This picture taken on August 27, 2013 shows a worker cleaning the floor in front of a poster advertising movie named 'Tanda Putera' at a local cinema in Kuala Lumpur. – AFP pic

KUALA LUMPUR, Sept 13 — The producer of controversial film “Tanda Putera” today apologised to DAP’s Lim Kit Siang over a photograph with a caption accusing him of urinating at the flagpole of a Selangor Mentri Besar’s house on May 13, 1969, the day of the racial riots.

Pesona Pictures said the photograph, which depicts Lim as being manhandled with the controversial note, was posted on its Facebook page earlier last year due to an oversight.

It clarified that there was no truth in the caption which said “Lim Kit Siang had urinated at the foot of the flagpole bearing the Selangor flag at the then Selangor MB Harun Idris’ house”.

“We, Messrs Pesona Pictures Sdn Bhd, unreservedly apologise to Mr Lim Kit Siang for the embarrassment caused by the aforementioned publication which is devoid of truth,” Pesona said in a letter posted today on the official Facebook page of Tanda Putera.

Pesona denied that the company had intentionally published the photograph and the caption, explaining that it had originated from a blog link in a subscriber’s comment on the Facebook page.

It also said it has forwarded an explanation to Lim, the DAP parliamentary leader, on the “unfortunate circumstances leading to” as well as the “inadvertence” in the posting of both the photograph and caption.

“The photograph and its accompanying caption made its way onto our official Facebook account Tanda Putera via a subscriber’s comment attaching a link to another blog. One of the administrators of our Facebook account opened the link provided and found the impugned photograph and its caption. Innocently believing the same to be in some manner relevant to the movie Tanda Putera, he proceeded to copy and save them onto the Facebook’s photo album.

“The publication thereof was purely an inadvertence, without any malice or bad faith intended,” Pesona said.

The photograph and offending caption was reportedly removed in July last year.

Lim had last August called the caption a “wild and reckless lie”, saying that he was not even in Kuala Lumpur during the May 13 riots in 1969.

He had also claimed that the photograph used was from a 1984 incident in Sabah.

Despite criticisms against the film’s fairness in its portrayal of the May 13 incident and the events surrounding it, Pesona said it was sticking to Tanda Putera’s contents.

“We stand by the content of our film Tanda Putera. Mr Lim Kit Siang was not featured anywhere in this film. This was made known to YB last year 2012,” the company said in the letter today.

The film, which was released this August 29 after some delays in the past, still features the scene of an ethnic Chinese man urinating on a flagpole at the then-Selangor Mentri Besar’s residence.

Yesterday, The Malay Mail Online reported that a former senior officer with the police Special Branch had said that the urination scene in the film is a complete fabrication.

“I can also confirm with you, as I was on duty at the time, that the urination incident never happened,” Tan Sri Yuen Yuet Leng said yesterday.

Yuen criticised Tanda Putera’s director Datin Paduka Shuhaimi Baba for keeping the scene in the flim, saying that it should have been researched properly to avoid sparking unnecessary tension.

“The director should have called me. It was during my time. This is a very specific incident and it should have been researched properly...now it is only causing so much confusion and this is not good for the country,” the former Special Branch deputy director told The Malay Mail Online.