Your report 20 groups to stage ‘anti-Japan’ rally in Ipoh refers.
I feel that the above headline is to provocative. My reasons for this are that although history has time and again taught humankind many lessons, old wounds never heal or can even be reopened after provocation.
Many adults today have no idea what World War II meant and the suffering and cruelty it brought with it. The few septuagenarians and octogenarians from both sides that are the survivors of this assault on human dignity will soon be gone.
There is a saying that the first casualty of war is truth. Enthusiasts of history should aim to pursue the truth. Emotionally-loaded statements against any country where the majority of the population are of the post WWII era will cause bewilderment and guilt.
It may also generate anger. By all means try to pursue the truth, but to rub salt on healed wound or to try to inflict a wound on someone, who is in all likelihood not guilty, is totally inappropriate.
The same is the case for the waste of taxpayers’ money in preventing former Communist Party of Malaya leader, Chin Peng, from returning to Malaysia. The peace accord has been signed but the ‘truth’ as purveyed by the British and the Malayan hopefuls during the pre-Merdeka period is only one side of the story. Now, Chin Peng has his side of the story and it is widely available in at least two languages.
Malaysians should consider not aping the activities of the Chinese from the Peoples’ Republic of China. The latter, for their own reasons and politics, have unfinished business with the Japanese.
Organisers of proposed anti-Japanese rallies ought to really seriously think about their content and presentation. Malaysia’s relationship with Japan is presently good and such rallies are not going to improve it.
If I were the CEO of a foreign company contemplating investing in Malaysia, I, too, might have second thoughts. |
NEWS
