I don’t want to be afraid in my own country anymore.
I created this series as a way to document my journey through police and prison abolition, and honour the lives threatened and taken by this system.
This series began with taking apart the Polis Diraja Malaysia logo - breaking supremacy and violence through the broken keris and parang, the destruction of hierarchy with the broken crown, the growth and healing work that must begin in these fractured spaces through the now wild wreath. The liberated tiger represents the spiritual and physical strength of communities to continue to push back and hold accountable any and every oppressive structure.
We will be free.
8.
September 14, 2022.
This week was the 20th death in custody this year.
Does your mind go blank when you think about dismantling the police? Like a wall you can't get through? Does it feel hard to imagine?
Because it will. It will feel wrong and scary.
When I first considered abolition, I was hesitant. I thought I was losing safety and security. But with reflection, I realised what I feared already is my reality. I am never safe or secure, not in a country that actively kills my people. Killings by the police, the very thing that was suppose to "protect" me.
It feels wrong and scary because I was taught to feel that way. That somehow without prisons and uniforms and unchecked power, our lives would tumble into endless violent chaos.
But it has always been violent and chaotic, enforced and maintained through systems of oppression.
Its hard and scary to imagine something we don't quite know. But even the systems we live under now were imagined too.
Someone imagined control, domination, and enslavement. Whole empires run with it, our country built on it.
So I ask us all to imagine again.
And again.
And again.
Ang again.
None of us will be free, until all of us are free.
7.
September 22, 2021
This week on reasons to abolish the police:
1) 100+ police officers used to hunt and incarcerate Sajat for being trans
2) refusal to arrest an UMNO assemblyman for murdering S Thava Sagayam
3) Death of Vinayagar K Thinpathy in custody and lying about it.
4) 1,730 LGBT people sent to JAKIM conversion camps this year.
6.
July 4, 2021
this week was so hard. I spent #lawan making this instead. and this series gets harder with every death in police custody. I don’t know how many more must die before we abolish the police. which makes this work all the more important. there is a different future. and we need it now.
5.
May 24, 2021
I imagine this world because it is possible.
#JusticeForGanapathy
#JusticeForSivabalan
#JusticeForMalaysianIndians
4.
May 13, 2021
Thinking of all the mothers whose children have died at the hands of the police, the government, and the system.
#JusticeForGanapathy
#JusticeForMalaysianIndians
3.
May 1, 2021
I know a world where we are free
I know a world where we are safe
I know a world where we are loved
#JusticeForGanapathy
#JusticeForMalaysianIndians
2.
May 1, 2021
I imagine a world where we are free. I imagine a world where we are safe. I imagine a world where we are loved.
#JusticeForGanapathy
#JusticeForMalaysianIndians
1.
July 27, 2020
As I continue to educate myself on police abolition, I made this illustration to reaffirm this. The work of justice requires reimagination, transformation and liberation. It is the breaking of supremacy and vehicles of violence as you see with the broken weapons. It is the destruction of hierarchy with the broken crown. It’s the growth and healing work that must begin in these fractured spaces with the now wild wreath. It’s the spiritual and physical strength of the collective to continue to push back and hold accountable any and every power structure with the liberation of the tiger.
I don’t want to be afraid in my own country anymore.
#MansuhkanPolis #AbolishThePolice