It is common for the system of rulers to absorb their enemies and to politically neuter them, render them harmless and then defang their revolutionary message.

This has repeatedly been done to Gandhi, Nelson Mandela and even Mother Theresa to neutralise their potent writings. They are held as heroes to the masses because they do not rock the ruling class and their system of exploitation.

Samad Ismail was an anti-colonial fighter who also fought against the likes of Tunku Abdul Rahman and Lee Kuan Yew. Samad was a member of the small secret Anti-British League.

Yes, Samad was a card-carrying member of the Malayan Communist Party who was vehemently against the British colonialists and their local accomplices.

The split in PAP between the anti-communists (pro-British) to whom the British had promised power and the pro-communists led to Samad leaving the PAP with others to form the Barisan Sosialis.

Samad knew it was important to make people politically conscious and this could only be accomplished by countering colonialist propaganda and exposing their local accomplices. He did this in the cultural field through his writings.

He was so subtle that he outwitted the colonialists who could not understand the nuances. Sometimes even the local representatives of colonialism could not do so.

When he was arrested and forced to confess on television, he reverted to Javanese phrases to convey that he was forced.

Yes, the pro-British camp used his arrest to force the Malaysian government to act in a certain way.

Just like their attempt to stop Mahathir Mohamad from coming to power - by arresting the three Dollahs – Abdullah Ahmad, Abdullah Majid and Siddique (Mahathir’s political secretary) on the eve of Mahathir being appointed deputy prime minister.

This was because the British colonialists and its supporters wanted "King Gaz" (Ghazalie Shafie) to be appointed as deputy by Hussein Onn.

This is also confirmed by Kassim Ahmad in his book Second University and Syed Husin Ali in his book Two Faces when they were interrogated to admit that Mahathir was a secret communist. As Syed Husin wrote, if they had done so history would have been different.

So Lee’s statements about Samad cannot be allowed to stand for it only distorts history.