09/12: A distortion of history

Khir Toyo has asked HINDRAF not to provoke the Malays. It seems SMSess are floating around saying that HINDRAF is planning to organise a gathering in Kampong Baru. This is what The Star reported:

The Indian community has been advised not to heed an SMS that claimed Hindraf would hold a gathering in Kg Baru, said Selangor Mentri Besar Datuk Seri Dr Mohd Khir Toyo. He said the messages were sent out with the intention of causing anger among the Malays and create racial tension.

“The Indian community should also ignore the messages. I hope the police will take action against those who are spreading false information,” he told reporters after attending the opening of the heritage building of the Sultan Suleiman Club by the Sultan of Selangor Sultan Sharafuddin Idris Shah yesterday.

“Hindraf should not provoke the Malays in Kg Baru, which was where many Malays struggled for the country’s independence and where they protected themselves during the May 13 incident in 1969.”

Khir said that the SMSess are about HINDRAF planning to organise a rally in Kampong Baru, Actually, the SMSess said that PERKIDA, not HINDRAF, was going to organise the gathering.

Khir has totally distorted the whole thing. The SMSess never said HINDRAF, it said PERKIDA. And why would HINDRAF want to commit suicide by organising a gathering in Kampong Baru? Would any Indian with even the smallest brain want to organise a gathering in a Malay enclave? That would not only be inviting trouble but would be a sure recipe for a massacre.

The police have called up the PERKIDA people to ask about their planned gathering in Kampong Baru. The PERKIDA people have denied it of course and said that the SMSess are false and that no such gathering has been planned. The police then warned the PERKIDA people that if they went ahead with the gathering they would be picked up.

Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi also called the PERKIDA people to advice them to cancel the gathering. This means even the Prime Minister believes that a gathering is being planned and he wants it aborted. Surely the Prime Minister, who is the patron of PERKIDA, would know whether his organisation is planning the gathering or not. And the fact that he has asked PERKIDA to cancel the gathering means that one had been planned.

Another distortion of facts by Khir was the part where he said that Kampong Baru was where the Malays struggled for independence and where they protected themselves during the May 13 race riots in 1969.

Now, there are many things wrong with this statement. First of all, Malaya was never colonised by the British in the true sense of colonisation. What we had was the Straits Settlements that was managed by the East India Company, a public company listed on the London Stock Exchange. The Straits Settlements comprised of Malacca (Melaka), Penang (Pulau Pinang) and Singapore (Singapura). Penang and Singapore were two islands leased from the Sultans of Kedah and Johor respectively while Malacca was given to the British by the Dutch. The British never sent in their army to take these three territories by force. Penang and Singapore were a commercial arrangement while Malacca was a territory that the Dutch gave to the British in exchange for British territories in Indonesia. The Dutch and British owned territories in both Malaya and Indonesia. They then decided that the British would make their presence in Malaya while the Dutch would just be in Indonesia.

We also had the Federated and Unfederated Malay States which were all independent and under the rule of the Sultans. The British, however, did position British Advisers in these states, especially to assist in matters of policing and maintaining the peace as most of the states were plagued with rebellions or civil wars, or were at war with one another, basically territorial claims and disputes over the rich tin fields.

The Malaya situation was actually quite unique. The British government was not really managing the many independent states directly. The states were being managed by a company and it was the company that paid the salaries of the administration personnel, which included the police and army. And there was no country called Malaya yet at that time. It was a collection of states, each under its own separate government headed by Sultans, except for the islands of Penang and Singapore which were leased from the Sultans and therefore managed by the company. And Malacca was not acquired or annexed from the Malays or the Sultan but was handed to the British by the Dutch. In a way the British ‘freed’ Malacca from Dutch control, not from Malay control.

The establishment of the Straits Settlements followed the Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1824 between the United Kingdom and the Netherlands, by which the Malay Archipelago was divided into a British zone in the north and a Dutch zone in the south. This resulted in the exchange of the British settlement of Bencoolen (in Sumatra) for the Dutch colony of Malacca.

Secondly, the Malays did not struggle for independence alone. What happened was that the Malays, Chinese and Indians got together to meet the British to discuss the possible date of the proclamation of independence for Malaya. Earlier, Umno sent a delegation to Britain but the issue of independence was never discussed. Later, when the British could no longer manage the Malay territories, they suggested the many states merge into one nation, initially to be called the Malayan Union, and when this was opposed by the ‘Orang Istana’ who lodged a protest with the Rulers, into the Federation of Malaya.

We must remember, Britain was bankrupt because of the Second World War and the new Labour government was keen to withdraw its forces from the East as soon as possible. Colonial self-rule and eventual independence were now British policy. The British were therefore very happy to ‘get rid’ of Malaya which was a drain on its financial resources. In way, Britain was ‘forcing’ Merdeka upon us. We really did not have to fight for Merdeka as much as Merdeka was shoved upon us.

You could say that the creation of the Federation was not really to grant ‘independence’ to this country, as there was no country as such, but to merge all the independent states into one nation in an effort to ‘dump’ us. You can probably also say that the British were not giving Malaya independence, as Malaya did not exist yet then, but were trying to create a nation called Malaya by uniting all the independent states under a Federation. This would be more viable than the British just going home and abandoning this country to civil war, rebellion, wars between the states, not to mention skirmishes between the different races, which were the reasons for British intervention in the first place. For example, Negeri Sembilan, which did not exist yet then, was carved out of Selangor after the war between the Malays and Chinese that saw entire villages massacred, the Sultan of Selangor’s family included. The Selangor-Perak war was another example where the Bernam River was eventually agreed as the Selangor-Perak border to settle the territorial dispute and Kampar and Tapah ended up as Perak territory.

Therefore, if anyone ‘fought’ for independence, it would have been the Malays, Chinese and Indians, not the Malays alone. In fact, the Indians under Chandra Bose, who came to Malaya during the war, had already negotiated for independence from the Japanese during the Second World War while the Malays under Mustapha Hussein, Ibrahim Yaakub, Dr. Burhanuddin Hilmi, etc,. had already fixed the date for the independence of Malaya. And the date fixed was 17 August 1945. This is confirmed by Mustapha Hussein in his book Malay Nationalism Before Umno:

Dr Burhanuddin and I slogged day and night to draft an Independent Malaya Constitution and other materials related to KRIS. As we worked, we thought of Ibrahim Yaakub and thus approached Major General Umezu to summon Ibrahim Yaakub, but Major General Umezu replied that it was not necessary for Ibrahim to lead this project. As KMM vice president, I could do so. He also said it was difficult to contact Ibrahim.

But we insisted, if not for anything, to show to the Japanese that just as Soekarno was the leader of the Indonesian people, Ibrahim was the leader of the people of Malaya. Not long after, Ibrahim Yaakub arrived in Taiping, accompanied by a handsome adjutant, Lt Osman Daim from the Malai Giyu Gun.

On 11 August 1945, HODOSHO officers took Ibrahim Yaakub and Dr Burhanuddin to Penang to meet the Japanese Submarine Flotilla Commodore responsible for Penang Radio Station whose permission was vital in the proclamation of Independent Malaya. I was told he was a communist and should gladly co operate. He openly welcomed the use of Penang radio station and would work hard towards the materialisation of Independent Malaya declaration on 17 August 1945. I did not go to Penang with them as I was busy drafting the Independent Malaya Constitution and KRIS Congress working papers.

It was already decided in Taiping, that the KRIS Congress be held at the Kuala Lumpur Station Hotel. The proclamation of Independent Malaya would be made on 17 August 1945 through Penang Radio Station, not in Jakarta as it was much chronicled later.

On 12 August 1945, I was invited by the Japanese Officers to go to Taiping aerodrome with Ibrahim Yaakub to meet the legendary President Soekarno and his entourage which included Drs Mohd Hatta, but I had to turn the offer down as my legs were in great pain. Descending three flights of stairs was daunting. I had turned down a golden opportunity, which I regret to this day

Soekarno stopped over in Taiping on his way home to Indonesia after meeting Field Marshall Count Terauchi, Supreme Commander of Japanese Forces in South East Asia, in Saigon. Although Ibrahim Yaakub liked to think otherwise, his meeting with Soekarno was by chance, as confirmed by Prof. Yoichi Itagaki who was present, “On August 12, 1945 Ibrahim met by chance Ir. Sukarno and Dr Hatta who were flying from Saigon to Djakarta at the Taiping aerodrome and was encouraged by them.”

17 August 1945 was the date that Malaya would gain independence. However, on 6 August 1945, the Americans dropped the atom bomb on Hiroshima followed by another one on Nagasaki soon after. And on 15 August 1945 the Japanese surrendered, two days before Malaya’s independence could be proclaimed. Malaya, therefore, had been ‘robbed’ of its independence by just two days. Umno did not even exist then. Indonesia, however, went ahead with its independence plans and they fought a bloody battle with the Dutch to prevent them from retaking the country after the Japanese left.

The second part of Khir’s statement is about “where the Malays protected themselves during the May 13 incident in 1969.” Come on, ‘protected’ means that you were the victim and not the aggressor. Do we really need to go through the history of the 13 May 1969 race riots and prove Khir wrong? I mean, May 13 is probably the most-widely discussed subject so there is really no requirement to talk about it anymore. But saying that Kampong Baru was where the Malays protected themselves is just stretching it a bit too far. Khir is insulting our intelligence if he thinks he can spin this one and get away with it.

Okay, let us get the facts straight. The Federation of Malaya did not exist prior to 31 August 1957. The independent Malay states were not united under one nation and, other than the Straits Settlements, were under the rule of their respective Sultans. Malaya was formed as a Federation to unite the states under one nation rather than to ‘free’ the states. Independence was originally fixed for 17 August 1945 but unfortunately the Japanese surrendered two days before the proclamation of Merdeka. Eventually, 12 years later, Merdeka was proclaimed but it was negotiated by the Malays, Chinese and Indians, not just by the Malays. No one fought for Merdeka; we were forced to accept Merdeka by a bankrupt British government that could no longer afford to keep us. The Malays did not ‘protect’ themselves in Kampong Baru in 13 May 1969. Finally, the SMSess said that PERKIDA and not HINDRAF is planning the gathering in Kampong Baru on 16 December 2007. And because of these SMSess the Bar Council cancelled its march today, worried that the march would be infiltrated by PERKIDA elements who might hijack the march to trigger race riots.

That is what really happened and not as what was reported by The Star. I wonder what else The Star distorted, what the Sultan of Selangor said maybe?