More than 60 years after British troops killed 24 villagers at
Batang Kali, Selangor, the case against the soldiers is going to be
heard in the British courts today.
IN 1948, the
Malayan
Emergency was just heating up. The country may have been weary of four
brutal years of Japanese occupation during
World War II, but the brief
post-War dominance of the
Communist Party of Malaya (CPM) was clearly at
odds with the desire of the British authorities to reclaim a territory
whose raw materials would help rebuild Britain itself.
By 1948,
this had erupted into an undeclared war that would be waged until 1960.
British forces sought to subdue the Communists, who had gained a degree
of popularity for their resistance towards the Japanese. It didn’t help
that in China, Mao’s Communist Party was on the verge of defeating the
Kuomintang nationalist party.
Uneasy lie the dead: This cemetery in Batang Kali, Selangor, is where about half of the massacred victims were buried.
It
was against this backdrop that the 7th Platoon of G Company, of the
second battalion of
Scots Guards unit of the British Army, belied its
centuries-long reputation for honour. On Dec 12, 1948, under the
leadership of Sgt Charles Douglas, the Guards surrounded a rubber estate
near Batang Kali, Selangor. Looking for Communist guerillas who
habitually moved in and out of the local population, they shot and
killed 24 ethnic Chinese villagers before razing the village.
The next day,
The Straits Times carried
a report stating “Scots Guards and Police were today reported to have
shot dead 25 out of 26 bandits during a wide-scale operation in North
Selangor.” It called the killings the “biggest success as yet achieved
in one operation in Malaya since the Emergency began.”
It was a
bold-faced lie. The troops may have been acting on false information or
may have panicked but there is little doubt that many innocent people
were killed. Worse still, the incident was hushed up, only surviving as
whispers through time.
There were, however, some survivors. One
man fainted and was presumed dead, while some women and children of the
men killed lived to tell the tale. According to them the Scots Guards
had separated the men to be interrogated before the situation turned
into a rampage of indiscriminate shooting.
This lush green spot is where dark deeds took place 64 years ago today.
“At
the time we didn’t hear much,” recalls Prof Emeritus Tan Sri Dr Khoo
Kay Kim. “We just heard some rumours. I would not call it the norm, but
no doubt there was tension. What happened at Batang Kali was part of the
complexity of society which can lead to such tragic situations. It is
almost unavoidable in times of conflict and when there is hatred between
ethnic and territorial groups. I see it as a conflict of cultures.
“From
what I understand, they were innocent men. But the Chinese may well
have reacted in a peculiar way that would have seemed suspicious to the
British, who were paranoid and ignorant of local ways. The British
always had problems with the
Chinese community.
“That is why
Governor
Sir Shenton Thomas tried to come up with a programme to
Anglicise the Chinese, but they were not easily controlled. At that
point (in 1948) the Chinese were under the influence of the leftists and
the secret societies. They were themselves enemies and in some ways it
mirrored the conflict in China between the Kuomintang and the Communist
Party.”
Prof Datuk Dr Shamsul Amri Baharuddin laments the tragic
loss of life. “At the time the British would have had their own people
on the ground. But informers can make the biggest mistakes, sometimes
even on purpose. It is possible that the informer didn’t like these
people. In this case, it is likely that the British acted on wrong
information.
This is apparently the tombstone of the first victim, Luo Wei-Nan.>
“It
is difficult to be an informer/undercover agent because both sides will
crucify you. In fact in the 1940s, the leader of the Communists, Loi
Tak, was a triple agent, a Vietnamese who worked for the Japanese and
the British while leading the CPM!
“The conditions of war
generates different dynamics, which we can still see today in
Afghanistan and Iraq where there are many vendetta killings and economic
killings done under falsified circumstances.”
Leon Comber played
a critical role in the formative years of the Malaysian police force’s
Special Branch and spent many years countering the Communist insurgency.
The author of
Malaya’s Secret Police, 1945-1960: The Role Of The Special Branch In The Malayan Emergency
has no light to shed on the Batang Kali incident but does concede that,
at the time, there was much mistrust between the Chinese community and
the British.
Comber had come over to Malaya as part of the
re-occupying forces that took over as the Japanese surrendered. In 1946
he was appointed to the police force in Malaya. He served as OCPD
(Officer in Charge of Police District) KL South; at that time KL was
divided into north and south zones for policing.
The Emergency was a savage war in which an estimated 12,000 people died. Did Comber ever have to do anything he was ashamed of?
File
photo from May last year when four claimants, (from right) Wooi Kum
Thai, Loh Ah Choi, Lim Kok and Chong Nyok Keyu announced that they had
been granted funds by the United Kingdom Legal Service Commission to
take their case to British courts. Today, the four are in London for the
beginning of their case.
“Personally I didn’t, nor did
I order any men under my command to do so. But I certainly heard
rumours about dubious interrogation techniques. Apparently the head of
the Special Branch, Richard Craig, issued a pamphlet which referred to
undesirable methods of obtaining information. I was taken aback when I
heard that. But if my fellow colleagues knew anything, they kept it to
themselves.”
Indeed, secrecy was very much the order of the day
as the colonial government maintained strict control over the media to
ensure that only their viewpoint got through to the people. Little was
known at the time of the Malayan Emergency’s many flash points like the
standoff in Bukit Kepong, Johor, on Feb 23, 1950, between police
officers and Communist guerillas that ended with more than 20 fatalities
on each side. Across the pond, on Dec 3, 1949, the British governor of
Sarawak, Sir Duncan Stewart, was stabbed to death by teenage Malay
nationalist Rosli Dhobi.
A few years after the
Batang Kali
massacre, the
Briggs Plan was put in place to win the hearts and minds
of the local population. Devised by General
Sir Harold Briggs shortly
after his appointment in 1950 as the Emergency’s director of operations,
the plan comprised the forced resettlement of rural Chinese population
into “New Villages” where education, health services and homes with
water and electricity were provided. Even as the Emergency continued and
news remained tightly controlled, the Batang Kali massacre reared its
ugly head from time to time. Soon after the incident, in 1949, an
investigation by the Attorney General, Sir Stafford Foster-Sutton,
concluded that the villagers would have escaped with their lives if not
for the soldiers opening fire – yet, no action was taken.
In
fact, only the soldiers themselves were questioned as witnesses; no
villager was asked for testimony. The cover-up echoed that of another
British colonial massacre in Amritsar, India, in 1919 when Colonel
Reginald Dyer ordered the shooting deaths of hundreds of unarmed Indian
civilians.
Following the My Lai massacre in the late 1960s during
the Vietnam War, when US troops unable to distinguish friend from foe
slaughtered all the villagers in My Lai, the Batang Kali incident was
revisited by British newspaper
The People. Then British Secretary
of State for Defence (from 1964 to 1970) Denis Healey set up a team to
investigate the incident. But the case was soon dropped for “lack of
evidence”, despite statements made from former members of the patrol
that made it clear they had been ordered to lie about the killings
during the 1949 investigation.
Still later, in 1992,
In Cold Blood,
a BBC documentary was aired about the killings, making it obvious that a
travesty had occurred, not just with the killings but with the cover-up
that followed. Journalists Ian Ward and Norma Miraflor also
painstakingly put together
Slaughter And Deception At Batang Kali (Media Masters, 2009), another work that endorses this viewpoint.
MCA Public Services and Complaints Department head Datuk Seri Michael Chong became involved with the case during the filming of
In Cold Blood.
“It
is not only me who is fighting this case,” he says. “Over the years
many fought it. Even (Malaysia’s first Prime Minister) Tunku Abdul
Rahman fought it before independence. But when I came to it in 1992 it
had been forgotten. All the time there had been a ding-dong and finally
after a change of government in the UK, the case was closed.
“In
late 1992, a group of BBC journalists came down with a few ex-Scot
Guards who were all in their 70s or 80s. They were not involved in the
massacre but had been asked by their Commanding Officer to help with the
post-massacre clean-up. They came and asked the villagers to remove the
bodies. After so many years they felt bad.”
Chong was outraged
by the injustice and decided to act. “Along with the lawyers Vincent Lim
and Datuk Lim Choon Kin, I took an interest. We went to see the place
and met the survivors. In 1993 we called a press conference and, with
the victims’ descendants, we lodged a police report in Batang Kali.
“After
that, we drafted a letter to Her Majesty the Queen to investigate this
old case and seek for justice. We went to see the then High
Commissioner, H.C. White, and were given assurances that the letter
would be passed to her. Meanwhile, we also worked with the police. I was
cautioned by the Malaysian police not to stir up this sentiment.
“To
be very frank, some leaders also asked me why I wanted to bring up this
old matter. They neither supported me or were against me at first. But
later on they gave me their moral support.
“For me, this has
never been about the publicity. I just want justice for the victims. I
want the British Government to recognise and admit that such an incident
happened. They were all shot in the back of the head from a close
distance. This is cold-blooded murder. They were never Communists, but
simple rubber-tappers. They were not even sympathisers.”
Eventually, through the perseverance of people like Chong, the British Government relented and agreed to hear the case.
Lawyer Quek Ngee Meng is part of a new generation of Malaysians who feel that there is no statute of limitations on justice.
“Back
in 2004 my father, the late Quek Cheng Taik, used to visit the hot
springs in Ulu Yam near Batang Kali to treat an illness. He used to go
from Serdang to that area and eventually bought a house in Ulu Yam. He
listened to the stories of villagers.
“It is still a talked-about
topic there more than 60 years on. Those killed were from Ulu Yam. If
you go there you won’t miss the cemetery. Every Qing Ming (a day to pay
respect to one’s ancestors) they go back.
“They still feel it. It
is still a stigma. The official account says they were suspected of
being bandits. When we followed the case, we found a lot of cover-ups.”
But what can be accomplished after so many years?
“I
think the first thing is an admission and an apology” says Quek. “The
victim’s families also lost their bread-winners so we are also seeking
compensation.
“Over here there are still about five witnesses to
what happened. In Britain some soldiers are still alive. I think there
are more than 10 on the British side. There are many who have passed
away in Malaysia, most recently Tham Yong in 2010. But we documented
their testimony.
“When pursuing this case, the famous human
rights law firm Bindmans backed us and were willing to procure legal
aid. Before they (the United Kingdom Legal Service Commission) granted
us that aid, though, they checked that we needed the funds. They also
checked if there was any merit in the case. Their estimate is a 50% to
60% chance,” says Quek.
Today and tomorrow, the team in London
will be applying for a judicial review to quash the earlier decision by
the British Government not to investigate the tragedy.
Quek says
incidents like Batang Kali were not necessarily unique at the time.
“There are many other cases of injustice during the Emergency. You must
understand, this was at a time when the British thought all Chinese were
Communists. The Chinese had to prove they were not Communists.
“But
even in such circumstances you must follow the rule of law. If they are
identified by informers they should have been detained and questioned.
But they were not.”
Quek makes a final point about the upcoming
trial. “We made a lot of progress with the (British) Labour Government,
but since the Conservative-led coalition took power, they have not been
so straightforward with us.
“They have made a lot of
representations using technical points trying to claim that it was the
Selangor Government who had jurisdiction and we should take action
against the Sultan instead of them!
He adds that, “This is a landmark case with an individual suing the British Government, and I am looking forward to the trial.”
It remains to be seen if justice will indeed finally be served.
By MARTIN VENGADESAN and LIM CHIA YING
star2@thestar.com.my
Related articles/Posts:
American Pit Bull Kills Jogger !
Dangerous animal: The pit buill being taken away by a man believed to be a family member of the dog owner.
