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| Southeast Asia |
| Man compensated for being stuck inside Malaysia |
| 2007-02-24 |
| A retired British soldier who said he was "falsely imprisoned" in Malaysia for 16 years after authorities seized his passport has won about $860,000 in damages, newspapers said Friday. Ronald Beadle had sued Malaysia's tax office after it confiscated his passport in December 1981 to recover outstanding taxes, a move that barred him from leaving the country. The authorities finally stopped impounding his passport in 1998, though Beadle had settled in Malaysia and remained. "His mind and self-esteem has been injured for more than 16 years," the Star newspaper quoted a High Court judge as saying when she ruled in favor of the 69-year-old from Derbyshire. The judge said the tax office had acted arbitrarily and unreasonably in seizing the passport. But she did not think that Beadle had been "falsely imprisoned" as he had claimed. Beadle was sent to Malaysia in 1961 to serve as part of a British army force stationed there. He later decided to settle down in the country and found a job with a helicopter company. Beadle, whose Malaysian wife died three years ago, said he was not totally overjoyed with the ruling. "No amount of money could have compensated the loss of 5,968 days when my passport was seized," the New Straits Times quoted him as saying. |
| Posted by:ryuge |
| #4 You are a darling, mac. :-) You're right, I would've started learning the language had we stayed another week or so. But I'm Jewish, half Israeli, and I have strong opinions on all sorts of subjects, as I think you'll have noticed, about which I sometimes forget to be tactful. ;-) How long until the Muslims expressed opinions of their own about mine, d'you think? I'm sure there are worse places to be trapped for a decade and a half -- Saudi Arabia comes to mind -- but Kuantan truly is the first place I ever visited where I was not willing to live. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2007-02-24 20:53 |
| #3 It surprises me to see you write that, TW. If you had been there longer, I'm certain that with your boundless curiosity you would have immediately set to learning Malay and getting an in-depth grasp of the local culture. Whether Mr. Beadle had any such intentions we can't know, but he obviously learned enough of the local culture to take a wife from it. That leads to another comment: from a guy's standpoint, while good-looking women may not alone make a life, they can come darned close. A good-looking and happily compliant woman who frequently smiles, decently cooks, and brings home the odd bit of alcohol now and then will keep most men very thoroughly engaged for quite a long time. |
| Posted by: mac 2007-02-24 17:53 |
| #2 Good looking women do not alone make a life. To be trapped in the capitol, Kuala Lumpur, is one thing, but I spent a week in Kuanton on the other side of the peninsula, and it's one of the few places I've been (granted my experience is limited, and I have been quite sheltered from the harsher realities of life) that I would be completely uninterested in living for any longer. There was practically nothing to do, practically no place to go, and only the same small group of people to talk to, day after day after day. I live in the outer suburbs now, so my need for society is demonstrably not that of the urban elite, but there I should have gone mad -- and Kuantan is the seat of one of Malaysia's sultans. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2007-02-24 13:04 |
| #1 As someone who has spent time in both places, I'd suggest that Mr. Beadle just got another break. My experience was that there were many more good-looking women in Malaysia than in the UK, so if he had to be stuck someplace, Malaysia had some serious advantages. It was probably tougher to get a pint sometimes, but then no place is perfect... |
| Posted by: mac 2007-02-24 07:18 |