Today is the 40th anniversary of the worst racial riot in Malaysian history. The 13 May incident will forever be a big blot in the history of race relations in Malaysia and the specter of which is being invoked over and over again until today to serve the narrow interest of a certain class of political elites.
In the aftermath of the riot 196 people were dead, 439 wounded, 9,143 people arrested, 6,000 people homeless, 211 vehicles destroyed and 753 buildings damaged by fire.* The best book written so far about this topic is by a Malaysian sociologist, Dr. Kua Kia Soong entitled "May 13: Declassified Documents on the Malaysian Riots of 1969." His central theory is that the riots were not the result of spontaneous violent outbursts by small groups of Malay and Chinese extremists as recorded in the Malaysian mainstream history but were the result of a meticulously planned actions by the small Malay capitalist class trying to discredit and wrest power from the erstwhile Prime Minister, Tunku Abdul Rahman. It was essentially an internal coup plot within UMNO.
Since then there has been no racial incident in Malaysia that come close to matching the level of violence and carnage of 13 May, 1969, though there had been a few close calls such as in 2000 when the UMNO Youth thugs protested in-front of the Chinese Assembly building to oppose the demands made by the Chinese group, Suqiu. I hope that the bloody tragedy will never be repeated again in the future.
* Quoted from "May 13: Declassified Documents on the Malaysian Riots of 1969" by Kua Kia Soong (page 9).
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