Yet another JUST member has left this temporary abode of ours. Eusof Izzuddin, a longstanding member from Penang, Malaysia, passed away on Sunday 3rd November 2024 . He was 80 years old.
Eusof’s wife, Fathima, their three sons and their grandchildren were with him when he breathed his last at the Universiti Putra Malaysia hospital. A lung infection and a bowel disorder were the immediate causes of his death though Eusof had been struggling against Parkinson’s Disease for almost 40 years.
A highly respected trade unionist in his younger days, Eusof was one of the leading lights of the Union of Postal Workers Malaysia for a number of years. It was he who developed its social education programme. He was also active in the Malaysian Trade Union Congress (MTUC) especially its Penang branch.
It was in his Union capacity that I first came to know Eusof in the early seventies when I was invited to give talks to postal workers and workers in other sectors of society. As a young academic, I was impressed by Eusof’s commitment to social justice and the dignity of workers.
When I established an advocacy group which sought to focus upon social justice and human dignity in the wider Malaysian landscape in 1977, Eusof was one of the earliest to join me and my collaborators. Eusof was an active leader of Aliran Kesedaran Negara (ALIRAN) writing articles and speaking at seminars and conferences at home and abroad.
By the time, I had initiated JUST with a few friends, in the nineties, Eusof was already ill but he insisted on joining the group once it was established as a membership based society and gave wholehearted support to its endeavours. Since both of us had moved to Kuala Lumpur and its vicinity in the eighties and nineties, my wife and I made it a point to visit Eusof and his family from time to time. But the visits became more painful as his condition deteriorated and verbal communication was getting to be excruciatingly difficult. But we continued to exchange Eid greetings and the like.
And now I am bidding farewell to a sincere and genuine friend. Eusof was a gem of a human being. Apart from what has been said, he was also a man of integrity endowed with a truly multi-ethnic outlook. All these attributes taken together made him an exceptionally good person.
And that is how Eusof should be remembered.
Chandra Muzaffar.
3rd November 2024.