“No Justice, No Merdeka!” Independence Rings Hollow for Sabahans Demanding Justice

In a field in Kunak on Sabah’s east coast, where thousands had gathered on 16 August 2025, chants of “No justice, no Merdeka!” rang out from every corner. As a young local activist declared, “Kami tidak akan mengkibarkan bendera Malaysia selagi tiada keadilan untuk arwah Zara! (We will not raise the Malaysian flag until there is justice for the late Zara!)”, the crowd erupted in wild applause. This was the beating heart of the “Justice for Zara” protests that had by then swept across Sabah and Peninsular Malaysia, drawing nationwide outrage and international media attention.

The wave of protests soon snowballed into a movement with broader demands, including a boycott of Merdeka (Independence Day). For Peninsular Malaysia, 31 August marks independence from Britain in 1957, but Sabah (and Sarawak) joined the federation only on 16 September 1963, now observed as Malaysia Day. The latter, declared a nationwide public holiday only in 2010, has remained overshadowed by Merdeka in Sabah, where 31 August also marks their own independence day. The belated recognition has reinforced for many Sabahans a sense of being peripheral to the federation.

Zara’s tragedy seemed to mirror Sabah’s marginalisation. On 16 July 2025, 13-year-old Zara Qairina was discovered unconscious in a drain below the domitory of her religious boarding school in Papar, a small coastal district just south of Kota Kinabalu. Though rushed to hospital, she was pronounced brain-dead and buried swiftly, without a post-mortem. But her mother later revealed that she had noticed bruises on Zara’s body, fuelling suspicions of bullying and a cover-up. Reports soon circulated that a school principal had tried to block the filing of a case and that police investigations were sluggish at best.

By late July, the hashtag #JusticeForZara had gone viral beyond Sabah, galvanising many to take a stand, while audio recordings of Zara speaking with her mother circulated online, deepening public grief and outrage. Zara’s case was soon politicised. For example, Opposition MP Afnan Hamimi criticised Education Minister Fadhlina Sidek in Parliament for failing to address safety issues in schools, especially in the case of the late Zara.

Meanwhile, backed by lawyers and activists, Zara’s mother succeeded in having her daughter’s corpse exhumed on 9 August. The Royal Malaysia Police headquarters in Kuala Lumpur then intervened, launching disciplinary action against senior police officers. An inquest, begun in early September, is ongoing. Earlier, on 19 August, the police charged five teenagers with bullying, a charge that many considered insultingly inadequate as on the ground Zara’s death was openly called “murder”.

By then, the rallies had begun. Although the first rally was in Kota Kinabalu, sentiments seemed strongest in the east coast – specifically Sandakan, Tawau, Kunak, Lahad Datu, and Semporna – with each gathering drawing thousands clad in black. In these towns, Zara’s death was not seen as an isolated tragedy but a mirror of their systemic neglect. As one rally goer in Sandakan put it: “If nothing had been said, Zara’s death would have been treated like the loss of a kitten. That is how little our children and all of us mean to those in power.”

The east coast of Sabah rises not only for a bullied child but against a political order that has long abandoned its most vulnerable.

Another thread in Zara’s tragedy was the persistent rumour that her bullies were not ordinary students but saudara dan anak VVIP (relatives and children of Very Very Important Persons). The whispers spread so quickly and relentlessly that the office of Sabah Governor Musa Aman had to issue a press statement denying any connection to the teenager’s death, an intervention that, rather than quelling speculation, only seemed to confirm it in the public’s mind. It also raised the concern that political parties had hijacked the gatherings, even though most of the rallies I attended displayed no party flags.

Comparisons soon sharpened the sense of injustice. In contrast with Zara’s case, when former federal minister Rafizi Ramli’s wife and son were assaulted in a Putrajaya mall in early August, the authorities reacted with swift arrests. The sting deepened on 28 August, when the Tawau High Court sentenced 13 vocational students for the murder of their schoolmate in March 2024: if a court in the same state could recognise and punish a case of peer violence as murder, why was Zara’s death in Papar reduced to a mere “bullying” charge?

The message for Sabahans was blunt: the children of powerful Peninsular Malaysians and Sabah elites mattered, but theirs did not. The anger hardened as Merdeka approached. People in east coast kampungs I spoke to had urged their villagers not to participate in Merdeka celebrations, declaring that flying the Malaysian flag did not signal freedom as long as justice for Zara was denied. A village chief in Semporna insisted that Zara’s case exposed a power struggle in which east coast Sabahans remain at the bottom of Malaysia’s political and legal order.

The 31 August rallies revealed this divide starkly. In Kota Kinabalu, the official Merdeka programme at Padang Merdeka unfolded as a pageant of plaques and patriotism. Yet in nearby Likas, tens of thousands in black roared “No justice, no Merdeka”. On the east coast, youth-led rallies like Tawau’s IKAT drew sharper lines, linking Zara’s death to political corruption, current government failures, the legacy of Musa Aman’s years as chief minister, and the unfinished struggle for greater control over Sabah’s own future – prompting arrests under the Sedition Act and headlines that reduced a mass movement to the spectacle of unruly youths. For now, the east coast of Sabah rises not only for a bullied child but against a political order that has long abandoned its most vulnerable. The refusal by some to raise the Malaysian flag during Merdeka was not just a symbolic act of defiance; it was a call for dignity, autonomy, and accountability, and a signal of growing disenchantment with federal and state leadership. Whether this disenchantment hardens into something larger will be revealed when the ballots are cast at Sabah’s state election, due by the year’s end.

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