COMMENT The unprovoked attack and bewildering prejudice exhibited by the director of the film ‘Tanda Putera' against my 2007 book, ‘May 13: Declassified documents on the Malaysian riots of 1969', are symptomatic of a deeper malaise evident among the Umno-nurtured propagandists in Malaysia who appear diligently uninterested in distinguishing fact from fiction.

The refusal to allow even the ashes of the former leader of the Communist Party of Malaya Chin Peng to return to his homeland, basing this on the official version of the Emergency, likewise point to a bizarre interpretation of history and its consequences for Malaysian collective conscience...