Dorus during a coffee-time session with his old friends at Miri Open Air Market, where they would meet regularly.
TO some, Dorus Katan is simply a retired Information Department officer, hailed as being instrumental in setting up the information service in Long Lama.
Those who know the man would describe him as ‘a humble Kenyah gentleman, a well-loved field officer’.
However, there was an incident in his life that he had never told anyone, until recently.
“The memory of it still brings shivers down my spine; sometimes, I still get vivid nightmares about it.
“Many of those associated with it have long gone, so I think I can tell this story now,” Dorus, now 76, tells thesundaypost in Miri.
‘Eager to learn’
Born in 1947 at Long Tap, Sungai Akah in Baram, Dorus was always an inquisitive boy.
He pleaded to his mother to send him to Long San Mission School in 1954.
“Already, we were living away from our families at the time. There were huts, each accommodating pupils coming from the same village.
“My mates and I would collect firewood and cook our own rice, but there were times when we could not find any wood, so we only ate rice soaked in water!
“I was only seven years old!”
Doris was in Primary 4 when finally, the pupils got to stay at a boarding house, and a proper cook was provided by the mission.
“Life at school did get better then.”
In 1960, Dorus and 11 other pupils sat for the Common Entrance. Only him and his mate, Gabriel Lasing, did well enough to be selected for secondary school.
“I opted for the St Joseph’s School Miri, while Gabriel chose to enter the seminary in Kuching.
“In Miri, I stayed with a Hong Kong family and I walked to school every day, a distance of three miles.
“When Bishop Anthony Galvin saw how I struggled every day, he made the call to place me in Kuching. Thus, I left for Kuching in June 1961, and stayed at the hostel in the St Joseph’s school there.
“It seemed alright, and I thought I would have a normal student’s life.”
In late 1962, Baram was hit by floods and Dorus, at the time, was getting ready to return to Kuching for the new school term.
It was January 1963, on board the MV Lutong bound for Kuching, when he knew that he would be late to report to school.
He was more than 12 hours late when he arrived at St Joseph’s Kuching.
The school’s rector at the time, Father Van Rowan, refused to let Dorus in, accusing the boy of ‘being playful, enjoying his day too much that he forgot about reporting to the school’.
“I was forced to go back to MV Lutong that very night, but I did not give up,” Dorus said.
“I had no money left, so I decided to go to the Education Office for help.
“There, I met a man and I asked for help.
“I said: ‘Can I see the Education Officer? I have run out of money, and I am from Miri’.
“The man took me upstairs, where I expected to see a European officer. Instead, the man who brought me up there simply said: ‘You better transfer to Sekolah Menengah (Secondary School) Madrasah Melayu, and you can come home with me later’.
“It was only later that I realised the man was, in fact, the Education Officer himself.”
That Education Officer was the 39-year-old Tun Datuk Patinggi Ahmad Zaidi Adruce, who would later on become the fifth Governor of Sarawak and also the longest-serving Head of State in consecutive terms from his inauguration on April 2, 1985, to his death in December 2000.
The handsome Kenyah, during his ‘Information Field Officer’ days in Long Tap, back in 1970.
Kind housemate
Dorus was happy not only to be enrolled to the Madrasah Melayu, but also that he was placed in Form 4 straight away.
“That Malay Education Officer said I was bright, and he was sure that I would do well based on my excellent performance in St Joseph’s School.
“The Madrasah principal Cikgu Ghazali Mohamad was also a very nice man. I felt very lucky.”
As time passed, Dorus got to know Ahmad Zaidi better and they became quite close.
“I knew he hailed from Sibu and was educated in England.
“As housemates, we often went out to eat together.”
One day, Ahmad Zaidi told Dorus that he wanted to go back to Sibu to bring over his wife and children to Kuching.
“He said he was fed up with eating out,” laughed Dorus.
“I thought it was great for him to have his family in Kuching. Either way, I was happy and I was really looking forward to meeting his family.”
It was June 1963 in Kuching, and Dorus was only 16 at the time. It never crossed his mind that he would experience a hellish ordeal that even up to this day, still haunts him.
Nightmare in lock-up
It was one dreadful morning when police and soldiers swarmed the quarters where Ahmad Zaidi and Dorus lived, and ransacked everything.
It was so chaotic that Dorus could not even contact the school to inform his teachers about the shocking situation.
“I later found out that they were actually looking for Mr Ahmad Zaidi. They forced open everything, but they could not find anything linked to Ahmad Zaidi. Still, I had no idea what was actually happening.
“Then, they took me away and threw me into the Central Police Station lock-up. I was detained there for two weeks.
“Some of the officers were very cruel,” Dorus recalled painfully.
“It was hell, non-stop beatings every day throughout the two weeks.
“I was slapped, punched, and kicked in the groin, the thighs and legs.
“Many times, I lost consciousness… only to wake up to more torture.
“I begged them to stop; I told them I knew nothing of his (Ahmad Zaidi’s) whereabouts, but they did not believe me. They insisted that I was withholding information.
“They would strip me naked during interrogations, which were followed by more beatings.
“Even years after that, I would still have nightmares of one particularly heavyset officer sitting on my head, as he forced me to talk.”
Two weeks of hell
Dorus was detained by the Special Branch at the time, as they suspected that he was connected with Ahmad Zaidi and Barisan Pemuda Sarawak – a fiery youth movement that was very vocal in its fight and had deep-seated aversion to colonist ideology.
It must be understood that this was during the pre-Malaysia times, when the security forces were still under British influence.
The Special Branch refused to believe that Dorus was innocent, insisting that the boy was hiding information about Ahmad Zaidi’s whereabouts.
“They based this upon knowing that the Education Officer had offered me a place to stay.”
It was the kind-hearted Cikgu Ghazali from Madrasah Melayu who could finally convince the police that Dorus was innocent.
Traumatised by the experience, Dorus wanted nothing else but to go back home to Miri, which he did.
His St Joseph’s School mates helped raise some money for him, but it was not enough to cover the fare on board MV Lutong.
Dorus was forced to sell his mother’s gold ring.
Dorus (right) and his good friend good friend Dennin Frederiks attending a ‘Neighbourhood Committee (RT) Leadership Seminar’ in Labuan in 1997. At the time, Dennin was the chairman of Piasau RT, and Dorus was his deputy.
Work in Information Office
He was reunited with Bishop Galvin in Miri, but the boy never disclosed to him – nor with anyone else, for that matter – what had happened in Kuching.
The bishop assigned a task for him – to distribute bulgur wheat from the USA to areas in Baram affected by the floods.
It was during this time in Marudi when he met a Canadian, Manson Toynbee, who offered him a job at Peking.
“When I heard Peking, I thought it was a job in China!” he chuckled.
It turned out to be Sungai Peking, an Iban settlement, reachable from Marudi via speedboat.
Dorus could not speak Iban that well, but he was hired anyway as a headmaster of a primary school there with a basic salary of $130, and an allowance of $27 – quite a good pay back in 1963.
A year later, Toynbee was succeeded by Wan Malang, who intended to transfer Dorus to another school in Long Jegan, a Berawan village.
“So I went back to Marudi where as luck would have it, I met a sub-contractor of a timber camp who offered me work as a ‘kuda kuda’. My task was to move logs to the log ponds.
“I took the job and did it for three months, when I saw an advertisement in a local newspaper, stating that it was looking for an ‘Information Field Officer’. I applied, and was later called for an interview in Miri.”
There were two officers, Ismail Shah from Kuala Lumpur and Poh Kiong Leng from Kuching, who interviewed Dorus.
“I was asked to translate a piece of news in English, into Iban. Both of them did not know Iban. Upon seeing my work, Mr Poh said that it was ‘okay’.
“Two weeks later, I was sent to Kuching for training. Long story short, in 1965 I was sent back to Marudi and assigned to the Information Office there.
“In May 1968, I was transferred to Long Lama, where I was tasked with setting up the new office.
“In 1974, I was relocated to Belaga to serve as its first Information Officer. In 1976, I was transferred to Bintangor.”
After being in service for more than 10 years, Dorus was sent to Kuala Lumpur for further training and in 1978, he was sent back to Marudi.
That year, he married Vornica Kumpu from Bintangor. The couple was later blessed with five sons.
In 1984, Dorus was transferred to Niah where he sat for his MCE (the Malaysia Certificate of Education, equivalent to today’s Sijil Pelajaran Malaysia, or the Form 5 national public examination) as a private candidate.
He passed, with credits in English and Mathematics. That same year, he was promoted to Field Officer Special Grade C3.
A photo from the family album shows Dorus and his family, taken just before his transfer to Niah in 1984.
In 1986, he was transferred to Miri where he remained until his retirement in September 1999.
Dorus and Vornica had five sons. Their third son James died in 2004, and Vornica passed away in 2014, at age 54.
Now, Dorus is enjoying his golden years with his eight grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.
‘Story behind it all’
It took many years for Dorus to finally understand the whole thing about Ahmad Zaidi during that incident in 1963.
It is outlined in this summary, based on the excerpt from the official portal of the Sarawak Government (https://sarawak.gov.my/web/home/news_view/244/3393/):
“Born in 1924, Ahmad Zaidi had his early education in Chung Hua School and Sekolah Abang Ali in Sibu. An exemplary student, he continued his education in St Thomas’ School in 1936 and went to an Anglo-Chinese school in Singapore and graduated in 1939, at the age of 15, with a Cambridge School Certificate. He later studied at Sultan Idris College in Tanjung Malim, Perak and later, Veterinary Medicine in Bogor, Indonesia.
“He returned to Sarawak in 1947 and was then appointed as a teacher at the Batu Lintang Training Centre (present-day Teachers Education Institute Batu Lintang Campus). In the same year, he also set up the first Sea Scout Movement in Borneo.
“In 1949, the British awarded Ahmad Zaidi a scholarship to a technical college in Aberdeen (Scotland) before he later enrolled in the University of Edinburgh in the UK. On May 28, 1953, he represented Sarawakian students to witness the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II.
“Before his appointment as Sarawak Governor, Ahmad Zaidi had a turbulent political career. His aversion to colonist ideology and experiences of discrimination brought on turbulent times, with plots and threats to arrest or assassinate him.
“Ahmad Zaidi was dubbed a traitor by British authorities and their supporters, including many of the expatriates in the Sarawak government, because of his strong influence and involvement in Barisan Pemuda Sarawak and also his suspected connection with Indonesia during the Indonesia-Malaysia Confrontation.
“This resulted in Ahmad Zaidi’s self-exile to Indonesia until 1969, when he was granted amnesty by the Malaysian government – a move strongly supported by then-Sarawak Head of State Tun Datuk Patinggi Abdul Rahman Yakub who was a federal minister at the time.”
Dorus receiving the ‘Long Service Medal’ from then-chief minister Tun Pehin Sri Abdul Taib Mahmud, during a ceremony in 1989.
Meeting the Governor
It was sometime during the 1990s when Dorus had a brief meeting with Ahmad Zaidi, at a rest house in Miri.
“It was really brief, just before a personal doctor came to do medical checks on him and his wife, Toh Puan Rosmiati Kendati.
“Still, he admitted to leaving me in the dark back then because he did not want anyone to know his whereabouts.
“He also asked about my work, to which I told him that I was with Information.”
“He smiled,” said Dorus.
“I was grateful to him for helping to enrol me to the Madrasah Melayu when I barely had anything more than the clothes on my back.
“We went out for meals together when we were housemates. How many officers would do that for someone they had just met?”
To Dorus, in his belief as a Roman Catholic, he regards all his experiences – good and bad – as indication that God is always there to guide him.
“I have never blamed him (Ahmad Zaidi) for the terrible things that happened to me back then.
“I have nothing but utmost respect for the man,” he said.