FOR nearly 50 years, a small gravesite, barely the size of two badminton courts near the Sungai Buloh leprosarium was largely ignored and unknown.

It has 114 standard tombstones – an Indian, two Malays and 111 Chinese (including 17 unidentified), all buried courtesy of the Malaysian government – on a slope in the jungle beyond the furthest reach of the leprosarium.

In those decades years of neglect, lallang and weeds encroached and hid it from view, while the leprosarium declined in tandem with the medieval disease.

Until the leprosarium was demolished to make way for the Sungai Buloh Hospital, and a few hundred metres further up the road, the bottom of the slope beneath the gravesite was cleared for the erection of the Masjid Hospital Sungai Buloh.

And nurseries sprouted on both sides of the road, and illegal Indonesian immigrants cleared the land all around the gravesite to nurture grass and turf.

Coming into view, and with recent talk that the slope may be cleared to make way for a car park for the mosque, the cemetery is no longer neglected. The weeds have been cleared and new turf was laid recently.

Artists have visited it to inspire their creative narratives.

Its phoenix rise from obscurity is because it holds some of the victims of the racial blood-letting that occurred on May 13, 1969, and the days after.

The racial riots that sparked off on May 13, 1969, six years after Malaysia and a dozen after Merdeka, called into question the racial harmony that was supposedly the unshakeable foundation of our nationhood.

It also left such a deep wound in our psyche that for the longest time it was not talked about, and not just because of government fiat. Nobody wanted to go near it. The priority was mending communal relations and country.

It became a blank page in our history books, except for Tunku Abdul Rahman’s report on it.

Official figures say 196 perished. That figure is disputed by those who would rather believe Western diplomats’ estimate of 600.

Now, at a time when communal relations are abrasive and divisive, the gravesite has become a symbol for what must not be forgotten, a reminder of bloody consequences if racial passions are unbridled or ignited.

Today is the 48th anniversary of that traumatic event.

One hundred and fourteen tombstones stick-out on a hill-side, dwarfed and facing a big mosque, looming apartment blocks and a university medical facility, but being obliterated into oblivion is no longer a threat.

Now where are the other 82? – May 13, 2017.

* Check out The Malaysian Insight’s photo gallery here for more pictures.