The other side of HIS-story!

My Side of History (@Chin Peng; 2003)

A few years ago when Chin Peng's application to return to Malaysia appeared in the local newspapers, I remember discussing with a close friend about the subject. Being a learnt chap who was fair and aged as he was, I was taken aback by his reaction. Hailing from the district of Tanjung Malim, an area listed as a red light for communists activities, he was quite emotional that Chin Peng should not be allowed back at any cost. He had first hand experience of experiencing the violence and atrocities at the hands of people who looked at communism as the saviour of our nation to escape colonisation of their European masters.
Now, the question is whether CP was a liberator or a CT (communist terrorist). The question is who decides which, is it the victors of ideology or the historians. The fall of communism just convinced the victors that they were right all along. As in all human endeavours, the fallen would always be suppressed by the strong and mighty. Like they say, when caught in a strong current, always hold on to the strong roots by the bank of the river not the dangling branches.

A War Hero

From our childhood, we had been inundated with the idea that communism is some kind of evil teaching that is out to pulverise all kind of successes and liberty that mankind had attained since the time of Adam and Eve. So when I saw it this book at the local shelf in 2009, I grabbed a copy but only got to read it of late.
Sometimes ignorance is bliss. Too much information can sometimes lead to more questions and confusions. This is what happened to a young Ong Boon Hua (a.k.a. Chin Peng), a veracious reader. At time when the feudal system was meeting its coup de grâce through much human suffering and rising of the workers' class, elitists and intellectuals tried to stir human emotions on equality and humanity. These ideas fascinated many young minds of the mid thirties in the hope of creating an utopia on Earth.
The 1937 Rape of Nanking by the Japanese soldiers left a deep scar on many Chinese all over the world including the first generation migrants. It was only natural that when the Japanese reached our shores in early 40sduring WW2, the Chinese here took up arms against their Eastern intruders. WW2, in a way, woke Malayans from their slumber of nationalistic apathy. The people were also divided into two factions; one who went underground to resist the invaders from the Land of the Rising Sun (MPAJA) and the other who were cooperative and gained from the cycling Hirakiri advocating invaders.

Public Enemy No. 1

The bumbling British tried to make a comeback with help of the underground army. This cooperation between Force 136 and MPAJA later won many praises when the war was over. The Communist Party which was hoping to liberate Malaya from their colonial masters were taken for a ride. The newer batch of English officers were gung ho and set to reap maximum benefits for their motherland which was in dire straits after the war.
On the Malayan side, poverty was the order of the day. All the three years hard earned savings through the war years came to naught when the returning masters deemed the banana currency non legal tender. The new changes in the British administration and the economy malaise added by hungry mouths became fertile ground for fascination with socialistic and communistic ideologies. These ideologies infiltrated trade unions.
After the war, many MPAJA soldiers were decorated. Chin Peng himself was conferred 2 honorary medals and OBE. Ironically, less than two years later, he became Public Enemy No. 1 with a price on his head!
Post World War 2 era marked the begin of the Cold War and both divides were not giving their territories to the other side so easily, hence the change of heart.
The frustrated guerrillas took matters to their own hands. With the dearth of communication means, the leaders of CPM never could hold a tight rein on their subordinates. On top of that all, it was rife with internal problems. Its early leader, Lai Te, turned out to be a turncoat who sold his comrades to the Japanese and also to the British! He later absconded with a princely sum of money.
Interestingly, CPM received support from sympathetic Malayans and through capitalistic means!
Subsequent shrewd planning and propaganda use of the media on the part of the British crippled CPM.
The crimes of the communists were highlighted making it justified in the public eyes for them to be labelled as 'terrorist'. On the other hand, nefarious acts by the armed forces were muffled. A picture of a British soldier holding 2 'trophy' heads of Chinese communists made it way to the Daily Mail in the UK. It earned a bad reputation for the Brits. The authorities justified their action by the need of identification and census. They argued that they did not have to follow the international set of rules of treating captives as the Emergency period (1948-1960) was not a war! Then there is the Batang Kali massacre where the accusing fingers still point to the English.
This book gives a deep insight into the happenings during the 1955 Baling talk like never seen before in any history textbook. Chin Peng and his men, by then weary of the jungle, wanted to come into the mainstream. They wanted recognition as an entity which fought for the nation and be allowed to operate as a political party. David Marshall, a roaring lawyer from Singapore with his own political ambitions, is seen here a loud steamrolling one sided negotiator who wrecked the peace talk. Tan Cheng Lock, is painted as a true capitalist who seem more interested in loss of business opportunities and monetary wastage rather than liberty and social justice. Political wrangling by the powers of the day forced them to go underground again.
Once again, as world reeled from the post war slump and economy was booming, communist sympathy dwindled. At the end of the day, it is money that talks - a hungry stomach raises the sickle but when hunger is fulfilled, he yearns for peace.
In its early days, CPM seem like a groping organization with no recognition from its well established peers like in Australia and India. It was not even invited for the Communist World Summit in 1960. The Australian delegate who was passing through filled in on the details and suggested the idea of killing strike breakers and traitors.
The damage of public property was supposed to hurt the colonial masters. The first brutal killing of a British planter in Sungai Siput over wage dispute herald the beginning of the Emergency period. Renegade members of CPM killed here and there without the blessings of the Central Committee, allegedly. The assassination of Sir Henry Gurney was apparently a wild shot, unplanned. Guerrillas who wanted food and money hijacked a VIP car by chance. Sir Gurney happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time.

Grinning Royal Marine with his "trophies".

Briggs' plan of creating new villages overnight by forcibly mass transporting villagers unannounced and rationing their food supply may appear inhumane but it helped to fade the sympathy of the Malayan people. This, with the euphoria of a new independent nation and burgeoning prices of raw material in the world market sent the revolutionary ideas further back into the back burner.
A disappointed Chin Peng went into exile in the background, He was a guest of Thailand, Vietnam and China. He received financial support for China and telecommunication aid to transmit communist ideas to Malaysia.
Chin Peng's love affair with communism met more resistance as the days went by. Malaysia started diplomatic relationship with China. CPM in turn had to comply with certain requests made by Malaysia via China. Difference in thinking amongst the Soviet, the Chinese and true Marxists created various factions within CPM with many backstabbing with money as the primary gain. The tired old man called truce in the 80s with the then Inspector General of Police but failed to make it even as to the motherland that he fought for. Ironically, his last breath was on the day sanctioned as Malaysia Day, 16th September 2013 at the age of 88.

Malaya: The Undeclared War

http://vimeo.com/20993726

Malaya: The Undeclared War from Enemies of the People on Vimeo.

Chin Peng deserves his place of rest

http://www.freemalaysiatoday.com/category/opinion/2013/09/22/chin-peng-deserves-his-place-of-rest/

September 22, 2013

Chin Peng’s ashes should be allowed the courtesy of entry into the country and internment in the place of his wish.

By M Kula Segaran
I have heard about the Communist Party of Malaya secretary general Chin Peng from a young age. For as long as I can remember, Chin Peng has been associated with the town of Sitiawan. More than interest in his career as a guerrilla fighter drew me to him.

I, too, hail from Sitiawan where I was born a good many years after Chin Peng emerged on the west coast of Perak in 1924. Marxists might disagree, but a sense of geographical solidarity may be just as strong as class solidarity.

I had wanted to meet up with Chin Peng since the time I first heard about him. Being from a rubber tapping family, I was drawn to read quite a lot about him and his struggles.

Rubber was the mainstay of the Malayan economy but rubber tappers were poor and communist ideology was sympathetic to those at the bottom of the economic ladder. Hence I had an interest in the fighter who was from my hometown of Sitiawan and in how his career worked out in history.

My curiosity was gratified with the publication of Chin Peng’s memoir of his struggle, ‘My Side of History’, which was published in 2003. I devoured the book and remembered striking aspects of the story.

An Ipoh lawyer of my acquaintance, Chan Kok Keong, took up Chin Peng’s application to the Malaysian government to be allowed to return to Malaysia to visit his parents’ graves. Kok Keong arranged for a meet-up in Bangkok in 2009.

Through Kok Keong’s connections, the meeting took place in a famous hotel in the Thai capital in 2009. With episodes in Chin Peng’s memoirs fresh in my memory, the first thing I did when I encountered the man in the flesh as different to the vivid character in the pages of ‘My Side of History’ was to ask about intriguing episodes in the book.

I asked how he evaded capture by the British and the Japanese while he traveled in Perak in the period between 1939 and during the Second World War (1942-45). He told me his base was in the high hills of Bidor, near Cameron Highlands.

Chin Peng told me that he cycled from his base in the hills of Bidor via rubber plantations to places where he could meet up with fellow guerillas and contacts. He told me almost all the time he was able to avoid detention. Till today, this narrative evokes wonder and awe in him.

I asked about how he had met up with the British military unit ferried by submarine to link up with officers of the Malayan People’s Anti-Japanese Army on the coast of Perak in 1943. He said the submarine landed in Lumut Kiri.

Even present days Perakians would be hard put to know where Lumut Kiri is. It is a very remote area which is only accessible on foot. Chin Peng said he had cycled to Pantai Remis via rubber plantations and then walked the last few miles to Lumut Kiri to meet up with his British military contacts. This wasn’t an easy feat, even if attempted in these days — what more then!

Honouring agreements
In the Bangkok meeting with him, I sensed Chin Peng’s desire to o come back to Malaysia, if only to pay his respects at his parents’ graves which are at the Chinese grave site in the village of Pundut, in Lumut. Alas, that wish remains unfulfilled.

I have raised in Parliament the 1989 Peace Agreement between the Malaysian government and the MCP.

I have argued that the government must be ashamed for not honouring their part of the agreement to allow Chin Peng to return as required by the terms of the peace accord.

Now the government’s decision to disallow the internment of his ashes in Pundut compounds the insensibility of the earlier decision to bar his return to the country of his birth.

How can we expect others to abide by the terms of agreement they may make with us if our government violates and refuses to adhere to agreements we have made with others, such as the one we made with the MCP in 1989?

I disagree with communist ideology and abhor the huge loss of life and destruction of property their militant struggle caused in Malaya between 1948 and 1960, and on a lesser scale from 1960 to the conclusion of a peace agreement in 1989.

But I contend that the MCP’s struggle against the Japanese during the latter’s occupation of Malaya was valiant and their resistance to the British colonials after the defeat of the Japanese hastened the grant of independence to Malaya in 1957.

For that reason and also in deference to the terms of the 1989 peace accords, Chin Peng’s ashes should be allowed the courtesy of entry into the country and internment in the place of his wish.

M Kula Segaran the MP for Ipoh Barat and the DAP national vice chairman.

I came here to bury Chin Peng, not to praise him

SEPTEMBER 19, 2013. MALAY MAIL

http://www.themalaymailonline.com/opinion/praba-ganesan/article/i-came-here-to-bury-chin-peng-not-to-praise-him

Praba Ganesan is chief executive

at KUASA, 

an NGO using

volunteerism to empower 

the

52 per cent. He believes it is

time

 to get involved

SEPT 19 — Funerals are always for the living. The dead don’t derive value from the exercise, irrespective of whether the remains are of obsessive atheists or deeply reflective monotheists.
The dead are dead, which is why body-grabbing episodes by your local cheerful Islamic department amuses me — and upsetting only as far as the act excludes the deceased’s family and presupposed values in the eventual rites.
The dead themselves can’t mind.
I say this upfront because I would prefer a zero-cost funeral for myself using recycled plastic, or roadside grass. I say this now because Chin Peng died and a slew of willing citizens are raving and ranting like a mob around a giant plastic doughnut, without actually wanting doughnuts.
The raves and rants are inappropriate because there is no widespread lobby at home for Chin Peng. Nor are protest rallies forthcoming.
And they distract from what reasonable people prefer: A meaningful discourse with full view of the facts and space for all opinions, and a common opinion representing the maturity of a society that is not silly enough to be caught up by jingoism and empty rhetoric.
I am not advocating for Chin Peng’s remains to be brought to Malaysia, or even for the outlandish request of putting up a memorial, but seriously, when Inspector-General of Police Khalid Abu Bakar said that he was upping border security so that Chin Peng’s body — a bit like “Weekend at Bernie’s” — never makes it past our border north, I grow weary.
But not before sniggering, for everything and anything traverses the whole border especially at the checkpoints; whether the 15 odd Bangladeshis in a sedan booth making their way to blissful economic exploitation in Balakong, diesel and petroleum by the tankers heading back to Thailand effectively stealing our subsidies, bored Alor Setar husbands riding shotgun with Penang technicians for a weekend jaunt and almost overstaying ASEAN pub girls prancing over to stamp their passports and getting a cheap manicure before boarding their bus returning to Kuala Lumpur. All witnessed by this lady selling steamed corn two metres from the no-man’s land zone and before Thai immigration.
I rather the IGP focussing on keeping my 61-year-old widowed mother’s travels to the city temple using the bus safe. Her husband was a serviceman, but she’d prefer the security not protection from dead 89-year-old men. Snatch thieves not greying zombies, I fear.
It’s the inordinate concern for the inane which gets me weary. We appear petty, as a nation.

Accounts to be settled

There are families affected by the period of Emergency (1948-1960) and thereafter isolated communists acts leading to the 1989 Haadyai Agreement officially ending any hostilities between Malaysian security forces and remnants of the communists 41 years after the killing of a planter in Sungai Siput.
But the killings were on both sides and the years of serious all-out fighting until 1955 were between British security forces — which had a substantial number of Malayans — and the Malayan Communist Party (MCP) which was exclusively Malayans.
There were cruel exactions on both sides and half a million of rural folks, mostly Chinese, were forcibly evacuated to fringes of cities to live in new villages which were in actuality camps. The social cost of that is still being felt till today, who’s to pay for that?
My friend, a wonderful well-meaning chap, says he would have fought on the side of the British against the Communists back then because he would have been picking the “lesser evil.”
It is a slippery-slope when beliefs are mounted on who did less wicked things, for people are only fed by those on their side of the divide. It compounds when that side won and wrote the history texts.
Neither do these remarks discount most of what is written.
Pity Chin Peng or hate Chin Peng, but don’t oversimplify the past by claiming it is completely factual.
Plus, there is the matter of a powwow 24 years ago across the border. Why are communities opposed to Chin Peng not opposed to the government’s decision to accept the Haadyai Agreement? The defence ministry did not oppose, the police did not oppose, Mahathir Mohamad supported it.
If those angry today at the mention of Chin Peng’s body returning were not up in arms back in 1989 and in positions oppose, are they then hypocrites? What does Malaysia call those who are of the opinion that agreeing to expedite their own interests and then to disown their own words when it is convenient?
Finally on this revisionist attitude to our collective past, when is it fine to kill members of the British forces impingeing on locals?
If the security forces of 1958-1957 were not really under British rule because there were Malayans in them, are the British justified in executing Maharajalela for murdering JWW Birch, then tracking Mat Kilau for decades and somewhere between butchering Tok Janggut and his men?
Was Custer the victim at the Battle of Little Bighorn, and Crazy Horse the villain? The Indian-killer or the white-soldier killer — who to cherish? And are the facts different because America is a
white-ruled society now?

There is no rewind button
Today does not matter to Chin Peng, nor does it to Abdul Rahman. Neither can David Marshall tell us about the sidebar conversations they had at the Baling Talks in 1955. They are all dead.
History is not about forcing a version. Life is about ensuring progress by accepting deep divides and working the margins. A future is built by recognising histories, appreciating the present accommodations and engaging people to realise everyone matters all the time.
Ignorance is the enemy of any tangible present or future.
I fear this debacle has highlighted the amazing levels of ignorance encouraged by those in power in steering emotions to particular outcomes.
Chin Peng’s death gave us an urgency to speak of the past in a sane way. That opportunity has passed.
All the past days have managed to highlight is that there are active voices disapproving intellect in our midst.
In time, along this trajectory, Malaysia will become an ignorant nation growing in arrogance. Then no war in the past or its actors matter anymore.
Nobody would want to enter this abrasive nation anymore, not even a Chin Peng.
http://www.themalaymailonline.com/opinion/praba-ganesan/article/i-came-here-to-bury-chin-peng-not-to-praise-him