Even though biologically, there is no such basis for a
category known as “race”, the social construction of race is ever
present in this country.
The launch of “Violence against an Ethnic Minority in Malaysia: Kampung Medan 2001” by S Nagarajan and K Arumugam yesterday is a wake-up call for Malaysians to get wise to the Malaysian state’s attempts to portray racist/fascist pogroms against ethnic minorities in Malaysia as so-called “racial riots” that came about “naturally” because of social conditions and dissatisfaction.
This is the first book written to put the record straight on the racial violence against ethnic Indian Malaysians at Kampung Medan in 2001. For this racial violence to happen more than 30 years after “May 13” is a scandal and an indictment of Malaysia’s modern day institutions which are still steeped in racism and racial discrimination.
My 2007 title, “May 13: Declassified Documents on the Malaysian Riots of 1969” challenged the official version that the violence (in which the victims were mainly ethnic Chinese) was the result of “riots” between “Malays” and “Chinese” who had been provoked by irresponsible opposition politicians. The official version of the Kampung Medan violence in 2001 was that the “riots” had been sparked by incidents which ignited “naturally” in a neglected urban ghetto.
The facts on May 13 point to an orchestrated pogrom in which a complicit state allowed the violence to drag on until July 1969, before the security forces demonstrated their full capacity to restore order. As documented in Nagarajan and Arumugam’s new book, the Kampung Medan violence, which started on March 8, 2001, was allowed to continue over a number of days in a relatively small enclave of Petaling Jaya – with the last tragic incident occurring on March 23.
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