SINCE winning the Best New Actress award at the Malaysian Film Festival in 2007, 25-year-old actress and television personality Lisa Surihani has been in constant demand in the local film industry. She won Best Actress at the 23rd Malaysian Film Festival Award in 2010, and also racked up the Popular Film Actress Award in the Anugerah […]
Found in Malaysia
Wishing for an open society
By Koh Lay Chin
R NADESWARAN, better known as Citizen Nades, has spent years as the heart of theSun newspaper’s special and investigative reporting team. An award-winning veteran journalist, Nades has reported about local government issues since he started his career as a reporter with The Malay Mail in 1978. Born in 1952, the 59-year-old has dedicated himself to […]
“See me as I am”
By Shanon Shah
TAN Sri Rafidah Aziz, 68, has been a towering figure in Malaysian politics for the past three decades. Born in Selama, Perak, in 1943, she became at age 30 Member of Parliament for Kuala Kangsar, and remains the incumbent. In 1987, she was appointed international trade and industry minister. Her political career has not been […]
Maria Chin Abdullah: It’s not about race anymore
By Jacqueline Ann Surin
IT is perhaps destiny that Maria Chin Abdullah ended up being one of the steering committee members for Bersih 2.0, the civil society movement calling for free and fair elections in Malaysia. One of her earliest memories is of independent Malaya’s first general election in 1959 when she was just three. Maria remembers being with […]
“We were not an ordinary country”
By Deborah Loh
HAD history not intervened, Emeritus Prof Tan Sri Dr Khoo Kay Kim might have been a footballer. Of his youth, Khoo said he would have been content getting a simple job as long as he could have gone on playing soccer competitively even though there was no money in the sport back in the 1950s. […]
“I am extremely Melayu”
By Shanon Shah
LEGENDARY Malaysian dancer Ramli Ibrahim, 58, has been captivating audiences with his performances and choreography of Indian classical dance for almost three decades. After returning from Australia, Ramli founded Sutra Dance Theatre in 1983. He has gone on to perform and win awards both locally and overseas, and has also groomed many a talented dancer. […]
Amber Chia: 1Malaysia won’t happen in a day
By Gan Pei Ling
WHEN she was 18, Amber Chia flew to Kuala Lumpur from Tawau, Sabah with only RM300 in her pocket to fulfil her dream of becoming a model despite her parents’ vehement opposition. Chia stumbled around for some time before she found the right modelling agency. In 2004, she got her big break when she was […]
Premesh Chandran: We lack a common future
By Jacqueline Ann Surin
PREMESH Chandran laughs when asked if he ever imagined Malaysiakini would become what it is today: the award-winning and leading online media in Malaysia that reaches over 300,000 readers per day in English, Bahasa Malaysia, Chinese and Tamil. “It grew to be something much bigger than what we expected it to be,” the news portal’s […]
Eddin Khoo: Preserving the nation’s soul
By Jacqueline Ann Surin
IF Malaysia is a nation of converging ancestries and cultures, then Eddin Khoo Bu-Eng should be one of its poster boys. The former Sunday Star journalist, who set up cultural centre Pusaka nearly 10 years ago, is the eldest of three sons born of a Baba Chinese father and a mother of Sri Lankan Tamil […]
Ann Lee: Both English and Chinese
By Jacqueline Ann Surin
FOR six years up to the year 2000, Ann Lee was beamed into Malaysian households three times a week as an RTM co-anchor for the 8pm news on TV2. She was also a newsreader on RTM’s Radio Four, making her a recognisable face and voice over the Malaysian airwaves. “People sometimes still come up to […]
