UMNO Youth chief Asyraf Wadji Dusuki today said communists are glorified as independence fighters in the Form 4 history textbook, and blamed the previous Pakatan Harapan government for it.

In a Facebook post today, Asyraf said he had issue with the depictions of radical Malay leftist leaders as fighters for independence and the Malayan People’s Anti-Japanese Army (MPAJA) members as fighters against Japanese occupation.

“This appears to be a planned and deliberate effort during the 22 months of Pakatan Harapan rule to sow the seeds of the ‘Malaysian Malaysia’ ideology and subtly brainwash students to think that the socialist and communist ideologies were not bad and employed to fight for independence,” he said.

Asyraf said he had also spotted elements of slander in the same textbook.

He alleged that Malays were denigrated as servants to the Japanese occupiers.

“Subtly and implicitly, the PH government has made the communist and MPAJA heroes and freedom fighters who deserve recognition,” he said.

Asyraf called on the Perikatan Nasional government to rectify the problem at once.
 
“Umno Youth demands that the Education Ministry retracts the Form 4 history textbook and correct the manipulated facts about the country’s history,” he said.

In response to Asyraf’s accusations, former deputy education minister Teo Nie Ching said the PH government was not involved in the reviewing of the school textbooks
 
Teo told Free Malaysia Today the curriculum and textbooks were reviewed in 2017 and that historians, public university lecturers, history teachers and curriculum officers from the panel of history curriculum experts and history textbooks were involved in the process.

On whether PH would consider taking legal action against Asyraf over his claims, Teo said the leaders would consult the coalition’s lawyers.  – February 24, 2021.