We need to redress a grave injustice

The May 13 cemetery in Sungai Buloh. - filepic

IT has been 48 years but the painful memories of the May 13 tragedy are indelible. The actual number of people who lost their lives is still a subject of debate and some of the details of what happened during the incident remain hazy.

But illegal land clearing around a forgotten cemetery, hidden behind the Sungai Buloh Hospital, has given us the perfect opportunity to re-examine the biggest blot in the country’s 60-year old history.

About the size of two badminton courts, the cemetery is located near the former Sungai Buloh Leprosy Settlement, 26km from Kuala Lumpur.

The settlement was set up in 1930, when Selangor was under British Resident rule and more than 2,400 people, ostracised for being inflicted with the dreaded disease, were brought there to be treated.

It has surely come a long way from a shunned village of “cursed souls”.

The disease is now only a distant memory, although 138 former patients aged between 65 and 95 still live there.

Called “Valley of Hope”, it is today a horticultural centre, an ideal place to buy plants, flowers and gardening needs. It also attracts visitors who come to take heritage walks.

Over the past weeks, there has been growing outrage over a purported plan to build a carpark at the cemetery, which was said to involve the removal of the graves.

However, the Selayang Municipal Council has confirmed that the clearing and levelling of land near the cemetery was illegal and that no one had applied to develop the site.

Now that there is more clarity on the issue, perhaps the next step is for the National Heritage Department to declare the cemetery a heritage site, given its historical significance.

Based on the 30m x 12m land area and the fact that 110 of the victims were buried there, it is indeed a mass grave.

While the majority were Chinese, there were also Malays and Indians. Their dates of death were between May 13 and May 20.

Most of the tombstones at the graveyard are engraved with names and the dates of death. The words ‘By the courtesy of the Malaysian Government’ are also inscribed on them.

Some only have the words ‘Unidentified Chinese’ and ‘M’ for male on the reverse side of the stones.

According to residents of the village who can still remember the burials, the bodies were brought in lorries from the Kuala Lumpur General Hospital over several days.

The bodies had apparently been painted with tar to cloak identification before they were taken to the site, which was then an isolated area surrounded by jungle.

The May 13 tragedy took place in 1969, three days after the general election and just 12 years after Merdeka.

Racial riots, mostly between the Chinese and Malays, and arson attacks on houses, flared across Kuala Lumpur and several other towns for about two weeks.

As a 14-year boy, I heard some of the horror stories from my late maternal uncle who worked for the Public Works Department and lived at the quarters behind Padang Merbok.

One appalling tale he told involved the traumatic recovery of mutilated bodies of women from a cinema in Pudu.

Official figures state that 196 people were killed but accounts by foreign journalists and records of diplomatic missions estimated the numbers at several hundred.

The younger generation may not fully understand this but the politics of this country has been greatly influenced by the tragedy, especially in the peninsula.

Up to the 1990s, it was very much a taboo subject. People rarely spoke about it openly, although the spectre of the bloodshed was regularly raised through hints and veiled threats just before elections.

Even today, it remains the proverbial elephant in the room. After 48 years, there is still the fear that discussion of the tragedy may open old wounds and fuel new hatred.

It is true that May 13 invokes bitter memories but how long should we keep sweeping it under the carpet?

Although it may be a dire and distressing thing to do, Malaysians have no choice but to come to terms with the country’s past and learn the lessons from this ugly episode in our history, in a rational and mature manner.

Two years ago, threats of May 13 were raised again, after an incident at the Low Yat Plaza.

Five people were injured when a mob attacked traders over an issue that arose over an alleged shoplifting of a mobile phone. Eighteen were eventually arrested.

In the wake of racially-tinged threats and intimidation by certain groups, former minister Tan Sri Rafidah Aziz warned that the country had everything to lose if it ever saw a repeat of the ghastly race riots.

She urged all Malaysians to learn from the May 13 incident.

“I have gone through that tragic and dark period in our nation’s past. It is not something to be proud of.

“It is something from which we need to learn valuable lessons,” she said.

Gazetting the Sungai Buloh May 13 cemetery as a heritage site and erecting a memorial to the victims buried there could be a good start towards establishing the truth behind the tragedy and putting the past behind us.

As inscribed on the tombs of the departed, this must be initiated by ‘the courtesy of the Government’.

Failure to do so would be a grave injustice.

Media consultant M. Veera Pandiyan likes this saying attributed to Buddha: Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon and the truth.