This is the first credible account of the May 13, 1969 racial riots/pogrom in Malaysia using documents recently declassified at the Public Records Office, London after the lapse of the 30-year secrecy rule.
Since local sources remain classified or have been destroyed, these documents provide the only available confidential observations and memoranda by British and other foreign embassy operative. They include dispatches by correspondents which were not available to Malaysians at the time.
A social scientist, Kua Kia Soong provides a fresh political analysis of this “May 13 Incident”. In his view, the riots were by no means a spontaneous of violence between Malays and Chinese but rather an orchestrated coup d’etat by the ascendant state capitalist class against the Tunku-led aristocracy. He discusses the contradictions of the post-independence Alliance racial formula and traces the rise of the Malay state capitalist class in UMNO which has ruled Malaysia since 1969.
With this publication, the frequently raised “spectre of May 13” by the Barisan Nasional government to deter any challenge to the status quo has been forever put to rest and the political tsunami of 2008 is proof that Malaysians are finally free from the fear of fascism.
