Pudu Prison and its sell-mates

Looks like Malaysians in general, and in particular possibly certain politicians, developers and entrepreneurs, have displayed yet again their utter contempt for things they consider old and do not promise good monetary returns. And this time around it’s the turn of the colonial Pudu Prison in Kuala Lumpur that is scheduled to be torn down later this year to make way for some commercial centre and condominium complex on a prime area. (See here.)

Built in 1895, the prison probably seems, to certain profit-motivated people, like a sore thumb standing next to an exciting commercial area in Bukit Bintang. Never mind the prison’s historical and cultural value which, in their minds, would not be able to attract and fascinate especially foreign tourists. After all, aren’t these tourists supposed to come here and shop till they drop dead?

 

If most things in life are to be measured only in terms of ringgit and sen, then those Cambodians, for example, must be mad to keep and transform a torture site under the Khmer Rouge regime into a museum for the locals and foreigners to witness their gory history in physical terms. (This is, of course, not to imply in any way that the acts of violence that happened in the Pudu Prison are  comparable to the atrocities that occurred in the Cambodian torture place.)

 

Security Prison 21 (S-21), which is now turned into the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, was a place where thousands of mostly Cambodians were tortured by the Khmer Rouge regime in the period 1975-1979. Torture paraphernalia, including torture beds, are maintained and put on display as a cold reminder of the dark days in Cambodian history. 

 

 

At the risk of sounding frivolous, the Cambodians could have auctioned off one of those torture beds and dozens of the skulls of the torture victims at the Christie’s simply for money. This is apart from turning the entire site of torture into a theme park perhaps.

 

This example suggests that Cambodians may be relatively poor materially, but they appear to know where to draw the crucial line between crass commercialism and materialism on the one hand and the invaluable price of historical and cultural heritage on the other.