Singapore Malays defend Lee

Singapore Malays defend Lee

SINGAPORE (AP): Ethnic Malay leaders in Singapore came to the
defense of former Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, whose memoirs have
been criticized in Malaysia as poisonous and racist, a newspaper
reported on Sunday.

The Singapore Story by Senior Minister Lee, which went on sale
last week, describes how Singapore and Malaysia merged in 1963
after independence from Britain. The union fell apart in 1965 as
racial riots in Singapore pitted local Malays against the
island's majority Chinese.

In his book, Lee blamed corruption and moral laxity among
Malaysia's leaders at the time for the split. The charge has
provoked harsh reaction from several Malaysian leaders, including
Defense Minister Syed Hamid Albar, who last week accused Lee of
"manipulating facts."

But leaders of the Malay community in Singapore supported the
former prime minister, who has said independent diplomatic
accounts confirm his claims.

"The fact remains that (the) senior minister had the access to
all the historic materials, especially those released by the
British archives," Yatiman Yusof, an ethnic Malay senior
parliamentary secretary told The Sunday Times.