NEWS on the arrest and prosecution of 12 individuals last month for activities linked to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, which Malaysia deems a terrorist organisation, took many by surprise.

As LTTE was defeated close to a decade ago, and the last arrests in Malaysia, before the recent swoop, were five years back, the group had certainly been a far-off memory.

When politics got entangled in the issue, two angles of contention arose. First, are the recent arrests politically motivated? Second, are security laws such as the Security Offences (Special Measures) Act 2012 (Sosma) still relevant in Pakatan Harapan’s promised “New Malaysia”?

I will not dwell on these two questions, because for the former, I do not have insider information and will have to rely on unjust speculation, and for the latter, the more qualified people have had their say.

If there is anything I can add, it is that we should look beyond Sosma, and at the Penal Code itself. Sosma is just a procedural law. Without it, a loosely defined terrorism crime could still make a minor act a heavily punishable one, just under different trial procedures.

Politics of ‘terrorist-claiming’

Going beyond these two perspectives, a more constructive conversation about terrorism would be to discuss terrorist groups themselves. I have argued elsewhere that it is analytically pointless, even if legally convenient, to equate different strands of terrorism as if they are of the same creed.

For example, the Islamic State is a terrorist group that has anti-systemic goals, meaning it intends to overturn the global order in exchange for one based on its millenarian vision of global caliphate rule – an aim that seems fairly distant now with its loss of leadership and territory.

LTTE is a separatist group with disputed methods that led to its “terrorist” status. Its goals are local and well within the realm of acceptability for the current global order, even if rarely accepted. One example of separatist success is East Timor, while Aceh can be considered a partial success.

Conflating IS and LTTE yields no insight whatsoever into how we can fruitfully deal with terrorist activities because their ideological underpinnings are entirely different. Some have more aptly compared LTTE with Hamas, which, like the former, has fundamentally ethno/religious-nationalist goals.

Even that comparison has devolved into “terrorist-claiming” on social media, with each side saying their group’s inclusion on lists is wrong, and that the other should be on the said lists instead.

Complicating this way of framing the issue is the fact that unlike IS’ global notoriety, LTTE and Hamas appear on only some lists. For example, the US lists both groups, the United Nations sanctions neither one, Britain lists LTTE and only the military arm of Hamas, and the European Union has removed LTTE from its list, but kept Hamas.

This obsession over lists denotes a focus on form over substance. Worse, because people typically choose sides based on their religious identity, the result is the adage “one man’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter” in its most partisan, parochial and reductive form.

We barely ask ourselves the important question regarding terrorism, that is, of violence. Under what condition can violence be applied, and to whom? When is it permitted by both state and non-state actors?

Without addressing these questions, we have no way of identifying the “terrorist” and “freedom fighter”, nor do we know when one becomes the other. And if we keep discussing terrorist groups without addressing the question of violence, we may risk normalising it.

Pacifism an illusion

I foresee two objections to my point. The first comes from an absolute pacifist viewpoint, which is that violence shall not be condoned under any circumstance. That is a fair point, but it is not enough to navigate the difficult sociopolitical questions we face today, given the prevalence of violence in human history.

To begin, sociologists and historians have long argued that most nation states were built on violent foundations. Countries like Indonesia and Vietnam had to literally fight for their independence. Even Nobel Peace Prize winner Nelson Mandela was once a guerilla fighter.

Having experienced colonisation, World War Two and the communist insurgency, our nation’s founding was not exactly peaceful, either. And the fact that we maintain an army and police force means we still accept some necessity of violence.

Even popular culture, which tends to stray from controversy, negates the pacifist viewpoint. A few days back, I watched a trailer for the upcoming movie Ip Man 4. In it, Ip Man asks: “Shouldn’t we use Chinese martial arts to change foreigners’ bias against us?” But what comes after? Basically, Ip Man beating the daylights out of his opponents. It seems that more than anything else, the dignity of the Chinese has to be redeemed with the fist.

The same goes for Marvel movies. The superhero always defines him or herself as the best fighter.

There is no shortage of good people in these films, but what gives the superhero, instead of others, the means to do good is his or her command of violence.

Don’t get me wrong. I am an action-movie buff who enjoys John Wick a little too much, but most of us are woefully under-equipped to grapple with the question of violence.

One consequence of this is an almost uncritical condoning of state violence. I recall watching online a clip in response to a violent incident. The presenter says blasphemy must be met with death. He preaches against vigilantism, and insists that the state must be the one wielding the sword, not normal people.

This is still a view that normalises violence, because violence is not reduced at all. It is merely accrued in the hands of the powerful state, which means extremists have incentive to capture the state so that they can exact “legitimate” violence. That was basically what the Nazis did in Germany. It also explains why IS wanted a physical state so much.

Talking about violence in peacetime

The second rebuttal is that some might dismiss these questions as highfalutin. That we can sit back in our armchairs and talk about violence in such a detached manner because we are not in a desperate setting like Syria or Yemen. In those situations, to meditate on violence is a luxury.

But, I would argue that it is precisely because we are comfortable and peaceful now that we have got to talk about violence. We won’t be able to talk about it when all hell breaks loose.

Take the example of Hong Kong, where there is now not only state/police-against-civilian violence, but also civilian-against-state, civilian-against-civilian, and civilian-against-infrastructure violence. And, anyone following the online discourse in Hong Kong would know that there is simply no space for a nuanced view of things, because there is no consensually agreed framework to talk about violence.

You cannot create that framework in a violent environment. You can work it out only when there is peace, so that people can negotiate without the threat of violence.

Without any reasoning to structure our understanding of violence, it will have neither goals nor limits. It would just be violence – state or non-state – for its own sake. The only logical outcome, then, would be escalation, as the last five months in Hong Kong have shown.

The fact is, despite our denouncing of terrorism (I certainly hope this is the case for the majority) and the severe punishment reserved for it, a significant minority of our youth still see no problem in joining or supporting terrorist movements.

This is not because they do not know that these are terrorist groups. The problem is, they do not know why they are so. And until we can have a mature discussion about violence, they probably won’t. – November 14, 2019.

* A Forensic Science-Asian Studies hybrid, Nicholas Chan is interested in how authority is shaped, exercised, and more importantly, resisted in Southeast Asia.

* This is the opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malaysian Insight. Article may be edited for brevity and clarity.