We’ve long waited for this day (Friday, 14th Sept) to meet Carmen’s friend, Fahmi Reza, an independent film maker and other film makers as well. So, we went to Central Market (the building after Central Market actually) where the freedom film fest took place. It’s so crowded. “Sambutan yang amat hangat”, said Kah Joon. Haha.

Well, it was an eye opener to all of us. We get to know the untold stories of our history. Do you know what’s ‘hartal’? It’s a mass protest against the government. Google it and you shall find where the word derived from.

In Fahmi Reza’s movie (10 tahun sebelum merdeka), ‘hartal’ is introduced to us (the ones who have never heard of this term) and it was used by all the unions (everybody, at that time) to strike against the federation constitution (perlembagaan persekutuan) because it’s based on race. People fought for another constitution, known as citizen constitution (perlembagaan rakyat) which was fair for everybody, but the British representatives, advisors from the Conference of Rulers and Malayan political leaders forced the people to accept federation constitution. Anybody who against it will be caught by the “dictators” and that’s when state of emergency happened.

So yea, that’s about hartal. We didn’t get to see this word in history textbooks nor hear it from anyone. We are very much retarded by the government’s education system. Not being revealed the truth about the history, aren’t we supposed to know about our own country’s past? Maybe these stories will erupt controversies and repeat, but wouldn’t that be a lesson for us all to learn and proceed to develop a better country? I feel somewhat shameful not knowing the truths of our beloved tanahair.

Most of the people here in Malaysia do not really care about the history. What’s history to them? They said, what’s passed is past. Try asking them what merdeka means to them. They said, it’s all about Tunku Abdul Rahman shouted “Merdeka!” for seven times at Stadium Merdeka on 31 August 1957. That’s all about it, not wanting to know more about it, either before or after merdeka and that’s what appeared in textbooks. What’s citizen constitution? What’s federation constitution?

Anyway, there were three other clips. One of them was made by Eunice and her fellow friends, Singaporeans, which talked about Chin Peng, the Communist. They spent two years and about 30k sing dollar in search of Chin Peng, but they didn’t manage to find him but his fellow comrades. They were showed by them where they usually hid in the woods and also how they survived. The other video was Idiot Nation. You see it in YouTube. Click on the link here to see. And lastly, an Aljazeera’s talk show with two history researchers about the Japanese Occupation during the second world war. River Kwai? Familiar?

I’m so into history right now. I used to hate history, as in the subject, because we’re only exposed the good side of the history and we had to memorize them for the sake of exam. The worst thing is, I have short-term memory lost, so I don’t remember and yea, I’m too lazy to remember them. lol.

So uhh, I think I should stop my blog here. I need to study for tomorrow’s exam; Semantics. Chiaoz ;)

Lrt Trip