TWO months ago, a case of rape and murder of a 22-year-old model shocked Taiwan. When details of the case first broke out, a female friend of the victim appeared to have had lured the model out to be robbed and murdered by her boyfriend in a basement.

This friend was portrayed to be an accomplice to the deed.

Except she wasn’t. She wasn’t even at the scene. Her alibi was proven and she was released by the police.

It turned out later that her boyfriend had deliberately implicated her in the murder in order to make her look like the mastermind in a bid to reduce his culpability.

Making ‘Medusa’

But while the legal courts had found her innocent, the court of public opinion was a different matter. For three days during her detention, the public and the media rained hell on her. Thanks to social media, I watched in real time how a person was turned into a monster.

She was called the ‘snake and serpent’ beauty, someone who could sting you unknowingly. Someone who is cold-blooded enough to stay and watch her boyfriend rape and murder her own friend.

Her social media site was full of vitriol and death threats.

After her release, there were some who still insisted on her guilt.

The uncomfortable fact is, as bystanders, our connection to the truth is always more tenuous than we care to admit.

Malaysian Rashomons

The point about raising this case is that we Malaysians are not impervious to such conduct.

In many cases, the Rashomon effect kicks in to the extent that we were left gasping for air in a smorgasbord of information, misinformation, perceptions, analysis, and outright propaganda and lies.

We saw that in the Lowyat riots. A bizarre case, truly, as when you strip away all the testosterone, politics, and ethno-apocalypse enthusiasts, what you have is basically a case of cellphone theft.

A similar gush of truths and mistruths happened too in a tragic car crash involving a number of kid cyclists, the case where a lady driver drove against traffic and killed a driver, and of course, the recent Austin Perdana mosque incident.

The common thread in all of them? The victims and the alleged perpetrators are of different races or religions, with netizens quickly forming squadrons to defend their side of the divide and sharing mostly unverified information which only verified their confirmation bias.

I am not saying such activism is entirely bad. For instance, the leakage of the footage allegedly showing Pastor Koh’s kidnapping is important because the public deserves to know that a group of people capable and willing to execute an extra-judiciary kidnap operation like this exists in Malaysia.

But the fact remains, most of the time, we don’t know what happened. In other words, we simply don’t have the privilege of truth. We make do with hearsay. And more often than not we create more hearsay.

That is why we have no choice but to place faith in our authorities – the police, the prosecutors, the judges, the Royal Commission. When something tragic happens, these are the people that can get the closest to the truth.

Chained custodies

Yet, custodians of truth are also rather stingy in sharing them.

This is the irony many Southeast Asian studies scholars find themselves in; the lack of access to data in an era where every government trumpets to the tune of Big Data.

The fact that findings about important instances of history or even just mundane statistics have been classified reveals a government that simply does not trust the public with the truth, or at least their reactions after getting it.

But the tight-lipped nature of governments rarely does themselves any good.

Take for example the case of Siti Noor Aishah Atam, a former Masters student detained and charged with possessing 12 allegedly terrorism-related books. Due to the lack of transparency about the case, many people questioned the police’s rationale for charging someone just for owning books.

It is only after more information surfaced (such as her ties with a few suspected militants) that a more complex picture was clear. Certain quarters may still question the merits of the case, but at least it no longer looks like the police had persecuted someone for a book keeping hobby.

One may even argue that if such information was released earlier, the unwanted speculation or even sensationalisation of the case would have been avoided. Secrecy, after all, is the magnet for speculation.

Truth as privilege

Those who were entrusted with truth-finding cannot at the same time only entrust the truth to themselves.

If we wish to face-off with the cynicism of a post-truth society, authorities must first fend off their cynicism towards the public.

A vacuum of truth will only foster the manufacturing of more mistruths. The absence of a central reference point, no matter how contested one is, can only mean all realms of possibilities, including the preposterous, are now open for contention and exploitation.

Just look at how many theories and conspiracies have sprung because no one can give an authoritative explanation as to what happened to Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, or where it is now.

Unlike branded goods, the lack of access does not give the truth more privilege. The truth can only be privileged if it is not kept as one. – May 31, 2017.

* 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.