Page 2 of
2 Malaysia's homesick
revolutionary By Andrew Symon
took place as by mid-1948 the MCP
had abandoned legal approaches to gaining power
for guerrilla war.
By 1959, the MCP had
been reduced to a few small bands of fighters
hiding mostly in the jungles in southern Thailand
just north of the Malaysian border. Chin Peng left
for Beijing in 1960 and spent the next 30 years of
his life there. In the mid-1970s, the MCP
insurgency was renewed, stimulated by communist
successes in Vietnam,
Cambodia and Laos and bolstered by small numbers
of new young recruits, both ethnic-Chinese and
Malay.
Selective clemency A
mutually acceptable peace was finally brokered in
1989, similar to the more recent Aceh accords
between Jakarta and separatists in Indonesia's
northern Sumatra province. Chin Peng returned and
an accord was signed in the southern Thai city of
Hat Yai on December 2 of that year. A crucial
element in bringing the conflict to closure was
the support from then Malaysian prime minister
Mahathir Mohamad.
The MCP disbanded its
armed units - which included two old Japanese
Imperial Army soldiers who had cast their lot in
with the MCP in 1945 - and its underground
network, destroyed its arms, ammunition,
explosives and booby traps, renounced armed
struggle, pledged loyalty to the king of Malaysia,
and vowed to obey all Malaysian laws.
A
key element of the accord was Article 3, which
states that "members of the Communist Party of
Malaysia and members of its disbanded armed units,
who are of Malaysian origin and who wish to settle
down in Malaysia, shall be allowed to do so in
accordance with the laws of Malaysia".
Chin Peng, now living in exile in Thailand
along with some of the other former MCP members
who live in settlements under the patronage of
Thailand's royal family, says he wants to exercise
his accord rights to spend his last years in the
country of his birth, to visit his childhood home
in Sitiawan on the west coast in Perak, and in
particular to pay respects to the graves of his
grandparents, parents and siblings.
In
1990 Chin Peng had applied to return under the
accord - and there are press reports of this at
the time. But unlike the petitions made by MCP
members, including other former central committee
members, Chin Peng's application failed to
advance.
In a June 2004 letter to
Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi, Chin
Peng wrote that he had been told by the Malaysian
Special Branch to wait in Hat Yai for a call to be
interviewed. "This call never materialized.
Subsequently I received a letter stating my
application had been rejected on grounds that I
had failed to present myself to an interview."
Chin Peng seems to have then let the
matter rest until the writing of his memoirs,
assisted by former London Daily Telegraph
Southeast Asia correspondent Ian Ward. Coinciding
with the publication of My Side of History
in August 2003, Chin Peng again requested that
he be able to return to Malaysia. Malaysian
lawyers then took up his case in late 2004. After
further requests, they decided in March 2005 to
challenge the government in the courts.
Two years on, Chin Peng has yet to have
his day in court. High Court hearings for Chin
Peng's applications to determine whether the case
can proceed have been delayed and postponed
repeatedly.
On Friday, the High Court is
again set to hear several applications, including
a complaint that the government broke the terms of
the 1989 Hat Yai accord. The government's
application, on the other hand, calls for Chin
Peng to show evidence that he made an application
to return to Malaysia in 1989 or 1990.
The
government's only official response to Chin Peng's
application since 1990 came in a very brief letter
to his lawyers from the chief secretary of the
Ministry of Home Affairs in October 2004, which
said simply that the decision had been made that
he would not be allowed to return and reside in
Malaysia.
While not being able to enter
Malaysia, Chin Peng has been allowed to enter
other countries, traveling on a special
Thailand-issued alien certificate of identity. In
1998, he visited the United Kingdom, where he
undertook research into the Emergency period in
the public record office in London, and also
Australia as a guest of the Australian National
University in Canberra for an academic seminar.
In the wake of the success of his My
Side of History, which was published in
Chinese as well as English, he was able to visit
Singapore in October 2004 for another academic
seminar as a guest of the Institute of Southeast
Asian Studies. He returned briefly to Singapore
last December to visit relatives.
Where
Chin Peng is headed next will be clearer on
Friday. Already, though, his re-emergence is
affecting how many Malaysians think about their
history and current political situation. My
Side of History and news of his efforts to
return to Malaysia are catalyzing a rediscovery,
if not discovery, of this earlier period and
questions about its implications for the present.
Indeed, other histories and memoirs
exploring these times are starting to appear. A
documentary film, Lelakii Kommunis
Terakhir, or "The Last Communist", made last
year in Malaysia by writer Amir Muhammad, featured
interviews with various old MCP veterans, though
notably not Chin Peng.
Underlining Kuala
Lumpur's enduring sensitivity over unsanctioned
histories of the Emergency period, the film was
later banned. According to the Star newspaper, the
government said it did not believe "Malaysians
have reached a level where they are ready for it".
That would seem to augur ill for Chin
Peng's latest legal petition to return to his
homeland.
Andrew Symon is a
Singapore-based freelance journalist.
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