UMNO BAPAK PERUSUH

Lee Kuan Yew  rebuts claims that riots did not involve Umno
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He had successfully sued an Umno leader and Utusan Melayu


SENIOR Minister Lee Kuan Yew has refuted statements by two prominent Malaysians who maintained that Umno was not involved in the 1964 racial riots here.

His reply, released yesterday, also noted that he sued an Umno leader, Mr Ja'afar Albar, and the Utusan Melayu newspaper for alleging that he could have unwittingly instigated the tension leading to the riots.

The legal action was taken in April 1965 while Singapore was still part of Malaysia. The Umno leader and the Malay language newspaper apologised in open court here and paid all the costs of the action. Mr Lee waived his
damages, his press secretary, Madam Yeong Yoon Ying, wrote in the letter to The Sun newspaper in Malaysia.

Its Sunday edition last week published the allegation against Mr Lee, which was repeated by Malaysian historian Professor Nik Anuar Nik Mahmud.

It also carried the remarks by Tan Sri Abdul Aziz Zain, one of the four judges of the Royal Commission of Inquiry, on the race riots.

He had said, among other things, that the riots were caused by a Chinese prankster, not the Malays.

Both Tan Sri Abdul Aziz and Professor Nik Anuar were commenting on the SM's version of the riots in his recent book: The Singapore Story: Memoirs of Lee Kuan Yew. In the letter, Madam Yeong noted that the issue was not the immediate trigger that let loose the riots, but who had created "the tinder box atmosphere for the explosion".

Mr Ja'afar and Utusan had created this incendiary situation and the former did not have to be present to strike that spark.

Transcripts and newspaper reports of these speeches were presented to the commission together with the memorandum from the Singapore Government.

Referring to Tan Sri Abdul Aziz's comment on the Chinese prankster causing the riots, Madam Yeong noted that Malaysian Deputy Prime Minister Tun Abdul Razak had also said this here on July 22, 1964, one day after the riots took place.

But this was never substantiated before the commission, she said, adding that the Federal government's case was that the riots were the work of Indonesian agents, not that of a prankster.

In his memoirs, Mr Lee wrote in pages 567 and 568: "In his opening address, counsel for the Malaysian government said he would show that the two disturbances (two riots in July and September 1964) were the work of Indonesian agents in Singapore. He had subpoenaed 85 witnesses to provide the evidence of this, but the evidence of the five main witnesses he produced did not show that it was so.

"All of them firmly denied that Indonesia was in any way connected with the disturbances."

Pages 662 to 663 read: "...If we had remained in Malaysia, the commission of inquiry into 1964 race riots would continue to hear damaging evidence against Ja'afar Albar and Umno, which would receive widespread publicity.

"Then there would be the hearing of my libel action against Albar and the editors of the Utusan Melayu, who would be thoroughly cross-examined in court on all the incendiary passages they published about me. That would
mean a devastating exposure of key Umno leaders' methods of incitement to racism and bloody riots."

The letter added: "Ja'afar Albar's incendiary statements were printed in Utusan Melayu. When Tun Razak told Dr Goh Keng Swee that he had complete control over Utusan Melayu and Ja'afar Albar, we understood why the federal government did not prosecute both of them for sedition, for inciting racial hatred."


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