Contents of a purported police intelligence report asserting that DAP had proposed to divide the peninsula in two back in 1969 are entirely unknown to party leaders of the time, said Lim Kit Siang.
Responding to former inspector-general of police Tun Hanif Omar, who asserted to the existence and contents of the report, the DAP stalwart said none in the party had even been aware of the allegation for which he is suing the former.
Lim said he checked with DAP founder Chen Man Hin, 94, who told him he had no inkling of the plot claimed by Hanif.
“It would appear that the Special Branch knew more about the DAP than the DAP itself!” Lim said in a statement.
Suggesting that the Special Branch (SB) report that Hanif was alluding to was false, Lim then asked if the document itself even existed as well as why the ex-IGP waited this long to expose the plan.
“If I or the DAP had proposed the partition of Peninsular Malaysia into two, the West to the Chinese and the East to the Malays, it would not have been kept a secret for half a century.
“It would have been used in the last five decades against me and DAP to show how divisive, destructive, racist and unpatriotic we were in wanting to divide Peninsular Malaysia into two parts according to race,” Lim said.
In his latest response yesterday, Hanif claimed his allegation was derived from a SB report he received as part of the National Operations Council (NOC).
According to Hanif who was the chief officer (Police) of the NOC at that time, then IGP Mohamed Salleh Ismael briefed NOC weekly but reports from SB would be delivered directly to Hanif if it was deemed important.
“That report was given to me after a DAP leader claimed to have made the proposal in Europe shortly after the race riots,” Hanif said during an exclusive interview with Malay daily Sinar Harian on Monday.
On Sunday, Lim instructed lawyer Ramkarpal Singh to initiate a defamation lawsuit against Hanif for claiming recently that DAP had advocated dividing Peninsular Malaysia.
Lim also called Hanif’s bluff on the latter being the police chief who ordered his detention under the Internal Security Act 1960 (ISA) – now repealed – following the May 13 riots in 1969.
Hanif was reported to have said last week that he had put Lim in prison under the ISA in May 1969 because DAP wanted to divide Peninsular Malaysia into two parts.
The former top cop clarified that he ordered the detention of Lim during the 1987 Operation Lalang, and not after the race riots in 1969.
“I was not the one who ordered him to be jailed immediately after the riots. It was only during Operation Lalang in 1987 that Lim was among those arrested during my tenure as the Inspector-General of Police,” Hanif said.
According to Hanif, he said his remarks were not meant to discredit DAP but to share his experience during his tenure in the NOC.
He said he had no issues with the Iskandar Puteri MP.
“After he was released from detention, I held an open house and he (Lim) visited me. We definitely have no personal quarrel, no problem with anyone else,” he said.
Hanif also laughed off a reported statement by Lim calling him senile.
“If he wants to call me senile, I can’t say it isn’t true. It’s his opinion. If something is important to us, we can remember it,” he said.
Earlier reports:
Sept 9, Kit Siang to Sue Ex-Top Cop Hanif Omar over ‘Dividing Malaysia’ Claim
Sept 6, Ex-IGP Threw Kit Siang into Jail to Keep Racial Harmony