RPK: Student Tan Kian Chong was found dead at the bottom of Apartmen Vista Angkasa in Kampung Kerinchi yesterday, suspected of falling down 16 floors. See the 'mess'. And eyewitnesses said they heard an 'explosion' when his body hit the ground while his blood was splattered right up to the second floor of the building.
2. Mr Teoh was questioned about the possible misuse of funds by his employer, a state assemblyman, to buy flags. The sum in question was RM2,400. For RM2.4K, he was questioned for at least 8 hours. A RM2.4K case was prioritized over the PKFZ and the Istana Khir cases. hmmmm... doesnt sound quite right.
3. Tan Hock Chuan (criminal lawyer) in court, "According to the first DNA report, the DNA profile derived from the swab from the back outer side of the blazer worn by the deceased Teoh Beng Hock consisted of a mixture of male DNA types from two individuals,”
4. Teoh Beng Hock - this young man had everything to live for. Getting married (on the day he died). 2 mth pregnant fiance. Good career, good family, good looking.
5. This final point has been extremely well said by Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah:
(Advice: think about it from more than 1 dimension, think about what it implies)
Questions about how Mr Teoh died cannot be shut down with the usual warning that it is “liable to confuse the public” because the public is already confused. We are confused about how an idealistic young man with everything to live for can enter the headquarters of the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission as a witness one day and be found dead outside the next.
Questions about the death of Mr Teoh cannot be swept aside with the paternalistic instruction to “leave it to the authorities to investigate,” because the death of Mr Teoh appears to be just the result of “leaving it to the authorities investigate.” It is precisely the independence of the investigating authorities that people are questioning.
Questions about the death of Mr Teoh cannot be suppressed with the warning “not to speculate” when the investigating authorities were apparently able to prognosticate, ahead of their own investigations, that foul play was not involved, and some leaders appear to have special knowledge that Mr Teoh jumped to his death of his own accord.
Questions about the death of Mr Teoh cannot be evaded with the low tactic of racializing the issue because the death of Mr Teoh touches us all as citizens, brothers and sisters and fathers and mothers. None of us wants to live under a government apparatus that cannot be trusted to be independent and to tell the truth.
Questions about the death of Mr Teoh cannot be suppressed with authoritarian prohibitions because they are about the integrity and independence of institutions that belong to the people. Those ministers who talk down to the people may have forgotten who put them into government and pays their wages, and whose questions they were put there to ask. And to answer.
To ask such questions is not to “politicize” the issue but to exercise our ownership of an issue that touches each and every one of us as citizens: our basic institutions are rotted out, and we are headed down the path of a failed state.
It is our right and indeed our duty as citizens to keep asking questions when someone dies under circumstances that put the entire government under a shadow. As we ask these questions let us accept our joint responsibility to push uncompromisingly for an overhaul of the key institutions that have rotted through under exactly the kind of authoritarianism that would prohibit discussion of the circumstances of the death of Mr Teoh Beng Hock.
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