Remembering a dark day in history

You know what they say: Those unable to remember the past are condemned to repeat it

AS the month of May neared, I found myself reading a text message inviting me to what is becoming a regular event for me at this time of the year: to speak at the cemetery where the bodies of those who died in the riots of May 13, 1969, are buried.

I had previously been invited to join religious figures from various faiths who had come to say a prayer for the dead in the multifaith cemetery, unique in Malaysia.

These are the dead who are mostly unnamed and signified with a tombstone that says only which ethnicity is buried.

I saw signs for Malays, Indians and Chinese.

The group that takes diligent care of this cemetery in Sungai Buloh, Selangor, is called Pesawa (Persatuan Sahabat Warisan Kuala Lumpur dan Selangor).

The members of the group informed me last year that they had invited me to speak because their practice of asking different religious representatives to say some prayers was criticised by some Muslim groups when a Muslim cleric came. So I was the default Malay asked to say a few words, albeit not prayers.

I have been invited again this year, which leads me to think that either I was very popular last year or that I am the only Malay crazy enough to accept this invitation.

The difference this year is that I have also been asked to speak on film for a documentary featuring relatives of the victims recalling the day.

I have already given my interview and had also put forward the names of two friends whom I know would not fear to talk about this matter. The filmmakers said it has been difficult to find Malays to speak about this moment in the nation’s history.

As with the previous year, I was also invited again to speak at a related event at another venue, together with a few other panellists. Same old same old.

I heavily feel that, as the years pass and I grow older, nothing changes in our beloved nation.

May 13 is still either unremembered, unrecognised, or used by some NGOs and political personalities to rile up racial sentiments whenever it’s convenient for them.

I remember a few years ago when Chinese education association Dong Zong was unhappy about the introduction of Jawi calligraphy for pupils in vernacular schools and a group of Malay university students used May 13 as a threat against the association.

I saw it with my own eyes and was in the middle of the affair, trying my best to douse the fires of racial tension. Is that how the day is remembered now?

After my appearance last year, I was given a book published by Pesawa, documenting firsthand accounts by Malaysians of all races who lost loved ones in 1969.

I read more than 10 accounts, but then had to stop for I couldn’t take reading any more.

One account by a Malay man who was a university student at the time narrated how he stumbled on a group of his people brandishing parangs, knives and swords, ready to kill anyone of another race. When he tried to run away, his life was threatened.

Another person recalled how his brother went to work digging a longkang (drain) and never returned. Yet another account told of couples going to a cinema and then running for their lives while seeing dead bodies all around.

I had to put the book down as I thought I would never sleep soundly again.

As a parent, I cannot imagine having a child just disappear, not knowing he had been killed until months later because news was slow back then, and contacting loved ones was not as easy as it is today in real time.

Can you imagine it?

Parents would suddenly find after many months that their missing sons and daughters had been killed. Spouses would discover they are truly alone weeks after waving a spouse off to work, never to return.

I have never had more gruesome images of deaths and killing in my head before reading that book.

Sadly, I found out that the two burial sites – the other, smaller site, is in Setapak, Selangor – had for a long time not been officially gazetted as the place where our sons, daughters, spouses, brothers, sisters, parents and friends killed by the riot had been laid to rest. The site in Sungai Buloh, where I delivered a speech under the morning sun that first time, had stood for more than half a century unnoted, unnamed.

After much effort by Pesawa, the Selangor government finally gazetted the site as a non-Muslim cemetery – in the nick of time to save it from being tarred over for a parking lot, it seems.

It is important that our nation acknowledge and identify these sites as a reminder of our weaknesses as a country.

In my mind, May 13 will always be something we did to ourselves, something that we should acknowledge if we are to be remorseful and repentant about letting this mayhem take place.

I feel that the Unity Ministry should take point in this matter and start the ball rolling on properly acknowledging the sites and providing a narrative that explains and remembers May 13, and lay it to rest properly.

Until we memorialise the sites and agree on the narrative as such, I feel that we will always be playing the blame and fault-finding game, and the incident will always be open to being used by various quarters to weaponise the narrative for their own selfish purposes.

Every May 13, we should remember, “Negara kita, salah kita, dan tanggungjawab kita bersama”. Our country, our fault, and our shared responsibility.

Prof Dr Mohd Tajuddin Mohd Rasdi is Professor of Architecture at the Tan Sri Omar Centre for Science, Technology and Innovation Policy Studies at UCSI University. The views expressed here are entirely the writer’s own.