In a sense, modern nations and societies can only move forward from release from the wounds of the past.

Is this release possible without acknowledgement and atonement for these wounds?

Perhaps acknowledgement or recognition of wounds inflicted is necessary but atonement is a more fraught issue.

Some circles in the west have in recent years recognised that something like 1.5 million Armenians were killed in a genocide committed by the Ottoman authorities between 1915 and 1921.

Fat chance you can get Recep Tayyip Erdogan's Turkish government to acknowledge that the genocide occurred, let alone think of making amends for it.

At least the relations of the murdered can feel some relief that opinion in certain quarters, a century after the genocide occurred, acknowledge it did take place.

Is public opinion in Japan any closer to acknowledging that the Rape of Nanjing in 1936 occurred, in which thousands of Chinese civilians were raped and killed by the invading forces of Imperial Japan?

Yet the brutalised have gone on to forge societies and nations that now take their rightful place in the United Nations.

In several cases, victim-nations have gone on to build beneficial relationships with Japan, regardless of whether the former imperial power has acknowledged or atoned for its past misdeeds.

For progress, for getting ahead, societies and nations need a release from the wounds of the past; wallowing in its backwash is a futile exercise.

In Malaysian politics, public attention recently focused on the Memali incident that occurred in November 1985.

Fourteen villagers and four police personnel were killed in that episode where some residents of Mukim Siong, in Baling, Kedah, refused to allow their charismatic Islamic preacher, Ibrahim Libya, to be apprehended by the police.

In the ensuing clash, 18 people died. The incident's reverberations were felt in the prelude to the contest for posts in the Umno polls of April 1987; in former deputy prime minister Musa Hitam's revisionist recall of some details of the episode; and in the Nothing to Hide 2 forum last Sunday when Dr Mahathir Mohamad, the prime minister at the time of the incident, was questioned about the episode.

In other words, the controversy is not going to be forgotten. Now and then the wound will be exposed to public attention and blame-fixing.

Establishing what happened, assigning responsibility, and fixing blame are tasks better left to historians than to contemporary politicians.

The Batang Kali massacre and the Bukit Kepong incident of the Emergency period can be brought up, with fingers pointed.

In 2001 due to sectarian violence in Kg Medan between Indians and Malays, six people were killed and over 100 hundred people were injured, and about 400, detained. Who was responsible for this unfortunate incident? A closure on this issue is over due!

A good alternative to address the above tragedies would be to set up a Truth Commission, a model successfully used in South Africa before.

In our digital age, these controversies will burn intensely and flame out quickly.

This does not mean we should allow these episodes and incidents to recede and recur at random. But we should not do what historians and researchers ought and can do better.

Of course, that means our academic institutions must be allowed the intellectual autonomy for the disinterested search for truth.

Chalk that one up to the deep and wide-ranging reforms Pakatan Harapan is seeking for the Malaysian polity, of which the Nothing to Hide 2 forum was a manifestation of its quest.

Which makes its disruption by chairs thrown, punches hurled and flares lit in what was very likely a manufactured demonstration of protest, an atrocity that deserves condemnation.

M KULASEGARAN is DAP’s Ipoh Barat MP.