The historic exterior of the Coliseum Cafe. The restaurant had been serving customers since 1921.
News that the 99-year-old Coliseum Cafe is shutting down for good has caused dismay amongst Malaysian foodies and historians alike. This 2014 story by our Travel writer Chester Chin perfectly encapsulates just why it is such a huge loss to our country s heritage.
This story originally appeared in
StarLifestyle on 31 August 2014, and has been edited for brevity and clarity.
The sconce on the stained wall at the back of Coliseum Café’s dining area hasn’t lit up for a while now. But the lamp’s faulty nature isn’t reason enough to warrant a brand new replacement - not when the item in question is a relic that’s almost a century old.
KUALA LUMPUR, APRIL 12: More than anyone else in Malaysia and Singapore, Said Zahari’s name must surely be immortalised as symbolising the struggle for press and media freedom.
The defining moment was, of course, the Utusan Melayu strike of 1961, when he led his colleagues to resist the newspaper’s takeover by interests tied to UMNO, the ruling party then and now.
The strike was remarkable for many reasons; two deserve special mention. First, it involved Malay workers unlike most labour struggles historically associated with ethnic Chinese and Indian workers. Second, the strike was not primarily over workers’ welfare, but instead tried to resist the takeover and transformation of the previously independent Malay-language newspaper into a ruling party tool.
COMMENT | The Mandela of Malayan journalism
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COMMENT | More than anyone else in Malaysia and Singapore, Said Zahari’s name must surely be immortalised as symbolising the struggle for press freedom. The defining moment was, of course, the
Utusan Melayu strike of 1961, when he led his colleagues to resist the newspaper’s takeover by interests tied to Umno, the ruling party then and now.
The strike was remarkable for many reasons; two deserve special mention. First, it involved Malay workers unlike most labour struggles historically associated with ethnic Chinese and Indian workers.
Second, the strike was not primarily over workers’ welfare, but instead tried to resist the takeover and transformation of the previously independent Malay-language newspaper into a ruling party tool.