysia, such as that experienced by northern Australia that is associated with the El Niño-Southern Oscillation or Enso.

“We may have a few weeks without rain around February which is our normal drier period. This will be further enhanced if Enso is also present,” he says.

However, Prof Azizan points out that in a warmer world, the atmosphere will be able to store more water vapour, usually translating to stronger thunderstorms and more rainfall.

“Depending on the duration of the rain, this can result in frequent flash floods or, if the duration is longer, river flooding (akin to) the 2014 flood,” he says.

The 2014 flood, which affected over 200,000 people and killed 21, devastated parts of Kelantan, Terengganu and Pahang on the East Coast, as well as other states.

It also damaged infrastructure, including homes, highways and rail lines, to the tune of billions of ringgit.

The stronger monsoon in the region is the north-east monsoon, which lasts from November to February and is also the time of heavy rain for Peninsular Malaysia.

Most weather models, says Prof Azizan, are predicting a weaker north-east monsoon and a stronger south-west monsoon from global warming.

“That is why regionally, they are predicting that Indonesia south of the equator will experience a drier climate in the future due to a weakened north-east monsoon,” he says.

Melting pot

While the present IPCC report approximates a sea rise level of about 3.2mm per year from glaciers melting in Greenland and the Antarctic continent, many glaciologists, says Prof Azizan, feel this to be an underestimation.

He says there are two components to rising sea level, one which is about 50% due to water expansion as ocean temperatures rise, and the other is from glacier melting.

“However, many Antarctic glaciologists think that this (the IPCC forecast) is an underestimate due to the rapid melting of the West Antarctic ice shelf that is now unstable.

“This may contribute a further 7m of sea level rise if all of the West Antarctic ice shelf were to melt away,” he says.

Also being threatened are the mangroves, seagrass and coral species along Malaysia’s coastlines – already these are under stress from development and, before the days of Covid-19, overtourism. 

Such damage basically leaves the country’s coasts “naked” and vulnerable to floods and erosion.

Pointing out that Malaysia is a “mega biodiversity region”, Prof Azizan says this area hosts about 70% of the world’s mangrove, coral and seagrass species.

“So our ocean is an important biodiversity refugia that is under threat from global ocean warming and acidification.

“While we tend to focus on conserving our terrestrial biodiversity like our rainforests, it is our ocean that plays an important refugia for global ocean biodiversity.”

(Refugia refers to an area in which organisms can survive unfavourable conditions, especially glaciation.)

Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia’s climatologist Prof Dr Fredolin Tangang, who authored a number of scientific papers cited in the IPCC report, says it does not specifically provide information on the future climate of a particular country.

However, he says that “Malaysia is projected to experience increased extreme climate events in future: “These include more heatwaves, more droughts and floods as well as rising sea levels in decades to come if there is no deep cut to greenhouse gas emissions soon,” he says.

Prof Fredolin is the review editor for Chapter 10 of the IPCC report as well as a contributing author of the Atlas Chapter.

Lest any climate sceptic tries to throw doubt on the report, Prof Fredolin says it represents a credible body of scientific evidence on the climate system that is based on a comprehensive and holistic, open, robust and transparent assessment of related published literature, involving over 1,000 authors and editors.

Although the Nature Climate Change paper was not assessed in the IPCC report having been published recently, Prof Fredolin believes that the collapse of the MOC will likely trigger an abrupt change in regional weather, including Malaysia’s, which is regulated by the monsoon cycle.

“I believe there is no particular paper addressing how this affects climate in Malaysia but this would be an interesting issue to investigate,” he says.

However, Prof Azizan believes that changes in the Atlantic will have only an indirect impact on Malaysia.

“The more direct impact will be changes in the Pacific and also the Indian oceans.”

No more talking shop

With slightly more than two months to go before the Glasgow Climate Change Conference at the end of October, the IPCC report has upped public expectation for the thousands of negotiators, politicians and diplomats to at last come to an understanding.

However, despite the fact that humanity’s survival depends on it and despite high hopes and criticisms, each time the conference has a dismal record of not performing up to expectations.

Should an effective agreement fail to materialise from Glasgow, current policies being pursued by governments will likely push warming up by 3°C by the end of the century, warns the IPCC report. In contrast, the goal of the much hailed Paris Agreement of 2015 has been to limit global warming to well below 2°C or preferably 1.5°C compared with preindustrial levels.

“The current pledges under the Paris Agreement won’t be able to cap the warming under 1.5°C and 2°C. More impact from extreme climate is expected in future decades,” agrees Prof Fredolin.

The report, he adds, also indicated that without deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, the Paris Agreement’s 1.5°C threshold is projected to be breached between 2021 and 2040 – likely in 2030 – and 2°C in 2050.

However, scientists behind the IPCC report believe there is still a chance to avoid the more harrowing effects of global warming by preventing the planet from getting even hotter.

According to the report, if a coordinated effort among countries can head off CO2 emissions by 2050 by moving away from fossil fuels and removing carbon from the atmosphere, this will allow global warming to likely halt at the level of around 1.5°C.

Failure is not an option because as many of the young climate strikers like to remind us – there is no Planet B.

Eye on the future

Malaysia’s main priority now, according to Prof Azizan, is to plan a more climate-resilient, sustainable socioeconomic strategy.

“This is to anticipate a soft landing for our nation and region in the future as the world warms up,” he says.

He argues that even if Malaysia is not a major emitter of greenhouse gas, the existing greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere have already locked in a future global warming of 1°C to 2°C.

“So the question is more about how much warming is acceptable to maintain our status quo without any major climate shift and to maintain the ecosystem that we are familiar with or adapted to,” he says.

The 10 biggest emitters of greenhouse gases (in descending order) are China, the United States, the European Union, India, Russia, Japan, Brazil, Indonesia, Iran and Canada.

Prof Fredolin says given the fact that Malaysia’s emissions contribute less than 1% to total global emissions, the focus should be on adaptation measures in increasing climate resilience.

“Having said this, of course, the country should enhance mitigation measures consistent with what is required by the Paris Agreement.”

Both Prof Fredolin and Prof Azizan agree on one thing: the country has to quickly come up with a national adaptation plan or strategy.

While Environment and Water Ministry secretary-general Datuk Seri Zaini Ujang told The Star in April that the government is coming up with specific legislation and policies to tackle climate change, there is currently no national adaptation plan.

“We need to look into water and food security strategies, using the climate scenarios of a warmer world,” says Prof Azizan, suggesting that Malaysia uses the Enso as a natural scenario to study how the ecosystem responds and from this, plan how coastal, rural and urban areas can adapt to changes.

Malaysia, he points out, needs to plan up to 30 years into the future.

“This is so that we can slowly build the necessary investment and governance structure at the macro level based on a number of scenarios – from optimal to a worst case scenario – and test how our ecosystem and socioeconomic system adapt.

“The bottom line is the world is getting warmer and we have no choice but to plan for it so that we can avoid a climate crisis in the future.”

This story, originally published by the The Star, has been shared as part of World News Day 2021, a global campaign to highlight the critical role of fact-based journalism in providing trustworthy news and information in service of humanity. #JournalismMatters. 

In a crowded shopping mall in Kuala Lumpur, 16-year-old Shirley* (not her real name) met with two men she had never seen in her life. They gave her a flight ticket to Hong Kong, and RM2,000 (US$474.32) in spending money. A friend she had met on Facebook, 15 years old at the time, had arranged the trip, telling her it was a free holiday. He had gone several times before, and even brought souvenirs back for her.

On the morning of her flight, one of the men showed up again and gave her and another fellow traveller a pair of shoes each. They were asked to wear them to Hong Kong.

Hours later, her life as she knew it was over. After arriving at Hong Kong International Airport, she was picked out for a body search, and 700g of heroin were found in the soles of the shoes.

In the past year, nearly 30 young Malaysians – some still teenagers – have been arrested in Hong Kong for being drug mules on behalf of international syndicates; and experts say the arrest numbers are just a fraction of those who actually make it through.

For Shirley’s parents back in Malaysia, the nightmare was only just beginning. For nearly two months, they had no idea what had happened to her. The last time they saw Shirley, their only child, she was begging them to let her go to Hong Kong with her friends. She was only supposed to be gone for three days.

Her parents searched everywhere – the airport, the police, hospitals – and found nothing. They couldn’t eat or sleep, and yet, as the owners of a small business, they had to continue working each day to survive.

And then came a phone call which gave them fear and relief in equal measure. It was from Hong Kong Correctional Services – their daughter was facing over 20 years in prison on drug trafficking charges. Ever since that moment, Shirley’s parents have been working frantically and desperately to prove their daughter’s innocence. But Shirley is not alone.

In the past year, nearly 30 young Malaysians – some still teenagers – have been arrested in Hong Kong for being drug mules on behalf of international syndicates; and experts say the arrest numbers are just a fraction of those who actually make it through.

With drug production in South-East Asia’s infamous “Golden Triangle” region hitting record highs in the past year, the number of mules being recruited to transport drugs could grow even higher across Asia, and Malaysia – the region’s low-cost airline hub – appears to be the perfect transit country.

Drug syndicates operating in Malaysia have been using Facebook pages and WeChat groups with devastating effect, luring impressionable young people with “paid holidays” (like the one Shirley went for) or part-time courier jobs. Some openly say the job involves drugs.

If the mules get arrested, they are left to rot in prison while the syndicates get off scot-free. All communications are done using fake profiles on chat apps, so the recruiters can’t be traced.

After receiving a tip-off from a lawyer and a prison chaplain in Hong Kong, investigative journalists from R.AGE started looking into this increase in drug mule activity and working with the families of the arrested mules to find out more about the syndicates. Through its investigations in Malaysia and Hong Kong alone, the journalists were able to uncover syndicates which were sending mules to Vietnam, China, South Korea, Taiwan, the Middle East, Australia, and even as far as Brazil and Peru.

The team then went undercover, posing as potential drug mules to meet with the syndicates’ recruiters, in hopes of exposing their tactics – which range from friendly recruitment to brutal physical force. Little did they know, their investigations would eventually help expose a dangerous drug trafficking network, with connections to a dealer in Hong Kong.
But it all started with a series of prison visits in Hong Kong.

Shirley, now 18, told R.AGE her story from behind a glass panel at a Hong Kong prison. She was supposed to be graduating high school this year. Her Facebook page is full of photos of her and her friends from school. None of them know what happened. Only her parents and a few close relatives were clued in.

“I told her not to go,” said Shirley’s mother, her voice trembling as she spoke from their home, in a small town two hours south of Kuala Lumpur.

They haven’t moved anything in Shirley’s room, the bigger of the two rooms in their home. It’s also the only one with a window, so the parents offered it to her. “She’s such a sweet child – her grandmother’s favourite, and popular with all her schoolmates – but she started mixing with these ‘friends’ on Facebook, and now they’ve ruined her life.

“She begged me to let her go with them. I felt bad because we never had the money to bring her for a holiday overseas, but I still said no. In the end, we just couldn’t stop her,” said the mother.

Her parents, too, had never been on a plane. Despite surviving on a combined RM3,000 a month, they spent almost all their savings making two trips to see Shirley in Hong Kong, desperate to find evidence that could help her case before she is sentenced.

“I can’t sleep. I can’t eat. I just cry myself to sleep every night thinking about her,” said the mother. “Just one trip – her first time on a plane,” said her father ruefully. “Look what it has done to us.”

“I believe I was set up (to be arrested),” said Shirley. “I was the one to take the fall. Why else would they only plant 700g on me? That seems like a very small amount.”

Shirley has not heard from the 15-year-old friend who recruited her. He was on the same trip, but on an earlier flight. As far as she knows, he’s back in Malaysia, safe and sound. Other mules tell us it’s a common diversionary tactic – keep the authorities busy with one or two arrests, while the majority pass through.
“I believe I was set up (to be arrested),” said Shirley. “I was the one to take the fall. Why else would they only plant 700g on me? That seems like a very small amount.”

Proving that in court, however, seemed an almost impossible task for her parents. The syndicate had burned all traces of their involvement, and the parents didn’t have enough money to hire a lawyer.

Although Shirley eventually pleaded guilty to avoid trial, the group of undercover journalists’ investigation behind this story put a dent in local drug syndicates’ operations by exposing their mule recruitment methods.Their work has helped raise awareness about Father John Wotherspoon’s work, a prison chaplain from Hong Kong on a mission to expose drug mule recruiters in Malaysia before they ruin any more lives. With the help of corroborative intel from Father Wotherspoon and families of incarcerated drug mules, a drug lord dubbed as Shanker was detained under the Special Preventive Measures by narcotics officers in February.

Another three senior figures in his syndicate were arrested as well. However, much remains to be done, like many others the teenage recruiter who made Shirley a drug mule is still at large.

* All names have been changed to protect the identity of the families involved.

This story by Ian Yee and Shanjeev Reddy was originally published by R.AGE, the Star on June 24.

As the world awakens to the enormity of the plastic waste crisis, Malaysia’s Yeo Bee Yin has emerged as one of Southeast Asia’s most vocal champions for biodegradable plastics and a new circular economy.

Earlier this year, the Minister of Energy, Science, Technology, Environment and Climate Change (MESTECC), together with her inspection team, discovered 450 tonnes of contaminated, low-quality plastic waste that was brought into the country illegally in shipping containers.

The containers, Yeo said, had originated from Australia, the United States, Canada, Saudi Arabia, Japan, China and Bangladesh, and were en route to illegal recycling facilities in Malaysia to be processed in an environmentally unsafe manner. Yeo estimated that they would find 3,000 tonnes of plastic waste once all the containers were inspected.

“Although people have started to segregate their waste, 90 per cent of the plastic waste in the world is actually not recycled,” Yeo shared with Asian Scientist Magazine from her office in Putrajaya, the government district south of the capital city of Kuala Lumpur.

“Instead, this waste goes from developed countries to developing countries like Malaysia, and ends up being dumped in some way or recycled in illegal factories.”

REPLACE, THE FOURTH ‘R’

While plastics account for only 10 per cent of the total waste humans generate, they constitute approximately 90 per cent of all trash floating on the ocean’s surface, equivalent to 46,000 pieces of plastic floating on every square mile, says the United Nations Environment Program.

At the current rate, a 2016 report from the World Economic Forum estimated that plastics will outweigh all the fish in the ocean by 2050. And since it is impossible to rid the oceans of plastic waste and microplastics, the problem needs to be tackled at the source.

Since being sworn into office on July 2, 2018, Yeo has made plastic pollution a key policy focus. Besides plastic straws — 500 million of which are used every single day in the US alone — the problem also includes disposable plastic bottles, packaging, construction materials and other industrial uses of plastic.

“The only thing we cannot do is say, ‘there are problems to the solution, let’s go back to business as usual,’ because you already know business as usual will not be sustainable in the future for Malaysia, and for the world,” Yeo said.

Malaysia is ranked 8th in mismanaged plastic waste, behind China in first place, Indonesia in second place and the Philippines in third place, according to a study published in the journal Science in 2015. This statistic has not gone unnoticed by Yeo, who, on October 31, 2018, announced a 12-year roadmap and legal framework towards eliminating single-use plastics in Malaysia by 2030.

In phase one of the plan, single-use plastic bags will cost consumers a nominal 20 sen (US$0.047) per bag. In states such as Penang, supermarkets, department stores and pharmacies have gone a step further and stopped dispensing single-use plastic bags altogether.

The 20 sen cost is not simply punitive, Yeo said, pointing out that recycling plastic waste isn’t exactly free either.

“Hydrocarbon-based plastics have proven to be very difficult to recycle—many of them have to be recycled illegally to make it work (for the contractors financially). People need to pay not just for the cost of production, but also for the cost to recycle the plastics (in an environmentally safe manner).”

Yeo’s 12-year roadmap thus calls for research into new materials for bioplastics.

“We are seeing that with reduce, reuse, recycle, the recycle part is really not working for plastics. So perhaps we need a fourth ‘r,’ which is to replace it, and to replace it, we need a lot of science,” Yeo said.

“What sort of materials can we use to continue packaging because you still need packaging? How do we find a material that is environmentally friendly? Biodegradable bags have a lot of science (behind them). For some of them, the strength of the biodegradable bag is not good, and some of them don’t decompose.”

STEPPING UP INDUSTRY RESEARCH

Citing a 2015 World Bank report that showed Malaysia spent only 1.3 per cent of its GDP on research and development (R&D), Yeo wrote on her personal blog that “this (statistic) is even lower than the average R&D spent in low- and middle-income countries.”

“When I first came in as a minister, I found that most of our grants are given to academics. Most of our R&D (funding) was spent on academics and higher education … but it’s not solving the problem; it’s not helping our economy,” Yeo told Asian Scientist Magazine.

“Historically, only 8.6 per cent of R&D funding in Malaysia was spent on industry research. We now want 50 per cent of (grant funding) to go to research collaborations with industry, or at least market-driven research,” said Yeo, adding that the four strategic areas her ministry is focusing on are halal food science, Islamic finance, health and wellness, and Industry 4.0.

Yeo also wants to create a pipeline of researchers to industry and raise the proportion of researchers in the private sector from the current 12 per cent today.

“There used to be a huge disconnect in Malaysia between scientists and the economy. We want to completely change how this works. And we’ll start very small; we’ll start by shifting our government researchers to industry for free for this year.

NOT BUSINESS AS USUAL FOR YEO

After being elected into office, Yeo was christened as one of the “Top 10 People Who Mattered in Science in 2018” by UK-based science journal Nature. In 2019, she was appointed a Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum. Could Yeo use her twin platforms of rising public popularity and policy making to shape the destiny of plastic use in the region?

Indeed, Yeo has ambitious plans for Malaysia to lead a new plastics circular economy in Southeast Asia.

“For the next three years we are developing a circular economy—how do we have a circular economy, not only for plastics, but also for electronic waste, like batteries? If we start changing our lifestyle to become more electrified, batteries need to be in a circular market.”

In parting, Malaysia’s plastics reformer spoke philosophically of the challenges in front of her, which include raising Malaysia’s renewable energy target tenfold by 2025 and implementing the 12-year roadmap to banning single-use plastics.

“The only thing we cannot do is say, ‘there are problems to the solution, let’s go back to business as usual,’ because you already know business as usual will not be sustainable in the future for Malaysia, and for the world,” Yeo said.

This story by Dr. Juliana Chan was first published by Asian Scientist Magazine on July 19.

The Road to Radicalisation is a story told of ‘Hani’, a wife and mother of three children whose husband, ‘Azmi’, gets caught and charged for terrorist activities related to IS or Daesh. Hani is candid in telling us her entire story from how Azmi first got involved, persuading her to move to Syria, right till his arrest. 

When people think of producing a documentary, the thing that always comes to mind is the extensive shooting, recording and editing process. But rarely do people think about the commitment that the documentarians make towards finding the right subject and then gaining their trust. 

The Road to Radicalisation is a story that Ezra Zaid and I told of ‘Hani’, a wife and mother of three children whose husband, ‘Azmi’, gets caught and charged for terrorist activities related to IS or Daesh. Hani is candid in telling us her entire story from how Azmi first got involved, persuading her to move to Syria, right till his arrest. 

It took me a while to identify Hani. Ten months to be exact. Ezra and I tried to make contact with ex-detainees, current supposedly active ‘terrorists’ and even their lawyers, but were never successful. We came close several times, but when it came down to going on the record, these people would always back out and bail. 

It was frustrating. Then, on the tenth month, I met Hani. 

A friend who works at an NGO that provides legal assistance to those who can’t afford it contacted me and said that he might have someone who would be willing to talk to me. It was a woman whose husband had recently been arrested for being involved in IS. He explained to me her story and I got the number and the next day, I gave her a call. 

Hani was very hostile in the beginning. She yelled and screamed at me accusing me of wanting to take advantage of her story to make money. She even threatened to sue. I let her cool off for a day then I texted her politely and continues to explain why we thought it was important to tell her story and how it would benefit others. 

I almost gave up. But then, after a week, I get a call from her. I answered the phone excitedly and then she started talking. She said she had done some research (ie: Google) and found out that I actually am a journalist and that she was impressed by my anti-establishment viewpoints. 

Then, Hani said that she had spoken to her best friend about the documentary and that we wanted to interview her. She told her friend my name and, lo and behold, her friend and I were friends back in university! Her friend told her that I can be trusted and that she should tell us her story. That did it and Hani agreed! What luck! 

And that’s how we got the story to The Road to Radicalisation. Hani didn’t hold back and told us everything. We hear how she disagreed with her husband and fought with him, how her children suffered after his arrest and how she is conflicted in disagreeing with her husband and still loving him and wanting to be a loyal wife. 

She tells us all this in hopes that it will help people to understand how to fight extremism and how to deal with the situation of losing a loved one to it as well. Now, aside from the documentary being broadcast on radio and available online, it is also being brought on tour around the various universities in Malaysia. 

We engage with students after screening the documentary and we discuss issues related to religious extremism, conflict, and indirectly, multiculturalism, pluralism and human understanding. These screenings and discussions have become a safe space where these students are able to speak and have discourse without prejudice or being judged. 

Since the programme was broadcast on BFM89.9, the Southeast Asia Regional Centre for Counter-Terrorism (SEARCCT) under the Malaysian Ministry of Foreign Affairs got in touch with us to explore the possibility of showcasing the Road to Radicalisation documentary with their respective collaborators. This included a request from the Malaysian Prisons Department, who expressed interest in airing the programme to prison detainees as a part of their rehabilitation programme. 

This is something we, the documentarians, and Hani are extremely proud of. 

This story by Zan Azlee and Ezra Zaid was originally published as an online podcast by BFM 89.9 on 4 October, 2018.