Putting the record straight

THANKS to the Winter Olympics in South Korea next month, the war between North Korea and the United States is not likely to start during the games. After the Olympics, nobody knows.

Did you know that last week two ‘wars’ suddenly erupted in Malaysia? Yes, one in the peninsula when a former MAF officer was up in arms against the Minister of Defence. The point at issue was an allegation purportedly made by the minister – that army veterans were being unpatriotic.

This allegation particularly incensed one former TUDM Major Mior Rosli and a number of his comrades. They came to his aid immediately, shooting from the flanks.

As this battle has loads of partisan politics, and recognising that this is the election season when anything goes and the fact that the Minister of Defence has enough of an arsenal to deal with this aerial bombardment, I shall refrain from touching on that war in the peninsula. I prefer instead to be at a safe distance but keep tabs on developments. The battle may reach our shores. Who knows?

I would rather touch briefly on a kind of war at another front, here in Sarawak, which took place within the same week.

A group of former officers from the Persatuan Veteran Tentera Kor Renjer (PVTKR) in Kuching were stung by a remark allegedly made by Ummah’s chairman, a cleric called Ismail Mina Ahmad, to the effect that only the Malays fought ‘invaders and communists’ – the statement was as sweeping as that.

Claiming that the cleric did not know what he was talking about, the veterans during a press conference demanded from the speaker an apology to “soldiers of other races who had fought gallantly risking their lives for the nation”.

During the recent Konvensyen Kebangkitan Ummah 2018, the cleric reportedly said that the Malays were the ones who fought the Siamese, the British, the Japanese, and the communists.

I studied his text as reported on the Internet and was not wildly excited or surprised at all. I had heard a similar version of the Malayan history from a PAS member sitting next to me in the Mapen meeting (National Economic Council) in the 1990s.

This cleric would have saved his colleagues from unnecessary embarrassment if he had confined himself to commenting on the Malay warriors’ role during the fights against the Siamese, the Achinese, the Portuguese, British for control of spice trade through Melaka in the 16th century and the 14,000 Malays recruited as special police in September 1948. It seems that at the convention, he got carried away and went overboard when he encroached on the next period of the history of the peninsula (Malaya) and of present day Malaysia.

Records in the archives and libraries in Malaysia and in certain other countries are available for evidence of the role of servicemen and women from almost all ethnic groups in defending modern Malaya during the Japanese invasion, during the Malayan Emergency, during the Indonesian Konfrontasi. By logical extension, he seems to have included the time of the communist insurgency in Sarawak, and the Suluk invasion of Sabah.

He skipped mention of a number of heroes killed during the conflicts from 1948 to 1989. He forgot that the British servicemen and the Indians were fighting and were killed while defending Malaya before and during the Japanese invasion, not to say many Chinese, and even the Dayaks (one Iban tracker Awang Raweng was almost killed in a fight); they were all fighting the common enemies to keep Malaya safe.

In Sarawak, the servicemen and women – and don’t forget the police, the Border Scouts, the SB and the civilians – coming from almost all ethnic groups were there on the frontline along with the Malays.

The cleric might not know of the rest of the history of conflicts in modern Malaysia, and we must not generalise or assume that other members of his Ummah or of those organisations under its umbrella are as unfamiliar with the history of conflicts in Malaya (and later Malaysia).

For that reason, we may be forgiven for being generous to him: dismiss him as someone who is well versed in his own religion but whose forte is not modern history. He might not know what he was doing, have you thought of that? Thus we must not assume that he was speaking on behalf of his organisation at that particular konvensyen in KL.

However, I wish that the Ministry of Defence would put the record straight for the information of us all and save us from further verbal skirmishes with one another over a personal perspective on history.

There must be, somewhere inside the files of the Mindef, records not only of Malayans/Malaysians who have served in the armed forces during the Emergency years, the Confrontation period and, in Sarawak of the communist insurgency time, and in Sabah, the Sulu invasion.

What about that apology? Do not expect one publicly; it would be enough if the public get some signal that the speaker is truly contrite: silence.

It would be enough if the relevant authorities could come up with some clarification, lest the silence may send a wrong signal – statements on race relations having a seditious tendency that promote “feelings of ill-will and hostility between different races or classes of the population of Malaysia” are to be tolerated. It is not acceptable.

As a passing shot, may I ask about the recognition of the service rendered by the civilians who helped provide information on the whereabouts of the enemy during those conflicts? They were equally essential to the war effort and the eventual victory. Shouldn’t the nation recognise their role during wartime too?

No one seems to remember, let alone care about the civilians. We Malaysians are a forgetful lot.

Comments can reach the writer via [email protected].