/17913579&sec= focus
Facts don't lie
Point of View With TUN HANIF OMAR
Sunday June 3, 2007
We must not allow ancient animosities and fears to prejudice our march
towards common sense and a common nationhood.
DATUK Dr Mohd Asri Zainul Abidin, the Perlis Mufti, continues to be a
refreshing exponent of an effort to return to an interpretation of Islam
that is freer of certain "protective" biases and prejudices that had crept
into it resulting from the need to confront the periodic assaults against
the Islamic ummah, states and empires by anti-Islam forces.
He said (The Star, May 11) that it's all right for Muslims to use the
crockery and cutlery of their non-Muslim friends, presumably those that
have
been washed since they were last used to hold, poke and cut into non-halal
food.
____________ _________ _________ _____
Role model: Kudos to people like the Perlis Mufti who
dare to stand up and be counted in the struggle for truth.
____________ _________ _________ _____
The plates, cups and cutlery, having been washed are no longer tainted and
Muslims, he said, should not be so overly cautious of what is not obvious
and impede their ability to strengthen their rapport with their non-Muslim
friends.
The biases and prejudices arose out of a perceived need in the past to
distance the ummah from the hostile non-Muslims, particularly Western
crusaders and colonialists.
I remember how, even after the May 13, 1969 racial incident in Kuala
Lumpur,
a Muslim group, since branded deviant, had propagated a very restrictive
interpretation of the halal doctrine so that Muslims would switch from
patronising non-Muslim goods and food for those that they were selling.
At the same time, some Chinese groups propagated the boycott of Malay
goods
including batik shirts and durians.
Thank God, we had all come out of that post-1969 mutually destructive
boycott syndrome to resume our march towards common sense and a common
nationhood. We must not allow ancient animosities and fears to prejudice
this march.
I was taken aback by the statement of Dr Kua Kia Soong at the launching of
his new book on the May 13, 1969 incident based on the reports of British
Embassy personnel to the British Foreign Office that the incident was
engineered by Umno members who were out to topple Tunku Abdul Rahman. He
asked for a commission to be set up to get to the truth. Shockingly he is
alleged to have added that, unless this is done or unless the truth is
out,
there cannot be national unity, or something to that effect.
At 38 years old, I think this is too "ancient" an animosity to be allowed
to
hold national unity to ransom. Should the past be allowed to destroy our
future? This is not to trivialise the incident, the deaths of about 189
people, mostly innocent, I believe, and the injuries to many more.
The figures can be obtained from the Tun Abdul Razak, Director of
Operation'
s, National Operations Council (NOC) Report, The May 13, 1969 Incidents.
The report also gave the more immediate reasons why and how the outbreak
started and its consequences. Actually, the racial animosity had been
building up seriously from as far back as 1964 as a result of racial
politics - Chinese education issues, Chinese stateless-persons issue, land
titles to new villagers, land for expansion of new villages, the Malaysian
Malaysia concept where non-Malay leaders challenged the bumiputra status
of
the Malays. Of course, Malay politicians did not take all these lying down
and the debates and public accusations and counter-accusations in
Parliament, state assemblies and at the open-air public rallies of those
days poisoned national unity.
Is the NOC Report accurate without touching on the plot to topple Tunku?
To
me it is. The unhappiness that some Umno members had with Tunku by 1969
was
real but it did not feature as a cause of the May 13, 1969 incident.
The incident, however, sharpened the unhappiness of the Malays with Tunku
and fuelled the movement to replace him with his deputy, Tun Abdul Razak.
As the coordinator of the Special Branch investigations into the incident,
and having read all the statements from eye-witnesses which formed the
basis
of the NOC Report, I am convinced of its accuracy.
The statistics couldn't be wrong because Tun Razak, appalled by the
casualty
figures reported in foreign broadcasts and newspapers, appointed a Chinese
Minister, Khaw Kai Boh, former Director of the Singapore Special Branch to
be in charge of collecting and accounting for the dead bodies. The police
in
turn appointed Chief Inspector Pang of the KL courts to be in charge of
the
burials of all the dead.
When the draft of the NOC Report prepared jointly by me, Encik (now Datuk)
Hamzah Majid, then seconded to NOC from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs,
and
Colonel (later General Tan Sri and Chief of the Armed Forces) Ghazali Che
Mat, PSO Military on NOC Staff, was first presented to the Director of
Operations and members of the NOC, Datuk (now Tan Sri) Hamzah Abu Samah,
the
new Minister of Information and a president of the sessions court before
that, expressed his reluctance to accept it. " I will not lend myself to a
fabrication, " he said, because the draft exonerated Datuk Harun Idris.
Tun
Sambanthan supported him. The Minister of Home Affairs, Tun Dr Ismail
Abdul
Rahman suggested, "Since Hamzah and Sambanthan are the Doubting Thomases,
let's make them joint-chairmen to go through all the evidence with Hanif
and
his boys, and come up with their findings."
This was agreed to and the drafting team found ourselves closeted with
these
two members of NOC.
The outcome was that the draft came out unscathed and the Doubting
Thomases
declared that they were happy to accept the Report as it was. Then it was
shown to Eric White & Associates for advice. They suggested that certain
relative adjectives such as "very" be dropped. We had no quarrel with
that.
They suggested that perhaps the number of dead and injured could be jazzed
up to bring it closer to foreign press speculations. This, we refused to
accept. Facts are facts. If people wouldn't believe them then it was just
too bad.
----------------------------------------------------------------
This e-mail has been sent via JARING webmail at http://www.jaring.my
No comments:
Post a Comment