May 13 mooted as day of reconciliation

Based on the notion that ‘Change, Peace Starts with Me’, a conference on ‘Tools for Change’ has mooted that May 13 be turned into a day of forgiveness and reconciliation among Malaysians.
Initiatives of Change (IofC), formerly known as the Moral Re-Armament movement, has taken up the idea and is now working towards ‘National Reconciliation Day’ on May 13.

It has formed a committee, Creators of Peace Circle, following a four-day international conference held last week.

Project coordinator Regina Morris said the spectre of the racial riots of May 13, 1969 has raised fear and that many are still not willing to face it.

“A group of participants from the conference decided to lay the ghost to rest by turning the spectre of May 13 into a National Day of Reconciliation,” she explained.

The committee hopes to launch the project by providing victims of the May 13 incident with a safe space to talk about what they experienced during that week of fear and violence.

“National Reconciliation Day is designed to draw participants through personal reflection to an awareness of needs in their own lives and communities, and to encourage steps to take to create peace,” said Morris.

“It allows space for people to tell their deepest stories and to be heard without judgment and in strictest confidentiality.

 

“It is formatted to build deep listening, which is a powerful tool of release and personal transformation.

“We hope by the end of the process that those taking part will become creators of peace themselves.”

Self-transformation in working towards a peaceful nation is an expected outcome from the project, mirroring the essential truth ‘As I am, so is my nation’.

Quoting Mahatma Gandhi who inspired the formation of IofC, Morris said: “There is no way to peace – Peace is the way.”

IofC is an international movement for social and global transformation inspired by personal transformation. It was started in 1938 as Moral Re-Armament.

LAUNCHING OF MAY 13, 1969, TRUTH & RECONCILIATION BLOG

Exactly 40 years ago a great tragedy occurred in Kuala Lumpur where many people were killed or injured. This tragedy came to be known as the May 13, 1969 incident. Today the very mention of May 13 still bring shudders and strike fear in the hearts of many Malaysians. 

Generally, the subject of May 13 is a social taboo in Malaysia, at least in public discourse. It is the tacit understanding of reasonable citizens that the topic is too sensitive for public discussion, especially among mixed company thus perpetuating the fears and myths.

It is with this unhealthy closeting of truths that a blogger decided to create a blog which aims to bring out ‘TRUTH AND RECONCILIATION’ and a proper closure to the tragic incident. After all reconciliation always starts with the TRUTH.

This initiators of this blog believes that every Malaysian particularly those born post-May 13, 1969 should be given every opportunity to learn the truth about the tragic May 13 incident. As a visitor to Malaysiakini commented,

“How are we to achieve excellence if we do not allow the freedom to probe and research? Without this freedom to probe and research, we will always be a mediocre nation and a mediocre people. “

The South Africans under their first ANC government thought so. Once the native Africans came to power after a bloody and protracted struggle, they did not persecute their white minority population as Robert Mugabe did in Zimbabwe. Instead, the first ANC government established the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, confronted their ugly past face to face, and wrestled their infamous national demon to the ground. ”  – Sim Kwang Yang in “Unmasking the Hornets”, Malaysiakini  

The initiators of this blog invites all Malaysians to confront their ugly past face to face, and wrestled their infamous national demon to the ground. And nothing short of an national inquiry and the establishment of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission could this past demon be overcome.

This blog also invites any eyewitness accounts of the May 13 incident to come forward and published their stories here for future generations to know. Its time for the tragedy to be demystified.

NO MORE SECRECY. NO MORE CENSORSHIP.

LET THE TRUTH BE TOLD.

TRUTH AND RECONCILIATION

by KJ John

One of the ways South Africa overcame its black-white struggle was through a Truth and Reconciliation Commission. According to Wikipedia, “The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) was a court-like body assembled in South Africa after the abolition of apartheid.

“Witnesses who were identified as victims of gross human rights violations were invited to give statements about their experiences, and some were selected for public hearings. Perpetrators of violence could also give testimony and request amnesty from both civil and criminal prosecution.”

The TRC, the first of the 19 held internationally to stage public hearings, was seen by many as a crucial component of the transition to full and free democracy in South Africa. Despite some flaws, it is generally (although not universally) thought to have been successful.”

What did the TRC do? It basically was a process for “overcoming the generations of hurts and pains caused by the White Supremacists in Black Africa’s southernmost state.”

Time to be afraid

By Jacqueline Ann Surin

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Malaysians are being told to be afraid (© Marcelo Terraza / sxc.hu)

“BE afraid. Be very afraid.” That, in essence, was what the protestors against a Hindu temple relocation in Shah Alam were saying. But they were not just saying it to their Hindu neighbours in Section 23, Shah Alam. They were also saying it to the Pakatan Rakyat Selangor government. In fact, they were saying it to all Malaysians.

How else can we explain their actions? First, on 28 Aug 2009, when they demonstrated with a severed cow head outside the Selangor state secretariat, promising bloodshed if a Hindu temple was relocated to their neighbourhood. And then on 5 Sept 2009, when they acted aggressively and threatened to rape and harm during what was meant to be a state government dialogue with the residents.

What’s worse is that the Barisan Nasional leadership and the administration under Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak is doing little to address this threat of violence. Indeed, if Home Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein’s actions are anything to go by, it would seem that the Umno vice-president actually supports the threat of violence by disgruntled Malay-Muslim Malaysians in their bid to get their way.

Zaid torches Utusan for stoking racial flames

Former Umno leader and minister Zaid Ibrahim has lashed out at Malay daily Utusan Malaysia for playing up racial sentiments.

He said the articles which appeared in the daily’s Sunday edition reminded him of how far removed the paper is from the reality of life in Malaysia.

HASSAN MUTHALIB’S MAY 13 PHOTO GALLERY

The day after: Curfew; the army takes over. Viewpoint from Hassan Muthalib’s home; across the road is a Chinese Malaysian vicinity. 14 May 1969 (Pic by Hassan Muthalib)

MAY 13 – SO WHAT??

Sunday, 17 May 2009 13:32

Four decades have passed. Yet, it appears that as a nation, we have not gotten over May 13. Although much has been achieved in terms of advancing development since then, Malaysia as a whole is not a happy nation. By LILEI CHOW, mysinchew Last Wednesday over the office water cooler, I said to my colleague, “So, May 13, huh?” He looked over at me and replied, “Yeah. So?” “Don’t you care?” I demanded to know. “No, not really,” he said and shrugged. “To me, it happened. We’ve been brought up to believe that we must always remember May 13 as something awful, terrible, something we shouldn’t speak about. But it happened and a whole bunch of policies were implemented to make sure it didn’t happen again. What’s more important to me is how we move forward.”

I felt a deep sense of betrayal

Saturday, 16 May 2009 17:18

I believe that in our present troubled circumstances, the most important role politicians can play is to identify and examine dispassionately those social, political and economic causes that can possibly lead to racial disunity and then set about rectifying them. By TUNKU ABDUL AZIZ/MySinchew WE WERE staying in a holiday cottage in Lynton, the quintessentially small English village in Devon, the setting of the great classic, Lorna Doone, by R.D. Blackmore, first published in 1869. We had run out of milk for breakfast, and so my wife, little daughter and I got into our rented Morris Traveller for the short drive to our favourite local grocery. My wife went into the store while we waited in the car. No sooner had she entered the shop than out she came, in shock, to tell me that race riots had broken out in Kuala Lumpur. The lady who owned the shop had, in the week or so we were there, got to know us a little and knew we were from Malaysia. Her first words on seeing my wife were, “Your country is burning!” My wife replied, “You must be thinking of Vietnam, surely.” In 1969, the war in Vietnam was still on. She then pointed to the stacks of The London Times, The Daily Telegraph, The Manchester Guardian and the rest of the British dailies, all with their screaming headlines. That settled any lingering doubts we might have had, and I bought every newspaper I could lay my hands on.

Forgetting May 13

Our older citizens must let go and become like our younger ones who have no memory of — and no desire to remember, recognise or commemorate — May 13, 1969.

By P. Gunasegaram (The Star)

TWO days ago it was 40 years since one of Malaysia’s most infamous and ignoble events happened — the racial riots of May 13, 1969.

It rose out of a confluence of unfortunate factors fanned by politicians and threatened to rip apart racial harmony built over centuries of living together and understanding each other’s ways.

Overnight, it turned the world’s happiest Prime Minister – as Tunku Abdul Rahman called himself since the country gained independence in 1957 – into its saddest, and sent waves of fear through the public as the unimaginable happened and threatened to spread.

The Truth Shall Set You Free – A series of essays by Bob Teoh of Sin Chew

The truth forty years later

 2009-05-12 17:47

THIS MORNING as I was paying for a book on May 13, a woman who was also at the payment counter eyed my book and asked: “Does this book tell the truth?”

“What’s truth?” I replied only to realise the Freudian slip a moment too late. I quickly switched the conversation back to her.

“Where were you on May 13?”

She said she was eight years old then.

“All I know of May 13 then was that we didn’t have to go to school for many days,” she said and left, obviously not wanting to be engaged in a discourse on May 13 with a stranger.

Nyah kamu, 13 Mei 1969!

Saya dilahirkan ke dalam sebuah Malaysia yang aman. Malaysia yang membangun dengan pesat, mengejar modenasasi dan begitu mengidamkan status negara kelas pertama. Saya membesar di dalam sebuah Malaysia yang majmuk dengan pelbagai bangsa dan agama, sebuah Malaysia yang pada dasarnya bertoleransi terhadap kepelbagaian yang ada di kalangan rakyatnya.

Saya lahir selepas tragedi 13 Mei 1969 berlaku. Akan tetapi, walaupun setelah berdekad lamanya, hari tersebut masih dijadikan momok yang kesannya dapat dirasakan sehingga kini.

Tidak ramai yang sebenarnya tahu apa yang sebenarnya berlaku pada hari itu. Apakah pencetus keganasan yang menyebabkan kita menumpahkan darah sesama kita?

Benar, terdapat “versi rasmi” peristiwa tersebut yang terkandung di dalam buku Sejarah sekolah dan diulang oleh para bijak pandai akedemik. Tetapi “versi rasmi” sesuatu peristiwa sejarah hanyalah naratif yang “dihalalkan” oleh mereka yang berkuasa.

May 13 – redeeming the tragedy

Steve Oh | May 14, 09 6:18pm

The ghost of May 13 will not disappear just because Malaysians shy away from talking about it. Every nation has to deal with its past, no matter how painful, and only a reasoned approach upholding the truth and seeking reconciliation can expunge the nation of its sense of foreboding and repressed anger.

 
Many Malaysians may share many similar views with a Chinese like Bob Teoh of MySinchew and a Malay like Farish Noor in their recent writings on this subject as the 40th anniversary of this tragic day comes and passes into history once more.  
 
History is like a prism and depending on how the light of interpretation shines on it reflects different rays of truth. There are always two sides to a story, as they say, and perhaps May 13 may have more than two and certainly not just the one that we are used to accept. They all make up the prism of truth and the virtue of looking at it truthfully is that as Bob Teoh wrote that the truth may “set you free.”