PETALING JAYA: There is no historical record of Umno and its members acting as a group in fighting and defeating Communist insurgents, the National Patriot Association (Patriot) said today.
Patriot president BG (Rtd) Datuk Mohamed Arshad Raji (pix) said former prime minister Datuk Seri Najib Abdul Razak had wilfully manipulated facts and history relating to the defeat of the communist insurgency in his quest to regain lost popularity among the Malays.
“Members of the security forces that had served throughout the period of the communist insurgency can easily vouch that they had never seen a single Umno member carrying a 30 kilo pack filled with ration and ammunitions on their back and a rifle in hand, foraging the jungles of Pahang, Perak, Kedah and Sarawak, risking stepping on booby traps, to seek out the communist insurgents. Neither have any of its members fallen fighting the communist insurgents,” Mohamed Arshad said in a statement.
The ousted premier had said that “the party (Umno) can resist the cruel PH (Pakatan Harapan) government, just as it fought and defeated the communist during the decades long insurgency”. He was reported as saying this at the recent Gombak Umno Annual General Meeting.
“Najib’s statement had played down the pivotal role of the security forces, i.e. the Royal Malaysia Police and the Malaysian Armed Forces in defeating the communist threat that had taken countless lives and maimed numerous members of the security forces,” the Patriot president said.
“For the record, in the war against the communist insurgents, all ethnic groups in our country participated – Malays, Chinese, Indians, Sikhs, Orang Asli, Iban, Dayak, Kadazan, and the Serani (Eurasian). Even though the two periods, 1948 to 1960 and 1968 to 1989, were officially classified as first and second emergencies due to insurance coverage issue, those were decades of a war.”
He pointed out that in the past there had been ultra-racial groups that also tried to stir racial sentiments by saying only the Malays played a role in the war against the communist insurgents, while the Chinese and other ethnic groups played no part, and therefore questioned their loyalty to the country.
“This is absolutely not true,” Mohamed Arshad said.
