I’ve been crying for 2 months thinking about my son, says victim’s mum

KUCHING: “Mother, we have all been arrested. Save Yusuf. I am afraid.”

Those were the words of Yusuf Islam Abdul Halik, 21, one of the 47 Malaysians detained in Cambodia on Dec 11, to his mother, Zunita Sedini, 42.

When Zunita heard those words, she broke down. She didn’t know what to do.

Two weeks later, on Dec 25, Cambodian authorities allowed Yusuf to call his mother again, for a mere five minutes.

“He told me that he is only given plain rice and water over there. In that short time we were allowed to speak to each other, I urged him to tell me where he was being held. He kept repeating ‘BMC’.

“Since then, I have not been in contact with my son. For two months, I have been crying, thinking about what he is going through over there, whether he is safe, or whether he is being beaten up,” she said after a press conference on the arrests of the 47 Malaysians in Cambodia here.

She said Yusuf had told her in October that he was offered a high-paying job in Cambodia as a “promoter” for electronic equipment.

In the first month after arriving in Cambodia, Yusuf would call her every now and then using a friend’s mobile phone.

“Since they were arrested, his friend has also asked me to find his family in a village in Siburan as he could not remember his family’s phone number.”

However, Zunita said she had not been able to trace the family.

She said the last time they spoke, Yusuf had also asked her to find a way to save the Malaysians detained in Cambodia.

“I will do my best to help all of them. I hope Wisma Putra can bring them all back to their families.”