COMMENT | May 13, 1969 - arrest and detention under ISA
COMMENT | Violence broke out in Kuala Lumpur in the early evening of May 13, 1969. Emergency rule was declared the following day and the National Operations Council (NOC) led by deputy prime minister Abdul Razak Hussein became the de facto government although Tunku Abdul Rahman was still nominally the prime minister. Parliament only resumed sitting in February 1971.
After the fateful May 13 incident, the whole state apparatus came down on Lim Kit Siang but he was fearless. His extraordinary courage and indomitable spirit kept the DAP movement intact in the years to come despite numerous attacks from the ruling coalition.
After a rally to thank the voters for their support in Melaka on May 12, 1969, Kit flew to Kota Kinabalu on the morning of May 13, 1969, and spoke in the evening to a crowd there. Just before he took to the stage in Sabah, he was told of the chaos in Kuala Lumpur though without exact details. The election for Sabah seats was scheduled to be held after polling in the peninsula but was now postponed indefinitely after the outbreak of violence.
For years, right-wing groups have spread many lies about Kit, including claiming that he was born in China and was present in Kuala Lumpur to instigate the riots on May 13. The lies are still being spread around on social media to this day.
Another vicious lie was even depicted in a mainstream Malay movie Tanda Putera in 2012 when a character deemed to be Kit was shown ...
COMMENT | Violence broke out in Kuala Lumpur in the early evening of May 13, 1969. Emergency rule was declared the following day and the National Operations Council (NOC) led by deputy prime minister Abdul Razak Hussein became the de facto government although Tunku Abdul Rahman was still nominally the prime minister. Parliament only resumed sitting in February 1971.
After the fateful May 13 incident, the whole state apparatus came down on Lim Kit Siang but he was fearless. His extraordinary courage and indomitable spirit kept the DAP movement intact in the years to come despite numerous attacks from the ruling coalition.
After a rally to thank the voters for their support in Malacca on May 12, 1969, Lim flew to Kota Kinabalu on the morning of May 13, 1969, and spoke in the evening to a crowd there. Just before he took to the stage in Sabah, he was told of the chaos in Kuala Lumpur though without exact details. The election for Sabah seats was scheduled to be held after polling in the peninsula but was now postponed indefinitely after the outbreak of violence.
For years, right-wing groups have spread many lies about Lim, including claiming that he was born in China and was present in Kuala Lumpur to instigate the riots on May 13. The lies are still being spread around on social media to this day.
Another vicious lie was even depicted in a mainstream Malay movie Tanda Putera in 2012 when a character deemed to be Lim was shown urinating on a flagpole at the Selangor menteri besar’s house in Kuala Lumpur on May 13, 1969. In an attempt to further damage his reputation, Pesona Pictures, the producer of the movie, uploaded an unrelated photo of Lim in Sabah in 1984 on Facebook with a nasty caption that mentioned the urinating incident of 1969 which never happened.
After Lim and many others protested, the fabricated scene was deleted before the film directed by Shuhaimi Baba was allowed to be screened in 2013. The producer also apologised to Lim for the "fake" photo and caption.
Admitting there was no such thing as the urinating incident and the wrong photo with the outrageous caption, Pesona Pictures in its public statement posted on the company’s Facebook page on Sept 13, 2013, said: “We, Messrs Pesona Pictures Sdn Bhd, unreservedly apologise to Mr Lim Kit Siang for the embarrassment caused by the aforementioned publication which is devoid of truth.”
At the grand finale ceramah of the Sabah state election in Kota Kinabalu on Sept 24, 2020, when Lim asked the crowd if any of them were present at his rapat umum on May 13, 1969, there were several senior citizens who raised their hands. I was touched by the moment. He told his 2020 audience that back in the 1960s, even in Kuala Lumpur, when Sabahans talked about Sabah politics in closed-door settings, they would look behind the cupboards and shelves to see if there were recording devices.
They were terrified by chief minister Mustapha Harun’s autocratic rule in those days. Mustapha ruled Sabah from 1967 to 1975 as its third chief minister. In the 2018 general election, Malaysians finally overthrew the one-party state. No one is afraid of anyone now.
On May 14, 1969, Lim was asked to leave Sabah on the instruction of Mustapha. He was not prepared to comply; he stayed on in Kota Kinabalu and deliberately missed his flight. He was later told that some Bajau horsemen were looking for him at the airport. By defying the eviction order, Lim cheated death.
Sec-gen at 28
He flew to Singapore the following day as Subang airport was shut due to the curfew. While he was in Singapore, he stayed with (former Singapore president) CV Devan Nair from May 15 to 17. Friends and family members urged Lim not to return to Kuala Lumpur as rumours were rife that he would be arrested and could spend years behind bars.
Devan’s son Janadas wrote, “My father told Kit Siang that if he were to return to Malaysia he would most certainly be arrested. The Malaysian authorities knew he was the real organising force behind the DAP, though he wasn’t the secretary-general.”
Lim was adamant that as a newly elected MP, he must return to Malaysia to be with the people in the nation’s then most serious crisis. “Without any hesitation whatsoever, Kit Siang said he would return to Kuala Lumpur and that he was prepared to face the consequences,” according to Janadas.
On the morning of May 18, Lim held a press conference at Goodwood Park Hotel and according to scholar Ooi Kee Beng, "told all who would listen that he was heading home and that it was his duty to help bring normalcy back to the country." Devan arranged for Lim a ticket from Paya Lebar airport to Ipoh via Subang and requested SP Seenivasagam, a major political figure of the People's Progressive Party (PPP) in Perak, to wait for Lim at the airport there.
Janadas said that: “My father (Devan), an old hand in dealing with security agencies who had been arrested twice in Singapore in the 1950s, calculated that if Kit Siang was not on the plane when it landed in Ipoh, we would know that he had been nabbed when the plane stopped in KL.”
While on the flight, Lim wrote a postcard to his wife as if it was his last words in the event of any untoward incident. The postcard never reached her. As he arrived at Subang airport, upon showing his passport, an officer told Lim that the authorities were looking for him. He was asked to follow the officer and was subsequently arrested and detained on May 18, 1969. He only next emerged as a free man on Oct 1, 1970.
Lim was first taken to the Jalan Bandar police station, then to a detention facility in Kuala Selangor - which was said to be the harshest - for the first 60 days of his detention under the Internal Security Act (ISA). On his way from Subang airport in a police vehicle, he saw burnt cars and other destruction along the way. He was later moved to the Muar detention centre. Party leaders and comrades such as chairperson Dr Chen Man Hin, Lau Dak Kee, Fan Yew Teng and Chan Kok Kit, visited and supported the family.
Lim's courage was compared to DAP’s then secretary-general Goh Hock Guan who resigned from his party position after being told by intermediaries - when he (Goh) was in Singapore - that he would be arrested upon returning to Malaysia. He reportedly said that “I am not a Lim Kit Siang. I am not made to be a martyr.”
He later sent his resignation letter from Hong Kong to chairperson Chen Man Hin on Oct 1, 1969. The DAP leadership promptly elected Lim as secretary-general while he was still in detention. He was 28 years old at this point in time.
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LIEW CHIN TONG is the author of the book Lim Kit Siang: Patriot. Leader. Fighter from which the above excerpt is taken from.
The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of Malaysiakini.
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