Sharuddin (squatting) and other PVATM Sarawak members during their visit to Rasli’s grave in Kampung Buntal.
KUCHING: The Malaysian Armed Forces Veterans Association (PVATM) is intensifying efforts to locate and identify the graves of Armed Forces personnel who died in service in Sarawak.
In this respect, its president Capt Datuk Sharuddin Omar has called upon all PVATM branches across Sarawak to help out.
“Particularly in Sarawak, where some of the fallen heroes are buried in remote areas, there could be those who had become almost forgotten and gone unnoticed.
“As such, we are intensifying our efforts to locate and identify these graves, including those in far-flung areas in Sarawak,” he told reporters when met during a recent visit to the grave of one of the fallen men, Trooper Rasli Buang, at Kampung Buntal near here.
Rasli was killed during an encounter with the communists in Perak on July 6, 1971.
Born in 1949 in Kampung Buntal, he joined the force in1968.
In recognition for his contribution, Rasli was posthumously honoured with the nation’s highest gallantry award, the Bintang Seri Pahlawan Perkasa (SP), on July 7, 1972, by then-Yang di-Pertuan Agong Sultan Abdul Halim Mu’adzam Shah Ibni Almarhum Sultan Badlishah.
Adding on, Sharuddin said locating and identifying the graves of these ‘fallen heroes’ had become a nationwide task for the association.
He said having identified the graves, PVATM members would help improve the condition of these final resting places and mark them with the association’s special remembrance and recognition plaques.
Sharuddin was accompanied by PVATM Sarawak chairman Roland Demong Radin and his deputy Lt-Col Monday Juhid.