KUCHING: Twenty members of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) Borneo Tour Visit (BTV) paid a courtesy call on Deputy Mayor of Kuching City South Council (MBKS), Haji Helmy Haji Othman at his office at MBKS Building in Padungan here, yesterday.
The group which also included nine students was led by Ryan Rowland, chairman of the Borneo Exhibition And Education Group School Programme Partnership with Australia, Sabah, Sarawak Schools (P.A.S.S). The group was also accompanied by Chairman of Sarawak Tourism Federation Heritage Development Committee, Dato Lim Kian Hock.
According to Ryan, it was the 18th Borneo Tour Visit since 2000. “We will be here for another two days. Today and tomorrow (today). We will be leaving on 18 April. The journey started in Sandakan and finishing at the War Cemetery in Labuan for the ANZAC Day which on 25 April with the Dawn Service at 5 am and the twilight service at the cemetery with the students and the locals at 4pm.
“So it is very important that we have this link and we are hoping that this could happen here eventually and I am certainly anxious that instead of having ANZAC Day here we have the Remembrance Day on 11 November back again like it was many years ago before the dedication was discontinued.
“We hope that this year is the end of the great wars which was from 1914 to 1918. So a 100-year centenary will be on 11 Nov this year. I hope there will be no more wars,” he said. Yesterday afternoon, the Group attended the Heroes’ Graves dedication service together with local war veterans and army veterans.
Today, the group will be having cross cultural exchange programme with the students and in the afternoon, they will have another service at the Memorial Garden at Batu Lintang which is another memorial site where the Japanese built a POW (prisoner of war) camp. Lim said MBKS has been very supportive. “In Kuching City South we have the Batu Lintang monument which is in Kuching City South and in Kuching City North we have the Heroes’ Grave.
“We are also looking forward to get people to start putting some monuments somewhere at Pending because that is the place where the Japanese signed the surrender documents on 11 September, 1945 at 2.30pm. “That was the time and place where the Japanese Army surrendered before the Army General of the Allied Force went to Batu Lintang POW Camp and arrived at about 5pm where he announced to the prisoners that there were free and the Japanese occupation was over. “So that is an important date because the Japanese surrendered at Batu Lintang on 11 September while Sandakan was on 13 September.
“So these are the few areas that are very important to us. These monuments are very important parts of the history of Sarawak,” Lim added. He also said a majority of members of the entourage are from Western Australia. They brought along with them students. “We are involved because they have a student exchange programme. So about six years ago, we decided that our students should join them and that is why we have one student from St Thomas and one from St Joseph in the programme,” he said, adding that they were selected by their schools to take part.
“They will follow the group to study the history of the Second World War and how we achieved peace. The idea is to enable them to understand that in any conflict or war there is cruelty. So once they understand cruelty, then they will also understand how valuable it is for peace to be kept.
“That is why from above you will see the Batu Lintang monument looks like the letter ‘H’ which stands for Hope. Its side looks like a book because Batu Lintang is an educational institution,” he said, adding that Batu Lintang is the only teachers training institution built out of the war because the site was the site of a prisoner of war (POW) camp.
“The prisoners secretly formed a group to study all kinds of subjects including engineering and the group was known as ‘Kuching Underground University’. That is why I said the first university in Malaysia started at Batu Lintang POW camp from 1942 to 1945,” Lim said.
