A Doctor in The House: A Memoir of Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad (19 page)

[
5
] J.W.W. Birch (1826-1875) was assassinated on 2 November 1875 after he angered local Malay chiefs by outlawing slavery and reportedly showing disrespect to the Malays.
 

[
6
]
Malaya, Part 1: The Malayan Union Experiment 1942-1948
, editor A.J. Stockwell, British Documents on the end of Empire, Series B, Vol. 3.
 

[
7
] Sultan Hishamuddin Alam Shah (1898-1960) was deposed by the Japanese for having made pro-British speeches prior to the Occupation. He was replaced by his older brother Tengku Musaeddin (b. 1893), who became Sultan Musa Ghiatuddin Riayat Shah. Sultan Hishamuddin was restored in 1945 on the return of the British, and Sultan Musa was exiled to the Cocos Keeling Islands, but was returned to Malaya just before he died in 1955.
 

[
8
] Malaya, Part 1: The Malayan Union Experiment 1942-1948.
 

[
9
] Ibid.
 

[
10
] These notes are kept in the Istana at Pasir Pelangi.
 

[
11
] H.T. Bourdillon served in Malaya and later worked in the Colonial Office in London.
 

[
12
] These notes are kept in the British Archives.
 

[
13
] Also from the British Archives.

From the end of the Japanese Occupation until Independence, the British kept a watchful eye on the activities of the Chinese, especially the communists. When the Kuomintang (KMT) and the Communist Party split in China in 1927, their Malayan counterparts were also divided. Viewed with suspicion by the British, the Chinese communists set up an underground party and initially confined themselves to organising demonstrations against Japan for invading
China. They also initiated boycotts of Japanese goods and threw Japanese products into the sea at the Esplanade
[1]
 in Penang. They even banded together with other Chinese groups in Singapore to raise funds for China.
 

During the Japanese Occupation, a number of Chinese activists, both communist and KMT, were arrested and executed. Relentless Japanese hunt-downs had forced both groups to retreat into the jungles where they set up guerrilla resistance. The two guerrilla groups were distinguished by the stars they wore on their caps—the KMT supporters had one star, while the communists had three, to symbolise that the Malays and Indians were also with them. They wanted to show they were Malayans and not just Chinese communists. Among the Malays in their ranks was Rashid Maidin who, together with Chin Peng, the Secretary-General of the Malayan Communist Party (MCP),
[2]
 was selected to attend the Victory Parade in London after the war. They had been leaders of the Malayan People’s Anti-Japanese Army or MPAJA, which collaborated with the British during the Japanese Occupation. When World War II was being fought, the British had been quite willing to supply both the one-star and three-star guerrillas with weapons and rations. They also set up a third stealth force, Force 136, which was almost purely Malay. Besides local recruits, Malay students studying in England and other Malays living abroad were also brought in to help with the resistance.
 

British officers parachuted into the jungle as designated liaison representatives for the guerrilla groups. Malay members of Force 136 from abroad were either parachuted into the jungle or brought in via submarines. Among those who landed on the shores of Peninsular Malaya was Tun Ibrahim Ismail, an officer of the Johor Military Force who had been sent to Dehradun, the British military college in India and who later rose to become Malaysia’s third Chief of Armed Forces. Two Kedah Malay students who qualified as engineers in England were also parachuted into the jungles. They were Mohamad Yusof, who later became the first Malay director of the Federation’s Public Works Department, and Abdul Hamid who returned to Kedah to join the Department there. Tun Hussein Onn, too, served in the British Indian Army. All these locally-based guerrilla forces were readying themselves to support an Allied landing and to recapture Malaya from the Japanese.

The Allies had planned Operation Zipper involving some 100,000 troops to be landed in the Peninsula. While the invasion force was still on the high seas, Hiroshima and Nagasaki were bombed, forcing the Japanese to surrender on 16 August 1945. As soon as news of the surrender broke, the Chinese guerrillas started to behave differently. They emerged from the forests and occupied several police stations in remote areas, arrogantly claiming that Malaya was now under their rule. This resulted in clashes with Malay villagers whom they accused of collaborating with the Japanese. We were told that over 2,400 Chinese, Indians and Malays were killed by the guerrillas. Among those who were taken away by the guerrillas was a close friend of mine, Sithampalam. He was working in the police force and was suspected of collaborating with the Japanese Military Police, the 
kempeitai
. After he was taken, we never saw him again.

Where government should have stood, there was only a power vacuum. An all-out bloody war between the Chinese guerrillas and the Malays was avoided only because British forces, after landing in Selangor and Penang, were quickly deployed to areas where tension had arisen between the Malays and the Chinese.

British liaison officers who had been working with the Chinese guerrillas were able to convince them to leave the jungle and to disarm. In Alor Star, guerrillas in full uniform, after much persuasion, laid down arms in the field near the old palace of the Sultan, adjacent to the Japanese school where I had once studied. But the British knew that a substantial number of arms previously supplied by them had not been surrendered. This was a mistake that would be repeated around the world in years to come: supplying heavy-duty arms and training friendly forces that would later turn hostile. Meanwhile, the guerrillas were hedging their bets. They did not quite trust the British, who were aware of the MCP’s openly-declared intention to rule Malaya.

After disarming and shedding their uniforms, the MCP went about organising trade unions. Soon every town had English and Chinese signboards with yellow characters on a red background proclaiming workers’ unions of every kind. Suspecting the intentions of the MCP, the Police Special Branch watched the activities of these unions closely. Among the most dedicated Special Branch officers were the anti-communist Chinese. These officers were naturally better able to penetrate the communist organisations and their guerrilla units, and they provided valuable background information on the activities and plans of the armed insurgency which soon followed.

All this took place against the backdrop of the British Malayan Union proposal, about which the communists appeared singularly unconcerned. When the Malayan Union was inaugurated, they continued organising their trade unions. But when the Malays forced a review of the Malayan Union Constitution, the communists joined the All-Malaya Council of Joint Action, a group of political organisations and NGOs created to take part in developing a constitution in preparation for Independence. The Malayan Union would have given the communists citizenship and the right to participate in the country’s politics. After the British abandoned the Malayan Union, the Federation of Malaya that took its place denied non-Malays the right to automatic and unrestricted citizenship. Only certain specific categories of non-Malays would qualify. No longer eligible to become citizens, most Chinese would be barred from participating in politics, so they opposed the Federation.

Meanwhile, the communist-led unions organised strikes and used physical intimidation on a large scale. Unemployment then was very high and small businesses were struggling in the immediate post-war years. Lacking confidence in the Government’s ability to deal with the communists, many Chinese allowed themselves to be intimidated into joining them, thinking that at least they would have food and safety. Except for a rare few, the Malays resolutely refused to join the communists, even though they had become increasingly disenchanted with the British.

Had there been elections, most Chinese would not have been able to stand as candidates or to vote. As non-citizens they could not organise or lead trade unions. Many activists were deported to China where the communists, after defeating Chiang Kai-shek and the KMT, had set up their government. Their scope for open and legitimate political action severely limited, the Malayan communists felt increasingly pressured to resort to different options. Whatever the immediate trigger, the Chinese communists in Malaya decided to abandon civil action and take on the British Colonial Government in open armed confrontation. They were prepared to fight tooth and nail to make Malaya a communist state. Doubtless, they were in no small way encouraged by the success of the communists in China.

In 1948, I followed these developments in the newspapers as I was studying my medical texts. The former guerrillas, I read, had slipped back into the jungle to begin their armed struggle against the British Colonial Government of the new Federation of Malaya. Bent on proving that they meant business, and to signal the beginning of the armed insurrection, they killed three British planters in Perak. From then on, British estate managers would become their principal targets. The British authorities reacted by arresting and detaining suspected communists.

A few Chinese medical and arts students in my batch at my college were also interrogated and detained. Upon their release two of them, presumably with strong communist sympathies, decided to leave the country for China. More left-leaning than politically committed, the others who decided to continue with their studies at the Medical College and Raffles College were harassed by the police in Singapore. Every now and then the police would come to visit them in their dormitory or call them in for questioning. I saw for myself how this affected their studies, but at the time we all accepted the fact that if you were a communist, the Government would take action against you.

Yet most people in Malaya were very anti-communist. They remembered that after the Japanese surrender, the communists had tried to rule the country. This was also a time of political awakening in Singapore. With the island’s large Chinese majority, the communists seemed set to dominate Singapore politics for good. They quickly gained control of the trade unions and the Chinese schools. Indian trade unionists in Singapore also teamed up with the MCP-controlled unions, in particular the Harbour Workers Union. Had Singapore become communist, the insurrection in Malaya would have been stepped up.

Meanwhile, the guerrillas were getting more active and their well-planned ambushes resulted in many security personnel being killed. British and other Commonwealth troops, together with Malay soldiers, were among the casualties. The guerrillas were well organised—a sure sign that they were receiving support from sympathisers among the Chinese population. Called the Min Yuen, or People’s Movement, this support arm of the party was made up of Malayan Chinese who worked silently to provide food, medical supplies and money to the guerrillas.

The British authorities responded to the communist challenge by declaring a state of Emergency. Under this rule, ordinary operations of the law were largely suspended. Communist suspects, for example, could be detained without trial for as long as it pleased the Government, a move that would be the precursor to the Internal Security Act (ISA).
[3]
 The situation served the British well for, as far as they were concerned, the longer the Emergency went on, the longer ordinary laws could be ignored. The power of the Government would be unlimited and would also be free from scrutiny by the courts. There was no right to challenge arrests and detentions in court during colonial days and even after Independence. It was only after I became Prime Minister that, in a case brought by lawyer and Opposition politician Karpal Singh, the age-old legal mechanism of 
habeas corpus
[4]
 was invoked to obtain the release of ISA detainees.
 

The British, however, made their classic error of underestimating the strength of an opposing Asian force. The determination of the MCP should have been amply clear: there was an escalation in trade union activities and in the intimidation of the workers. In response, the British brought in trade unionists from the UK to advise the workers and their leaders, which was clearly an exercise in futility. When a dispute arose between the workers and the General Transport Company (GTC)—a British company which operated buses in Kuala Lumpur—the communist trade union activists simply sabotaged the vehicles, puncturing the tires and damaging the engines. But the strike was only in town where the GTC operated the bus services. Other locally-owned companies were permitted to bring passengers from the outlying areas into town. The GTC, incidentally, would in later years be sold and renamed Sri Jaya, making it the first major Malay bus company.

In Malaya, Indian unionists also backed the MCP. Prominent among them was the communist R.G. Balan, the Tamil publicist of the MCP in the Kampar and Tapah areas during the Japanese Occupation. He was later to control 90 per cent of the estate workers in Kedah and the Kinta Rubber Factory Workers Union in Perak. The MCP also made attempts to get Malay support, but made no headway as most Malays rejected communism as atheistic and anti-Islam. Gruesome memories of how MPAJA guerrillas had taken over rural police stations in the immediate post-war period, abducting and executing Malays they randomly accused of being Japanese collaborators, were still fresh. The MCP also formed a peasant party, the Kaum Tani, and managed to gain control of the youth wing of the Malay Nationalist Party, the Angkatan Pemuda Insaf (API). When it was banned by the Government, a new youth party, Ikatan Pemuda Tanah Ayer (PETA), was set up. Members of the API, PETA and a party called 
the New Democratic Youth League
[5]
 were given military training by the communists.