May 13th 1969 – The Correct View (part 2)

When Kua Kia Soong launched his book a couple of years ago, it was hailed as a momentous occasion where a national taboo was at last broken. What more, the authorities did nothing to even review or validify the book’s contents. It is after all, a one man’s point of view. A skewed one nevertheless. But it is a book that is open for discussion.

Nobody on earth questioned about its contents back then. Kua Kia Soong’s book was the definitive guide for Malaysians to learn about May 13, 1969. So when this blog revealed that Kua Kia Soong had actually slandered our very own Bapa Pembangunan Malaysia for instigating the riots, everyone jumped into the bandwagon and criticised me as a racist.

I find that hilarious.

I conclude that among the communist infested minds of the commentators here, it is OKAY for Kua Kia Soong to omit facts from his book and also, it is permissible for him to insult and slander people without proper evidence.

On the other hand, when I revealed that there are so many other FACTS that were omitted by him and also the refutations provided had unveiled his malicious agenda, I was hurled with so many abusive language. Some even wanted me to be jailed under the ISA!

I guess from a communist point of view, telling lies is okay but trying to rebuke the lies and telling the truth is a BIG NO.

As predicted, profanity-charged comments came from all over to spam this particular blog. After getting a free ride since Kua Kia Soong’s book hit the book stand in 2007, these particular commentators are rattled just because someone had tried to debunk their ‘bible’. They could only spew vulgarities (which had to be deleted) but unable to rebuke the writings I posed for them.

For instance, not one of them rebuked my contention that Kua Kia Soong made a horrendous mistake regarding Dato’ Onn’s struggle back in 1946. Not one of the many comments made a reference to my assertion that Kua Kia Soong purposely did not include any of the damning events leading to the general elections in 1969. He did not even describe with great detail how was the victory parade looked like a day after the general elections. To me, like I stated earlier, he was trying to imply that the racial riots were originated from Umno alone. I proved to them that it was wrong. And no one rebutted me on that.

Anyone?

Anyway, some of the commentators could not even argue properly. This is because, they have not read Kua Kia Soong’s book or any of the books I provided. A few actually said that since Kua Kia Soong had his own sources, we should believe him because my own sources are unverified.

Well, truth be told that the sources I used as reference are from the same sources that Kua Kia Soong had used for his book! Just look at its bibliography section and notice that he had referred to Tunku’s book (May 13 : Before and After) and the NOC Official Report.

Where do you think I get all the pictures and details? From those two books lah! Not only that, I used as reference Tunku’s other books such as Political Awakening (I even provided page number for the readers’ easy reference). I also sourced out references from other people that was involved during that period of time. One of them is a book entitled ‘Nation Before Self’ by Dato Seri Yuen Yuet Leng who is a celebrated police officer of his time (he retired in 1984 as a Sarawak Police Commissioner).

Since Kua Kia Soong’s sources of references are deemed as credible by these Chinese chauvinists, then why are mine be selectively discarded?

Bear in mind, I took first hand experience from writers that were involved during that episode.

Bottomline, they are unable to accept that what Kua Kia Soong had written could be extremely one sided and may not be deemed as the comprehensive truth after all.

It must have hurt them real bad to have their fantasies of pinning all the blame to Malays and Umno over what happened in 1969 was put to the stress test by this blog. Of which, judging from the plethora of ‘denial syndrome’ infested comments; it was indeed a test that these bigots failed to pass.

One last try of the ridiculous argument they presented was that all those provocations by the chauvinistic Chinese towards Malays such as ‘Melayu babi balik kampung’ and ‘Jakun balik hutan’ and showing their genitals and vulgar signs did not justify the killings of Chinese by the Malays that went berserk from those taunts.

My rebuttal? What was the justification to kill an innocent Malay Umno member by the Labour Party members 2 weeks before the elections? It was an unprovoked attack. Was his life less valuable than the life of a chinese? I guess not then.

Which is why Tun Mahathir said in one of his articles – when Malays tried to defend their constitutional rights and tell their side of the story, it is deemed as racist. But when those extremists initially had shrieked on top of their lungs to abolish those very rights and propagating insidious lies as history, it is deemed as acceptable and following the rights to have freedom of speech.

That is certainly not how it is done here. Freedom of speech can only be done if it goes hand in hand with a sense  of responsibility and awareness.

Here is a poser: some say that the cause of racial tension here in Malaysia is due to the NEP. The NEP is the one that made all races resent each other. Correct?

But racial riots that happened in 1969 and prior to that occurred before the inception of the NEP in 1970! If the opposition now had publicly declared that they will uphold the Malay Special Rights and will protect what is in the Constitution, what was the cause of the racial tension pre-NEP days then?

You guessed it right. Extremism and subversive communist propaganda. Some people then could not accept what is in the Constitution. These were the opposing views who wanted to segregate themselves from nationalism. Those racist bigots back then thought that the Malay Special Rights were an abomination to their own minority rights. And what right was that? The presumption that their chauvinistic values are far better than the stereotyped Malays.

We see here now that a similar trend emerged since the 80’s where the opposition kept on questioning the Malay rights. The Malays in turn could not question or even defend their rights for if they were to do that, they will automatically  be labeled as racists. Evidently, the concept of fairness only applies to what they only think was fair.

Here is another fact. On May 13, not all that died were Chinese. 25 Malays, 13 indians and 143 chinese died because of the riots. Freedom of speech that went too far coupled with provocations caused those deaths. Extremism caused those deaths. Racial insensitivities caused those deaths. Irresponsible subversive elements such as communist underground movement caused those deaths. Unhindered chauvinism and racism caused those deaths.

Please do not start that there were more Chinese that died compared to other races. Certainly it wasn’t the Malays that started the funeral procession and the victory marches. The blame should be put squarely on the shoulders of those who took part in the processions and the parade as well.

Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak made a speech recently that Umno must not be too nostalgic of its past contribution. He said:

“There is no other party that has made as much contribution to nation-building as Umno, and this has been proven,” he said. “But if we only rely on sentiments, past contributions and nostalgia, these may not be enough to sustain our position as the ruling party.”

I am happy that the prime minister is cognisant of history although I doubt he is aware of the current prevailing sentiments of the people who had been influenced by the hate propaganda of the opposition. Many out there believe that the racial riots of 1969 was started by Umno.  And many believed it was started by his own father! Tragically, many of our younger generations may have believed it as well. Regarding the young generation, Najib said this about them in the same speech:

“They are like a piece of white cloth; if you provide them with the right information, they will lean towards us.”

But ever since the publication of Kua Kia Soong’s book, were there any effort to correct the misleading facts shown in that book by the government? Were there any books to counter its damaging effects?

Hence, these blog articles here will help the people to see the tragic incident from an impartial perspective.

I need not apologise for this effort. It is a story that must told in the correct way.

We will start on where we left off from the previous article.

As what was well documented, the Alliance lost many parliamentary seats in the 1969 general election.

Selangor lost many of its state seats but managed to get hold of the state government through a slim majority of 4 seats.

Perak nearly lost to the opposition. Pulau Pinang lost to Gerakan.

All of the state seats in Kuala Lumpur fell to the chinese based opposition political parties (Kuala Lumpur was part of Selangor then).

In Parliament, the Alliance lost its two-thirds majority by only 1 parliamentary seat (although they regain the two-thirds majority when Gerakan, PPP and PAS joined the Alliance to form Barisan Nasional in 1973).

As the result of the unprecedented victory by the opposition at that time, the DAP and Gerakan decided to organize victory parade all over Kuala Lumpur on the 11^th and 12^th of May.

Kua Kia Soong even stated on page 85 that the racial riots of 1969 were carefully planned and organized by Tun Abdul Razak as a coup d’etat. Kua Kia Soong concluded all this eventhough circumstances before, during and after the riots clearly made his conclusion a wrong one.

And this was well documented by the people that were there during the scene. However, there were some commentators in the previous article who said that it was Tun Abdul Razak who had granted permission to the opposition to hold victory parade but Tunku was against it. Hence, the massive scale of riots could have been avoided and there would have been no killings on May 13^th.

That could be true. But then again, let me show you what really had happened according to what Tunku had written in his book that Kua Kia Soong is also using as reference (again, please click and zoom). By Tunku’s own admission, he wrote:

Taken from May 13 : Before and After (i)

Taken from May 13 : Before and After (ii)

From reading this, the report on the victory celebrations actually jived with the clippings  NOC report attached at the end of the previous article.

But it does not jive with the notion that it was Tun Razak who had planned to give the permit for the parade. In fact, Gerakan’s V. David had arrogantly defied police orders and proceeded to organise an illegal victory parade in the middle of Bukit Bintang!

If you have eyes and able to read, then I leave it to you to think whether all the assumptions made by people who wanted to twist history is viable.

Dato Seri Yuen Yuet Leng wrote a whole chapter on the racial riots in his book – Nation Before Self. On page 159, he reminisced:

“The sudden surge of excessive Chinese chauvinistic and uncontrolled emotions during the May 69 elections following Opposition camps, was accompanied by even some simplistic presumptuousness that even greater Chinese political ascendency and successes would follow. The aggressive posturing and defiance seen during the funeral procession of an opposition posturing element shot by the police few days earlier had already fumed the situation. All these acts together could only create anger and inflict humiliation on the fragile sensitivities of a basically proud race and people. Very strong Malay anger arose intermixed with political anxieties for the community’s future. A counter procession in strength with much embedded racial pride and improvised self-protection was planned and organized.”

On page 42 of Kua Kia Soong’s book, he only made a passing remark about the funeral procession and the victory parades (just 7 lines to be exact).  Will this give his readers the true picture of what had happened then? I doubt it. Do you?

Here are more pictures taken from the history archives:

Provocation by the chauvinist victors

The parade that went off course than was permitted

Freedom of speech that went too far

Picture taken from Tunku's book

Before we move on to part 3, I would like to state another misdirection Kua Kia Soong did in his book.

On page 62, Kua Kia Soong stated this –

“From the declassified documents, it was widely known that the number of casualties were far higher than stated in the official statistics. Still the official sources showed a preponderance of non-Malay fatalities.

On 21 May, limited passenger train services resumed between Kuala Lumpur, Butterworth and Singapore; Malaysia-Singapore Airlines resume normal operations, while international flights were still over-flying West Malaysia. The official statistics of casualties were:

“137 killed – 18 Malays
342 injured
109 vehicles burned
118 buildings destroyed
2912 persons arrested, mostly curfew breakers”

Wow. At the start of this paragraph, he said that there were actually more deaths than what was reported in the official report. He said that it was widely known from the ‘declassified documents’ that the casualties were higher. But get this, he did not even publish the excerpt of this ‘evidence’ in his book at all! Instead, he put in the official statistics.

Why? So that he will incite hatred among those who read his book. And yet, I was the one who was labeled as hate monger when I have done nothing but exposing the weaknesses in his hypothesis and adding the facts that Kua Kia Soong purposely had omitted.

Furthermore, it was not Tun Razak who established the National Operations Council (NOC). It was Tunku. Therefore, to even suggest that it was Tun Razak who created the NOC just to shelve the then PM was indeed a false notion. Below is the excerpt from Tunku’s book:

May 13 : Before and After (pg 98 - 100)

Thus we go back to Kua Kia Soong’s conclusions mentioned in the previous article:

1) Tun Abdul Razak masterminded the May 13 racial riots as a form of coup d’etat from Tunku Abdul Rahman – false conclusion

2) Datuk Harun Idris led Umno Youths to spontaneously launched an unprovoked attack towards the chinese people – to be discussed in the final part

3) The racial riots were not the fault of the racist opposition or the subversive communist movement – false conclusion

In part 3 (final part), we will discover what went on the tragic day itself. We will read the going-ons and the decisions made by leaders on that day. This final part may not be a good read for Umno as well as it will impartially look at the party’s situation and how some leaders at that time became opportunistic.

The final part will also try to discuss the aftermath of the whole event. Please be patient.