The people behind Tanda Putera have admitted they made a mistake accusing DAP veteran Lim Kit Siang of urinating on a flagpole in a Facebook posting last year.
“We, Messrs Pesona Pictures Sdn Bhd, unreservedly apologise to Lim Kit Siang for the embarrassment caused by the abovementioned publication which is devoid of truth,” they said in a statement uploaded on Facebook today.
In a posting yesterday, the Facebook site of the film based on the May 13, 1969 race riots clarified that a junior employee had made an error when the inflammatory caption and photo was uploaded.
“Our young administrator did not do it on purpose, he/she really did think it was right and so it was uploaded,” read the Facebook posting today.
The message was uploaded after Lim contacted Datuk Seri Yuen Yuet Leng, the former Perak police chief, who was on active duty in Kuala Lumpur during the riots.
According to Lim, Yuen had confirmed that the May 13, 1969 “urination” incident was totally fictional, as the ex-cop had never even heard of it, refuting earlier claims by the movie’s director Datin Paduka Shuhaimi Baba.
During the movie’s early promotion last year, the production team uploaded the photograph of DAP’s Lim Kit Siang being manhandled by the police, with the caption “Lim Kit Siang telah kencing di bawah tiang bendera Selangor di kediaman Menteri Besar Selangor” (Lim Kit Siang urinated at the base of the Selangor flag pole at the residence of the Selangor Menteri Besar), on the movie’s official Facebook page.
The photograph was uploaded onto the movie’s photo album with the title “Scenes depicted in the movie”.
This led Lim and several other DAP leaders to deny the incident, which was never recorded in the annals of Malaysia’s history, and the photograph was subsequently removed.
“This is one of the episodes in the history of Tanda Putera that has been embroiled in politics although it was never our intention for this to happen. There have been many false accusations without any basis about the film and its producer,” the post reads.
Director Datin Paduka Shuhaimi Baba had insisted that she had never accused Lim of committing the act but defended the scene by arguing that the movie was made based on a collection of historical accounts by sources.
Lim has also launched legal action against Umno-backed Malay daily Utusan Malaysia and former information minister Zainuddin Maidin for alleging that Lim did commit the act.
Tanda Putera was a box-office bomb in its first week of screening and has been reduced to being screened in halls with smaller seating capacity at cineplexes.
The movie that contained questionable scenes of the May 13 racial riots opened nationwide in late August and had been criticised by DAP and MCA for showing that the Chinese were responsible for the riots. – September 13, 2013.
