Kit Siang: Let May 7 become new May 13
(The Malaysian Insider) PETALING JAYA, May 14 — Four decades after the country’s worst race riots, DAP parliamentary leader Lim Kit Siang has urged all Malaysians to forget the bloody clashes of May 13, 1969 and instead replace it with the memories of last week’s state assembly debacle in Perak.
”Let us exorcise the spectre of May 13 and replace it with the May 7 image of Speaker V. Sivakumar being forcibly dragged out by Umno’s police,” the veteran politician told an overflowing civic centre crowd here last night.
“This is the image that frightens Umno and Barisan Nasional so much that they have banned television stations from playing the video footage of the legitimate Perak speaker being dragged out of the assembly.”
The ban he referred to was apparently given to Media Prima, the group which controls the country’s four free-to-air private TV stations — TV3, NTV7, 8TV and TV9 — on the evening of May 7.
Lim was speaking last night at a public forum “From 513 to 1 Malaysia: The Future of Malaysian Nation Building” organised by the office of Kampung Tunku state assemblyman Lau Weng San to mark 40 years since the May 13 riots.
Amid an all-star line-up which included opposition leader Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim, Bukit Gantang MP Mohammad Nizar Jamaluddin, DAP vice chairman Tunku Abdul Aziz, retired judge N.H. Chan and Bar Council chairman K. Ragunath, Lim reminded the crowd that the BN government had used May 13 as a haunting tool to divide Malaysians for 40 years.
“This allowed them to spawn corruption, suppress human rights and turn our country into a nation of mediocrity. Two million of our best and brightest went abroad, much to our loss.
“We must remember May 7 until we have removed the hegemony of Barisan Nasional,” he said to thunderous applause and shouts of agreement.