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No Homecoming for Chin Peng
Written by Our Correspondent
Wednesday, 02 December 2009
An irrelevant former guerilla wants to go home to Malaysia to die
An 85-year-old man living in relative obscurity in Thailand has become
the latest lightning rod in the continuing political squabble between
Malaysia's United Malays National Organization and the opposition Democratic
Action Party.
History has largely obscured Chin Peng, once the secretary general of the
Communist Party of Malaya and once known as the Butcher of Malaya, who led a
bloody, futile decades-long guerilla movement attempting to overthrow the
government of the country that eventually became Malaysia.
Reportedly ailing and near death, Chin wants to return to his home in the
coastal town of Sitiawan in Perak state, he says, to visit his parents' graves
and to die. His cause has been championed by the DAP, which points out that a
1989 amnesty signed in Hatyai, Thailand, for all Communist Party members which
officially marked the end of the long-dormant insurgency, would have allowed
him back. Chin refused at the time, saying the terms would have humiliated him.
On Wednesday, Deputy Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin said the cabinet
would not change its decision to allow Chin Peng back despite the fact that the
1989 pact granted him the right to return. In a formal statement carried in the
Kuala Lumpur-based Star newspaper, Chin apologized for the deaths of government
forces and common citizens during the uprising.
Nonetheless, "We will be firm as far as this decision is concerned,"
Muhyiddin said. "He will not be allowed to come back." Muhyiddin was commenting
on a statement by former Inspector-General of Police Rahim Noor that the former
guerilla had the right to return at least on a social visit under the terms of
the agreement. Nor will he be allowed to meet with Prime Minister Najib Tun
Razak when he meets southern Thai leaders later this month in an attempt to
defuse Muslim-Buddhist tensions.
"Chin Peng killed many and while his actions may have resulted in
independence, he fought not for an independent Malaya but for a communist
Malaya with him at the head and with mostly Chinese comrades, and even those
from the mainland mind you as supreme leaders," said an ethnic Malay source in
Kuala Lumpur.
The Umno forces largely have ignored the fact that two ethnic Malay
leaders of the insurrection, Shamsiah Fakeh and Rashid Maidin, who signed the
1989 agreement, were allowed to return . Said one blogger: "It's different for
Shamsiah Fakeh and Rashid Maidin, who were allowed to return as they were used
by him."
"Najib and the cabinet should do what is right -- honor the Hatyai
Agreement and allow Chin Peng home to visit his hometown in Sitiawan," said DAP
leader Lim Kit Siang in a media statement Monday. "It reflects most adversely
on the credibility and international standing of Malaysia for the Malaysian
government to renege on its solemn commitments and undertakings in the Hatyai
Agreement. When the Agreement was signed 20 years ago, both signatories agreed
to move on and this is what the Malaysian government and country should do -
allow Chin Peng home to visit his parents' graves in Sitiawan."
The DAP's stance gave a flock of Umno bloggers the chance to accuse the
opposition party of being in alliance with the Communists in a war that has
largely been forgotten. One website carried a photoshopped image of Selangor
state executive councillor Ronnie Liu of the DAP in a communist uniform.,
infuriating Lim Kit Siang, who issued a statement calling the tactic "gutter
politics at its worst" and adding that "Umno blogs have been working overtime
in trying to make the DAP as the country's new public enemy number one by
labelling it and its leaders as communists in an effort to shore up Malay
support."
The matter appears likely to fizzle out. Neither the Parti Keadilan
Rakyat nor Parti Islam se-Malaysia, the two other components of the Pakatan
Rakyat opposition, wants any part of a crusade to bring back what most of
Malaysia regards as an unrepentant killer although Opposition Leader Anwar said
at one point that he would agree to Chin Peng's return.
The ageing guerrilla might have ended up a national hero if he had
stopped his campaign. During World War II, he took to the jungles to lead an
implacable war against the Japanese, who occupied the then-British colony in
1941. He served as a liaison officer between the guerrillas and the British
military in Southeast Asia and was awarded the Order of the British Empire, one
of Britain's highest honors, as well as two campaign medals by the British. The
OBE was later withdrawn.
At the return of the British, Chin kept on going, leading the Communists
in a continuing jungle war that ultimately became known as the Malayan
Insurgency, which lasted until 1960, with the death toll in the thousands, when
British and local forces finally succeeded in subduing the guerrillas.
Chin eventually moved to China while the party maintained what was called
a "theoretical armed struggle" based in southern Thailand for nearly two more
decades. During those two decades, most of Malaysia regarded them as irrelevant
as the country moved on, growing increasingly rich off its export-led economy,
the communists fell on each other with a flock of purges, trials and
executions. In 1989, the exhausted guerillas gave up, bypassed by history and
by Chinese supreme leader Deng Xiaoping's own turn away from the communism
espoused by revolutionary leader Mao Zedong.
Ironically, it was a guerilla war that probably could never have been won
under any circumstances. It was centered in a minority of a minority -
Malaysia's Chinese population, who historically have run the country's commerce
and who were hardly enthusiastic about communism. And the Chinese were always
decisively outnumbered by other races, particularly by ethnic Malays, who were
antipathetic both to communism and to the Chinese.
Nonetheless, the Americans, deep in their own war in Vietnam, regarded
the British as geniuses for having snuffed out the rebellion, and attempted to
use their tactics, particularly the establishment of so-called strategic
villages in which entire populations were scooped up and deposited in new
locales via helicopter to dry up the sea in which guerillas could swim. The
rural Vietnamese, who believed in geomancy, were often terrified by the moves.
They situated their own villages to placate a large variety of gods and
sleeping dragons. The Americans knew nothing about that.
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