Today marks the anniversary of Day One of the Malayan Emergency (June 16,1948 -1960). It was an undeclared war won not only on the battlefields, but also through winning hearts and minds of the civilian population. A pertinent lesson to our war efforts against Covid-19.
It was early morning on this exact day 73 years ago. Plantation manager A.E Walker was gunned down mercilessly in his Sungai Siput, Perak office by communist insurgents. Less than two kilometers away, another manager J.M. Alison and his assistant were tied-up then murdered.
The triple homicide would lead to one of the greatest episodes of violent uprisings in Malaysian history. The Malayan Emergency was first declared in Perak, then subsequently went peninsular-wide, lasting 12 years and robbing thousands of civilians of their innocent lives; the lessons we could draw from it remain pertinent even to this day.
Lesson one: Violence begets violence
Following the Second World War, the Malayan economy was reduced to a struggle for subsistence. High levels of unemployment, abysmal wages, and severe food shortages. The failure of the British administration to reorganise the weak economy gave rise to labour strikes and civil unrest. Further aggravated by political and ideological differences between the colonial British and Malayan Communist Party (MCP), the antipathy between the two finally boiled over in June 1948.
The British response was swift and brutal. Although the number of communist insurgents never numbered more than 8,000, their ethnic composition led the British to regard much of the Malayan Chinese and Orang Asli population as suspects. The British actions against these unarmed civilians right after declaration of the State of Emergency involved high levels of force and coercion, punctuated by concentration camps, mass deportations, tortures, mutilations and the Batang Kali massacre.
On December 12th, 1948, 24 unarmed villagers at Batang Kali, Selangor were rounded up by troopers forces, interrogated then summarily executed as bandits. The village was razed to the ground and the British declared the massacre their “biggest success as yet achieved in one operation in Malaya since the Emergency began”.
As a countermeasure to guerilla warfare, the British deployed chemical warfare to destroy forests and food crops to deprive the communist forces of cover and food. Starved and depleted, the insurgents prey on the Chinese villagers living on the fringes. Caught in the crossfire of the colonists and the communists, the local Chinese found themselves between a rock and a hard place.
Violence begets violence, and it’s the innocent civilians who pay the blood toll.
Lesson two: Hearts and Minds
The Malayan emergency was an undeclared war won not only on the battlefields, but also through winning the hearts and minds of the civilian population. The escalation of violence in the early years, between 1948 and 1952, only inflamed the sentiments of the local populace in favour of the MCP.
In 1949, a Malayan schoolmaster and businessman, Tan Sri Tan Cheng Lock established the Malayan Chinese Association (MCA) in order to rally and protect the working classes from the heightened series of retaliations between the British and the insurgents.
MCA was also formed with another goal in mind: to manage and improve the welfare of the populace forcibly relocated by the Briggs’ plan to New Villages.
Initially, these new settlements were little more than concentration camps, surrounded by barbed wires and watchtowers to prevent any escape, and isolate the civilians from lending aid to the insurgents. Misery and death became the norm in them, and it swung the opinions of indifferent civilians against the British rulers.
Tan Cheng Lock and MCA understood better than anyone that the Chinese populace wants nothing more than rice and peace. They quickly set to work and spared no expense in turning the New Villages into hospitable areas. Brick-by-brick, they helped build homesteads, schools and clinics. Electricity was brought in, a novelty at the time for many of the disadvantaged, and this greatly helped improve the quality of life.
At the same time, MCA managed to broker a political alliance with the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO) to push for an independent and democratic country where the citizenships and rights of the minorities would be safeguarded, an altogether better alternative to which MCP had offered.
It was a turning point for Malaya. The moment the populace became aware of the good deal: better employment, quality of life, material support, and opportunity for a better tomorrow — the cause of communism lost steam and fizzled.
The lesson of winning hearts and minds remains considerably germane to our current war efforts against the invisible enemy, Covid-19. While the government and enforcement authorities had to put on the persona of a stern parent to implement rigorous policies to battle the spread of infection, leaders must not forget to play the role of a clement ruler by communicating frequently and empathising where possible.
