PKR vice-president N Surendran has likened PAS deputy president Mohamad Sabu to famed Turkish Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk for daring to speak up on the country's history.

"The great Turkish writer, Orhan Pamuk ( above ) who won a Nobel Prize, was prosecuted in Turkey for talking about the Armenian genocide during the First World War.

"He said the truth, that the Armenian people died in the genocide... and they prosecuted him," he said.

kua kia soong new book launching patriot and pretender 240911 pkr surendran Surendran's ( left ) remarks came during a book launch entitled ' Patriots and Pretenders: The Malayan Independence Struggle ' authored by academic Kua Kia Soong in Kuala Lumpur last night.

"Look at the parallels, Mat Sabu speaks about the 1950 Bukit Kepong affair, he gets prosecuted, Orhan Pamuk talks about the 1915 Armenian genocide, and he gets prosecuted. So Mat Sabu is really in great company..." said Surendran.

Mohamad or more popularly known as Mat Sabu, was on Wednesday, charged with criminally defaming the police officers - now deceased - and their families who had defended the Bukit Kepong police station against communist insurgents in 1950.

Charge may be backfiring

He had during a speech on Aug 21, praised Mohammed Indera, the man who led the attack on Bukit Kepong as a freedom fighter, justifying it by pointing out that the police officers in fact were serving the British crown during that colonial era.

Despite the glowing comparison, where the charge is concerned, Surendran was less than amused.

NONE "Mat Sabu ( right ) is in great company, but in what company are we in? This sort of things puts our country in really bad company.

"It puts our country in the same category with those that do these horrible and silly things, things that embarrasses Malaysia."

According to the PKR veep, however, the Mat Sabu episode seems to have stirred people's curiosity about the truth of the country's history.

"I've been going all around the country to give political talks. it used to be about rising prices, it used to be about abuse of government institutions but people are now listening in rapt attention to the intricacies of history 50 years ago."