POLITICS-MALAYSIA: Memoirs Reopen Wounds of Communist Insurgency

By Baradan Kuppusamy Reprint | | Print |

Baradan Kuppusamy

KUALA LUMPUR, Oct 10 2003 (IPS) - Malaysians are woefully divided over Chin Peng, the man who led a bloody and violence-filled communist insurrection four decades ago that killed thousands of people but is now seeking forgiveness for that still-sensitive episode in history.

Now, all the former leader of the Communist Party of Malaysia wants to do is to return home from exile in southern Thailand, pay his last respects at his parents’ graves and die in peace.

Is the 79-year-old Chin Peng a hero or a murderer? Is he an independence warrior or a traitor? Can he be forgiven or is he condemned forever? Should he be allowed to return home or left to die in exile?

There has not been such intense anger and deep division over the fate of one person in Malaysia, since former deputy prime Anwar Ibrahim was arrested, jailed and beaten up while in police custody in 1998.

Chin Peng launched his futile insurrection to oust the British from Malaya in 1948. But the war, officially called an "emergency" to protect British insurance companies, was roundly defeated within months and lifted in 1960.

Chin Peng and his followers, however, lingered on in the deep jungles of South Thailand across the border from Malaysia, suffering great deprivation, food shortage and constantly hounding by security forces. They continue to launch sporadic raids that today do not merit even a footnote in contemporary Malaysian history.

In 1989 the communists sign a peace accord, surrendered their weapons and took to farming. Some former Communist Party of Malaya fighters were allowed home, but others like China Peng were barred.

Chin Peng, who became a communist at age 23, would have slipped into blissful anonymity had he not published a 570-page memoir in September etitled ‘Chin Peng: My Side Of History’.

The revealing memoir is a bestseller and answers key questions about the insurrection that police and historians have long wondered about, such as the extent of support from communist China, internal dissension that led to liquidation of hundreds of communist cadres, the effects of police infiltration.

It also sheds light on the most tantalising puzzle – the final end of former communist leader Lai Tek, a police spy who infiltrated the party and ended up as its secretary general, doing massive damage to the communist campaign in the process.

But the memoir has also ignited a new debate over contemporary history and how Malaysians recall that episode in their history. The memoir, as narrated to retired English journalist Ian Ward and his wife Norma Miraflor, is racy and reads like a detective novel. But it is Chin Peng speaking – and for the first time too.

He emerges from the pages a dedicated anti-colonial warrior who reluctantly had to take tough measures that led to killings of civilians, soldiers and rival communists.

He demolishes his five-decade old image of a merciless and cold-blooded killer. He downplays his part in the killings, justifies some of it and glosses over others.

"The memoir offers an insider’s incisive analysis of why and how the communist insurgency failed. . . Chin Peng relates the losers’ side of the story," wrote retired historian Cheah Boon Kheng. "Once feared and glamorised as the country’s most wanted man, he appears (in the memoir) as a simple, warm-hearted personality speaking with a voice of moderation."

Chin Peng concedes in his memoir that the world has changed since the time he took up arms to fight colonialism.

"My world was different…the colours of that colonial world were stark. I was young in a very different age that demanded very different approaches. A revolution based on violence has no application now in modern Malaysia or Singapore, " he wrote. "But it is ironic that I should be without the country for which I was more than willing to die."

Since his memoir was published, not a day has passed without letters in newspapers urging respect, magnanimity, forgiveness and honour for Chin Peng. Other letters downright attack him as a killer who deserves no mercy, even decades later.

The Malaysian government has refused to allow him back because he was linked to a banned group that had a history of perpetrating terrorism.

"Chin Peng was a terrorist who murdered in cold blood…he is a communist and we must remember that once a communist, always a communist," said Deputy Information Minister Zainuddin Maidin. "We are disappointed that some Malaysians want him back."

The opposition National Justice Party of Anwar Ibrahim and the Democratic Action Party have urged the government to allow Chin Peng to return saying he too fought for the country’s independence and that it is time to for reconciliation.

However many ex-soldiers and civilian survivors of Chin Peng’s past terror reject this, relating horror stories – how babies were impaled on stakes, civilians beheaded, informers scalped and entire villages burned. Social analyst Dr A Soorian, who described Chin Peng’s memoir as a "catalogue of lies and half-truths", said torture, murder and mayhem were deliberate policies of Chin Peng.

Soorian said to allow Chin Peng home is like giving Osama bin Laden U,S, citizenship after the al-Qaeda leader retires from terrorism as a profession.

"(But) if we can forgive the British and the Japanese (occupiers), I do not see why we cannot forgive our own countryman, who unfortunately was caught on the wrong side of history," wrote Hamdan Ibrahim in the English-language daily ‘New Straits Times’ newspaper last week.

Socialist Party of Malaysia secretary general S Arulchelvam says history has been unfair to Chin Peng. "He was first portrayed as a hero by the British for opposing Japanese occupation. But later when he turned against their colonialism, he was immediately labeled a communist terrorist." "Chin Peng has the courage to admit his failures…today we welcome and embrace Japanese and British businessmen, forgetting the atrocities their nations had committed in Malaysia before," he told IPS. "There are armed struggles everywhere…it is important to consider the fundamental issues behind each, or otherwise we walk a thin line calling every rebel a terrorist," he said. "We should let him come home." Political analyst James Wong said: "Chin Peng is not applying for Malaysian citizenship or permanent residency. He is also not coming back to claim victory or to settle scores with anyone. He only wants to pay respect to his parents and ancestors," Wong said.

But a victim of the communist insurrection identified only as ‘Impossible to Forgive and Forget’ responded to these moves in a bitterly worded letter ‘The Star’ newspaper this month.

He related how Chin Peng’s soldiers killed his father on the night of Dec. 19, 1948. "The communists shot dead my father in front of his pregnant wife…the shock was too great for her. Four days later I was born, prematurely and fatherless," his letter said.

"I always thought about my dead father…my mother suffered so much bringing up eight children single-handedly," he wrote. "I can never forget or ever forgive Chin Peng."