#malayan emergency

[keystonepublishing]

Psychological Warfare of the Malayan Emergency by Herbert A. Friedman (Ret.)

Have you ever been taught a version of history at school that seems weirdly simplistic? And then years later, you find more evidence that shows the whole affair was a giant, complicated mess?

Guess what I learned over the past few months about the Malayan Emergency.

For context, the Malayan Emergency was a conflict that raged in the British colony of Malaya from 1948 until the 1960s between communist forces and the British government, later continued by the independent Malayan government. The government forces won, but any school teachings of the conflict was presented in a manner that simplified the complex (and often, grey) nature of the Emergency.

I knew since then that a lot of truths were hidden away, but I didn't realize that there was a psychological aspect to the Emergency until I stumbled upon this webpage by a retired military officer about it. Given the length of the information provided and that it's the only one of it's kind — and therefore at risk of information loss if deleted, I sought to bookbind it. Pictures and all.

Given the amount of information contained and the sheer number of images, this project took about a month!

I had to divide the continuous stream of information in the webpage into readable chapters.

Then, I had to layout the images with the text, which was actually harder than expected — the size of the image could shift relevant text into the following pages, so it was a process of balancing image size to textual placement.

In-between that was the regular work of typesetting, but also of formatting quotes and examples, of which there were a lot.

And then there were pages that required special attention. For example, these pages:

The pages on the right was relatively simple — a double-sided leaflet that could be showcased in a double-page spread, with contextual information in the following pages.

On the left however, to create the list of dead / living people, I had to finagle a table in Microsoft Word and constantly adjust the cell size to make the long names and positions fit. The whole endeavor was an exercise in patience.

Leafing through the pages, there are some parts I am annoyed with, such as pictures on the right page with their annotated message in the following left page. But as it is, I'm just glad this is done.

Special thanks to SGM Herbert A. Friedman (Ret.) for compiling this information that astonished me to create this bookbind.

[southeastasianhistories]

S. A. Ganapathy's date of birth is contested, with claims that he was born in 1912 refuted by a former colonial official who asserted that he was born in 1917. Ganapathy joined the Malayan Communist Party in 1939, fought with the Indian National Army during the Second World War, and was elected the President of the Pan Malayan Federation of Trade Unions in 1947, the first union party in Malaya and a significant threat to the British colonial powers that reoccupied the territory upon the end of the war. In 1949, in the midst of the Malayan Emergency, Ganapathy was charged with the illegal possession of a firearm (forbidden by Emergency laws) and sentenced to death by hanging. He was executed on 4 May 1949.

A. Ganapathy was a Malaysian milk trader who was arrested by Malaysian police in February 2021 to 'assist' them in their investigations of one of his brothers. While under police custody, he was repeatedly assaulted (with claims that the assaults included beatings with a rubber hose) necessitating the amputation of one of his legs and reports of kidney issues. Ganapathy passed away from his injuries in Selangor on 18 April 2021, leaving behind two children.

[probablyasocialecologist]

Chin Peng’s My Side of History lays bare the violence of British imperialism in Malaya – violence that robbed the colonised of their humanity and sought to erase their collective memory.

It is important to emphasise that the “Malayan Emergency” was a misnomer that the British used to mask the intensity of the 12-year violent war it waged against Malayan insurgents to strengthen its grip on the Malayan peninsula following Japan’s surrender in 1945. Additionally, calling it a war would have invalidated British businesses’ insurance policies. The misnomer was useful for demonising the legitimate armed struggle led by the CPM. It also justified branding members of the party as “communist terrorists” and that was how, as Chin Peng points out, they were “dismissed in the books that touch on that grim and gruesome time”. The early direction for British government public statements testifies to this devious tactic. As the Colonial Office’s Assistant Secretary of State, J. D. Higham demanded: “On no account should the term ‘insurgent’, which might suggest a genuine popular uprising, be used”. Writing to Commissioner Malcolm MacDonald in Singapore in August 1948, Arthur Creech-Jones disclosed that the Atlee Labour government intended to conduct “a vigorous counter-attack on communist propaganda both at home and abroad” to refute the assertion that the “present troubles in Malaya arise from a genuine nationalist movement of the people of the country”. This tactic employed by the British consequently concealed its acts of violence not only right after its reoccupation of Malaya in 1945 but also during the 12-year counter-insurgency war.

Britain was the first country to use a herbicide that contained the deadly contaminant dioxin, similar to what became Agent Orange, in its attempt to starve and wipe out Malayan insurgents in the early 1950s. British troops sprayed crops and roadside verges with the chemicals sodium trichloroacetate (STCA) and Trioxone that have devastating effects. The herbicide could cause disfiguring diseases, cancer, and congenital abnormalities in embryos at low doses. In December 1951, the British colonial state purchased 200 tonnes of STCA from the United States and 80 tonnes of STCA from Sweden. It spent approximately $1.4 million in January 1952 to purchase another 250 tonnes of STCA and 10,500 gallons of Trioxone which were to be used in “large-scale roadside spraying in Malaya” scheduled for the following month.

The British also used concentration camps known as “new villages” – another misnomer – which were similar to Japan’s “fortress villages”. The use of these camps was introduced in 1950 by Director of Operations Harold Briggs – the same man in charge of the chemical warfare – to punish hundreds of thousands of people whom the British referred to as “squatters” for supplying food to the CPM during the war. The policy referred to as the “Briggs Plan”, Chin Peng writes, “began isolating us so dramatically from our mass support”. The CPM was consequently confronted with a serious crisis of survival as the squatter communities were detained in barbed-wire camps and subjected to constant searches, interrogations and restrictions on their movement.

[found-slides]

apr 59

my dog “nutty” at penang

[ourforgottenwars-blog]

No. 77 Squadron CAC Sabre fighters on the tarmac at Townsville awaiting deployment to RAAF Butterworth in Malaya in 1959.

[pattern-53-enfield]

A British soldier shares a light with a Sarawak Ranger in Malaya.

[uss-edsall]

Soldiers of the British Army dismount from a lorry and head into the jungle as the patrol is ambushed by Communist terrorists during the Malayan Emergency, 1948-1960.  © IWM (CT 44)

The man closest to the camera seems to be holding a Browning (FN) Auto 5 riot shotgun.

[vintagepromotions]

A colourised photograph of Trooper J.J. Croty and tracker dog during the Malayan Emergency, April 1957.