The Big Durian

<The BIG Durian>

The Big Durian is a Malaysian Documentary that created during year of 2003 which film by Amir Muhammad. The different of this documentary compare to other documentaries in Malaysia is they discussed about the sensitives issues that happened in the past of the history of Malaysia, such as Ops Lalang 1987.

Before they talked about the issue Ops Lalang, the documentary started with the issue of Private Adam Jaafar. This was a shocking news during that time when an army private named Adam Jaafar had run amok in KL's Jalan Chow Kit with his M-16 rifle that he took from the army base. This incident took place on 18 October 1987 which was a dark day for all the Malaysian. After his rampage in Chow Kit, he moved to Wisma Sabaruddin and this the placed he was surrounded by the military and police. However, there is no further investigation or any news report to the public when Adam was caught on 19 October 1987. As the public wants to know the reason behind of him to conduct this terror action in Chow Kit. But this issue ended up with a question mark in all of the Malaysian's head. Here's the things, after the issue seem to be settled without a great explanation by person in charge, a different kinds of rumors started to spread throughout the thought of Malaysian to create a hypothesis on the reason for Adam's terror action. What I called it as rumors is because the polices or governments do not want to clarify the truth yet some of the rumors was strongly agree by Malaysian as the reason behind the zero action from the polices and government on the explanation of this Adam incident. One of the rumors that is well believed by the Malaysian until todays is about the dead of Adam Jaafar's brother. As Adam was an army during that time, he heard that his brother was dead due to a Sultan's action. His brother is a caddy man which is a golf assistant to help Sultan in carry and give the golf stick. One day, when the Sultan missed the hole, this Adam's brother made a joke on Sultan that Sultan miss the hole even in a short distance. Sultan was angry and hit him with his golf stick. Adam's brother dead at the scene after got hit by a golf stick. As the Sultan Malaysia have their own unique power which they can't charge by the law in Malaysia. Adam knew that he can't do anything to help revenge on his brother, so the rumors explained that the reason he conducted this terror in Chow Kit to pull everyone attention on him and revenge on his reconciled.

From the aspects of rumors to chow kit incidents, there is a very high possibility that the rumor is true. As there is many incidents happened in Malaysia which the government or polices wanted to cover it up to protect some particular people which is from upper level of society. Therefore, this issue may has a very chances showing that they don't want to create public discontent to the issue that sultan killed someone since they never going to charge sultan any law action. This might be the reason why the polices or government do not report any further investigation on the case.

After 9 days of Chow Kit incident happened, the government had launched out an Ops Lalang (Operation Lalang) on October 27 and arresting 106 people under the distension of Internal Security Act (ISA) and most of them are from opposition leaders and Chinese education activists. This is a black day of human rights in Malaysia and also the dead of democracy in our country. Then what is it for to call Malaysia a democratic country when we have no freedom in human rights, press freedom or independent judiciary? I believe that this is the reason why Malaysia is hardly improve and developing to become a most successful country in SEA compare to Singapore which has nothing and become something in the SEA.

Throughout the documentary of "The Big Durian", I believe that this is a scripted documentary which everything is planned and prepared during the pre-production while some actor is real or some actor is prepared. As some of the actor has shows some flaw during their acting as a interviewer of this documentary but this doesn't matter. The one of the aspects that I'm interested is why they planned before the documentary instead of recording in live without scripted. There is few reason to this aspect. Firstly, maybe the director wanted to maintain the presentation quality of the documentary. Secondly, the director worried that Malaysian are scared to present themselves on the screen to talk about something sensitives issues happened in Malaysia. This is because we Malaysian know that Malaysia is a democratic country without democracy.