So the saga continues

Beware lest we lose the substance by grasping at the shadow. — Aesop

EVEN at his death and after 50 years of the nation’s independence, the name Chin Peng still caused much bitterness, hatred and uneasiness.

Described by the US media as “a communist guerrilla leader whose tenacious, bloody struggles for an independent Communist Malaysia pitted him against Japanese invaders, British colonialists and finally the government of what had become his own newly sovereign nation,” and endowed by South China Morning Post in Hong Kong  as “Asia’s last great revolutionary, Malaysian communist guerrilla,” Chin Peng died on September 16 in Bangkok.

When news broke of his death on the morning of Malaysia Day, amidst celebrations, several leaders responded immediately.

No, not even the ashes are allowed to be transported across the border, let alone allowing him to be buried at his home town of Sitiawan in Perak – it was crude to have come out from the breath of our leaders and law enforcers!

Former Inspector General of Police Tun Hanif Omar reacted almost immediately: “Why should we give him a resting place here?”

The Prime Minister said much later in Sabah after his Malaysia Day do: “We will not allow him to be buried in Malaysia,” while maintaining that Chin Peng would be remembered as a terrorist who led a violent guerrilla movement that caused countless deaths of civilians and the security forces.

Former prime minister Tun Mahathir did not mince his words when he said the communist leader had been living in Thailand for a long time and did not seem to want to be a Malaysian and should be buried there, not forgetting that Chin Peng’s application to come back to Malaysia was rejected by the High Court in 2009 on technical ground that he could not prove that he was born in the country.

I do not espouse communism but because I do not consider myself immune to the thoughtless crude words from my leaders, I felt my little space has been attacked left, right and centre by them on Malaysia Day.

Neither am I immune to the sorrows, anguish and hurt of the families of Malayan and Commonwealth troops and civilians killed during Chin Peng’s campaign to establish a communist state in the country.

The signals that our leaders have given out were that of “hatred” and “unforgiving spirit” even when a person is dead, even when the country has gained its independence for 50 years.

There are always better ways to express our emotions and bring forth our message.

The short “journey” recorded in the New Straits Time by Najib Rahman – whose father was the late Tan Sri Abdul Rahman Hashim, the third Inspector General of Police – from the time he received the news of Chin Peng’s death to the call he made to his mother was something I think brings much positive thought and the message conveyed is far-reaching.

According to Najib Rahman, Chin Peng, based on the official version, had ordered for his father to be “gunned down like a vermin in the streets of Kuala Lumpur in the morning hours of June 7, 1974.”

First, he remembered his late father, then the over 10,000 innocent lives lost due to Chin Peng’s campaign. And he also remembered to call his elderly mother who should have suffered much with the loss.

My simple mind has not been able to comprehend the way his 88-year-old mother, widow of the late Tan Sri Abdul Rahman Hashim, reacted.

In Najib Rahman’s own words: “Over the phone, I broke the news to mother. Her reply, in a voice that clearly belied her 88 years, was simply Baguslah.Tak payah risau lagi (Good, No need to worry anymore).”

Najib Rahman summed it up very well: “That there are lessons to be learnt from the past, a bloody and painful chapter of history has been closed, that there is absolutely nothing to be gained by extremism of any kind in this country, that we need to learn to trust one another again, and that is the time for us to move on. Achieve that and there will be nothing for us Malaysians to worry about.”

In his memoir Alias Chin Peng: My Side of History published in 2003, Chin Peng said the Malaya he grew up in and fought against was a different world from the Malaysia today.

Obviously, in mitigating his image as brutal and ruthless, he wrote that today’s young Malaysians who are living in stable government would find it difficult to comprehend the choice he had made – a revolution based on violence and armed struggle.

He said he had to be a liberation fighter after having witnessed how locals were badly treated by the British colonials, claiming the communist movement took place amid injustice.

That was the signal Chin Peng received in those days of Japanese occupation and British colonisation – injustice in society.

Chin Peng has passed on. He had been denied return to the country – and now “not even his ashes should return.” The signal we are sending out to the people is that despite the signing of a peace accord in 1989, we can totally ignore it.

I chanced upon the comment by former Special Branch officer Tan Sri Yuen Yuet Leng in The Nut Graph in 2009 when Chin Peng was denied return to Malaysia.

The forgiving and big-hearted fighter of the communists during and after the Emergency years sent out this signal: “We have to find ways to reconcile sooner rather than later, not carry negative baggage, prejudice and sensitivities from generation to generation, confusing the future when all communities have to work and unite together without racism to survive in the world of globalisation.”

We are divided more than ever. We have taken a few steps forward but alarmingly, also a few steps backwards.

Is it really true that “we don’t have to worry anymore?”

Take the new Bumiputra economic empowerment agenda announced by the prime minister just two days before Malaysia Day – again we are sending out the signal the government agenda is to continue with the privileges of certain groups only, not the nation as a whole.

Is it because we have been too engrossed in the jubilee celebrations or too overwhelmed by the death of Chin Peng and whether his ashes should have a space here in Malaysia that we have forgotten to address the new “agenda” – not even hidden – to be implemented that speaks only of strengthening and empowering the privileged group?

For Chin Peng it is dust thou art, and unto dust shall thou return.

But we have a life to live – take time to seriously think how history is shaped. Withdraw into the silence but do not turn off the current to the antenna just in case we miss the signal that will bring us back in a flash … something important is going on all the time.

It’s the essence of life.