I think it is high time that we close the chapter on Mat Sabu the PAS Timbalan Presiden after so much arguments, much tears and sometimes laughter. Before that lets read what DAP's Tunku Aziz have to say about Mat Sabu:
Bukit Kepong: Insensitive remarks
MOHAMAD Sabu, or Mat Sabu, is always good for a laugh and I must say I find his speeches on the hustings delightfully shallow.
You may say that he is entitled to his opinion and I agree. However, when facts are twisted, so much so that they border on lies, he invariably invites, and deservedly so, innuendos and strictures.
It is in his interpretation of the attack by 180 communists of the 4th Independent Company of the Malayan Races Liberation Army on the remote police station at Bukit Kepong on Feb 23, 1950 that Mohamad has succeeded in further reducing himself to a sad figure of fun and ridicule.
He is, to the discerning, no more that a political jester, one of the many that the system has thrown up in all of our political parties. I say this more in sorrow than anger.
He has resorted to spinning his tangled yarn in a disingenuous way as he tries to worm and wriggle his way out of the preposterous, callous and insensitive assertion that the terrorists who mounted that dastardly attack on the lonely outpost at Bukit Kepong in Johor were the real independence fighters.
He said he did not use the word "communists" to describe the attackers. The fact is they were communists.
I concede his right to his opinion, but when Mohamad is who he is in the Pas hierarchy and, therefore, a leader of Pakatan Rakyat, a coalition now posturing itself as impatiently waiting in the wings to run the country, then he cannot speak as a jester. He is no longer amusing.
There is now an added dimension to his political life. The people have a right to examine him more closely for signs of character defects.
He has to reconsider his assessment of events in a more honest, principled and responsible way.
Unlike Mohamad, I equate a nationalist freedom fighter, whatever his politics, with chivalry.
According to one of the communists, Ching Moit Chai, (see Gallant Last Stand at Bukit Kepong by Datuk J.J. Raj Jr, Brian Stewart's Smashing Terrorism in the Malayan Emergency and J.W.J Moran's Spearhead in Malaya), there was heavy resistance by the 20 Malay policemen against some 180 to 200 terrorists.
Ching's leader, a Malay terrorist, became impatient and ordered them to attack the living quarters, the weakest spot in the compound.
As a matter of interest, Ching was tempted to surrender later, as was the case with hundreds of other "freedom fighters", by the prospect of getting his murderous hands on the reward money being offered by the government.
One of the policemen's wives "tried to run to the station but my comrades caught her. They asked her to walk to the station and ask the men to surrender. She refused and she told my comrades that there were only two people left alive in the married quarters, a policeman's wife and daughter. My comrades shot her and called upon the one in the quarters to surrender. She refused and shouted that both she and her daughter preferred to die. So my comrades set fire to the quarters. Then they threw the body of the other wife into the blazing building".
Could the means justify the end?
I wonder whether Mohamad has the moral courage and integrity to reflect dispassionately upon this, the height of bestiality and cowardice by people whom he had sought to dignify as the true heroes of Merdeka.
The communists were aliens to a man and owed no loyalty except to China. They fought the British with the sole purpose of turning Malaya into a Chinese communist state, a satellite of the Communist Party of China.
The Malays in their thousands volunteered their service not, as Mat Sabu implied, to protect British interests in Malaya but, in cooperation with the colonial power, to defend the only country they ever knew and their religion against a godless alien ideology.
I am in danger of being accused of racism, but I am talking of events in a different era.
In this struggle to defeat communism in Malaya, there were many officers and men of non-Malay origin who fought with great gallantry.
Some of the names that come to mind are Tan Sri Yuen Yuet Leng, Datuk J.J. Raj Jr, Datu Tagore, Goh Chin Hee (once a teacher at Klang High School), Leong Chee Woh and Tan Tiew Siew, my classmate at Klang High School.
He and Datu both won the George medal, the civilian equivalent of the Victoria Cross. They were the real heroes together with tens of thousands of other loyal men and women of all races.
I come from a police family and am proud of the vital contributions of the police, then and now, to the peace and security of our nation.
Read more here.
Though some like Helen Ang are a wee bit suspicious about the DAP needling their partner liking it as an attempt to distance themselves as much as possible from the aftermath of Mat Sabu's ill advised statement on Bukit Kepong which he has yet to recant and retract or even offered an apology to at least the descendants of the Police Constables and their familiy members who were massacred, I am prepared to give Tunku Aziz the benefit of the doubt on this one.
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