Merdeka without memory: A Malaysia with no Remembrance Day?

Kua Kia Soong

Every year, as Malaysia celebrates Merdeka, we are treated to the familiar spectacle: flags everywhere, patriotic songs, military parades, politicians proclaiming their love of the nation, and solemn speeches about the sacrifices of our forefathers.

But there is one conspicuous absence. Where is our Remembrance Day? 

Why does Malaysia have no national day to remember and honour the Malaysians who died fighting the Japanese fascist occupation during the World War Two? And those who subsequently sacrificed their lives fighting British colonial rule? Other countries understand that a nation cannot celebrate its independence without remembering those who paid the ultimate price for it.

Britain has Remembrance Day. France remembers the Resistance. Vietnam commemorates those who died in its struggle for independence. China remembers the victims and resistance fighters of the Japanese invasion.

Across the world, nations build monuments, hold ceremonies and teach their children about those who fought and died for freedom.

Malaysia, however, seems to have developed a remarkable capacity for celebrating Merdeka while forgetting the dead who made freedom possible.

Resisting fascist occupation

The Japanese occupation of Malaya from 1942 to 1945 was not merely an interruption between British colonial rule and Merdeka. It was a brutal period in which people from different communities suffered and resisted.

My family and friends in Batu Pahat suffered the same. Thousands were killed, imprisoned, tortured, starved or displaced. The Japanese occupation exposed the brutality of fascism and colonial militarism alike.

Malayan resistance movements fought the Japanese and drew support from people of different ethnic communities. There were also those who fought alongside British forces, including members of the Malayan Volunteer Forces and the Force 136 underground resistance.

They did not all share the same political ideology. They did not all dream of the same post-war Malaysia.

But they shared something fundamental: they resisted fascist occupation. Some died carrying rifles. Others died in prison camps. Others were executed. Many never returned to their families.

Shouldn’t their sacrifice belong to Malaysian history? Or have we decided that remembering them is politically inconvenient?

Independence from British colonialism

And then came the fight against colonialism. The irony becomes even greater after 1945. Once the Japanese had been defeated, Britain returned to Malaya and attempted to restore its colonial authority. The struggle for independence then entered another phase.

Yet the official narrative of Merdeka has often reduced this complicated history to a neat story: the British eventually handed over independence to Tunku Abdul Rahman and the Alliance in 1957, and Malaysia was born from a peaceful constitutional transition.

That story is profoundly incomplete. There were others here who fought colonial rule – through trade unions, political organisations, anti-colonial movements, student organisations, peasant struggles and armed resistance.

Some were imprisoned. Some were killed. Some spent years in detention without trial. Some died in the jungles.

Can a nation simply erase people from its history because their politics later became unacceptable? That is the uncomfortable question Malaysia has never adequately confronted.

The dead do not vote

Perhaps this is why remembrance is so politically difficult. The dead cannot vote. They cannot contest elections. They cannot demand that politicians put up their photographs on Merdeka billboards. They cannot complain when their names disappear from school textbooks. They cannot ask why some historical figures are elevated into national heroes while others are condemned to oblivion.

But history should not be determined by who happens to be politically useful to the living. A mature nation should be able to say: we honour the sacrifice without necessarily endorsing every political belief of those who made it.

We can acknowledge British servicemen who died defending Malaya against the Japanese fascists while simultaneously recognising that Britain was a colonial power.

History is not a courtroom in which we must declare everyone either a saint or a villain. It is a record of human beings, their choices, their courage, their mistakes and their sacrifices.

A Malaysian Remembrance Day

This raises a more fundamental question. What exactly are we celebrating on 31 August?

If Merdeka is simply the transfer of administrative power from one elite to another, then perhaps there is no need for remembrance.

But if Merdeka represents the Malaysian people’s long struggle against fascism, colonialism, racism, exploitation and oppression, then the people who fought those battles are central to the story. 

Merdeka should not be reduced to a date on the calendar. It should be a historical memory. And memory requires names. It requires graves, monuments and museums, and it requires school lessons.

Above all, it requires the courage to remember even those whose politics make us uncomfortable.

Malaysia should therefore establish a national Remembrance Day for the Fallen in the Struggle Against Fascism and Colonialism. It could be observed annually around Merdeka, perhaps on 31 August itself, or on a separate day preceding Merdeka.

The day should remember all those in our land and the British servicemen who lost their lives resisting the Japanese occupation and those who subsequently sacrificed their lives in the struggle against British colonial rule.

Their names should be researched, documented and publicly commemorated regardless of ethnicity, political affiliation or historical controversy. A national memorial could record the names of the fallen.

Museums and archives could preserve their stories. Schools could teach the history of resistance from multiple perspectives rather than presenting a sanitised nationalist narrative.

And every year, the prime minister, cabinet ministers, opposition leaders, veterans, civil society organisations and ordinary people can gather – not to celebrate a political party, but to bow their heads before those who never lived to see the Malaysia they fought for.

That would make Merdeka mean something deeper.

A nation that forgets its dead is not truly free

There is something deeply strange about a country that spends millions each year celebrating patriotism but has never established a national tradition of remembering all those who died in the struggles that preceded independence.

We ask our children to wave the Jalur Gemilang, the national flag. We punish those who happen to hang the flag upside down. We ask them to sing Negaraku. We tell them to be proud Malaysians.

But do we tell them who died so that they could grow up in a country called Malaysia? Do we tell them about the resistance fighters who faced Japanese fascism? Do we tell them about the anti-colonial activists who were imprisoned or killed? Do we tell them about the workers, peasants, students and ordinary people who challenged colonial power?

Or do we prefer a comfortable history in which independence arrived neatly packaged on 31 August 1957? Merdeka without remembrance is patriotism without history. And patriotism without history is little more than flag-waving.

This Merdeka, perhaps instead of asking only, “How proud are you to be Malaysian?”, we should ask a more difficult question: “Whom have we forgotten?”

For until Malaysia is prepared to remember all its dead – including those whose political beliefs make our present-day politicians uncomfortable – we have not yet learnt the most important lesson of independence: 

Freedom is never given by history. It is won by people – and some of those people paid for it with their lives.

Dr Kua Kia Soong is a former MP and adviser of human rights group Suaram.

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