The 22nd of August was day of mourning for the whole nation.
Malaysians from every walk of life gave a minute of silence for the dead as
their earthly remains were transported from the coldness of foreign shores to
the warmth of the embrace of their Ibu Pertiwi, their Earth Mother.
And yet, hardly a day had gone by when a headline rudely splashed across my Facebook newsfeed:
“PKR leader calls National Mourning Day an excessive affair”,
which immediately raised my ire out of the sheer audacity and disrespect toward
the dead, and toward a nation in mourning. How dare this upstart politician use
this tragedy as a grounds to bash the government? Has he no decency? Has he no
respect? I straight away clicked on the link to find out more about this
person.
And I was surprised.
This was no ordinary politician. He was a retired Admiral of the Malaysian Armed
Forces, someone who had dedicated his life to the preservation of our nation’s
well-being, our way of life. And here he was questioning the Government’s
excessiveness in mourning, and called the armed personnel involved as ‘mindless
slaves’. Something did not quite add up.
I read the article again.
Imran Abdul
Hamid, the retired admiral-turned-politician, was quoted to have said:
“It’s not
that we do not sympathise with the victims of MH17, but the national mourning
day did seem excessive given the fact that the 10 soldiers who died in Lahad
Datu did not receive the same amount of honours.”
And this
made me think very hard. For those unaware of what he was talking about, last
year, Malaysia was invaded by an armed group of Filipino rebels. Ten brave
servicemen lost their lives upholding their oaths to defend their country. They
were given military burials with the customary gun salutes. The PM visited the
families of the fallen, and there was media coverage for a day or two.
But there
was no declaration for a national day of mourning. There was no honor guard
motorcade from the airport to their burial sites. No roads were closed off.
And this
made me think again.
It was not
that the admiral did not feel pain, or did not mourn, over the Malaysian lives
lost in the skies of Ukraine. It was that the sacrifice of the nation’s heroes,
who had paid the ultimate sacrifice, seemed to be worth less. And this was what
was unfair. He was not speaking as a politician of the Opposition. He was
speaking as a leader of men, of heroes, who laid down their lives every day so
that we could preserve our freedom, our way of life, our identity.
This was
the newspapers doing what they are good at – putting a political spin on news
to make it sell better. This seemed to work as most of the comments that I saw
in response to the story were those of hate toward the man, and the political
ideals he was seen to represent.
They did
not see that this was a man who had lived, and still lives by the creed:
Dulce et decorum est, pro patria mori – It is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country.
Dulce et decorum est, pro patria mori – It is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country.
Only is it?
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