Malaysia: History not Important

Blueheeler goes in search of archives of a newspaper in East Malaysian province of Sarawak and finds that the city does not care about its history.So, in short, the Sarawak Tribune, the most important English newspaper on Sarawak/Bornean issues, with its 60 years of reporting the going-ons in Sarawak, cannot be accessed in Sarawak.When I told this to an academic working at UNIMAS, he said “Don't you know? For Sarawak, history is not important. Not only can you not find the Tribune, there's no history department at the University!”.

2 comments

  • WTJ

    yup.. that’s why you can’t find how sarawak actually join malaysia…

  • Just to kick up a bit more dust, I found that the S’pore National Library has archived the Sarawak Tribune. Maybe I’m pushing this a little too far, but this is an example of how in the S’pore/M’sia rivalry, S’pore will always come out on top: S’pore not only ‘produces’ knowledge but she also ‘controls’ it. Look at where NUS is today, after splitting from UM in 1905. And why in the world does S’pore want to archive the Tribune??? Because, simply, she ‘can’.

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