Chin Peng's remains couldn't be interred in his Sitiawan hometown to be cremated in Bangkok instead

The Wat That Thong temple where Chin Peng will be cremated in Bangkok.

PETALING JAYA: The late Chin Peng will be cremated according to Buddhist rites at Bangkok’s Wat That Thong temple next week.

Paul Chin, an aide of the former secretary-general of the outlawed Communist Party of Malaya (CPM), said the body would be brought to the temple for a wake on Friday and the final rites conducted on Monday morning. The cremation will follow in the evening.

The communist leader died at a hospital in Bangkok on Monday morning. He was 89.

Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak said Chin Peng’s remains would not be allowed back into the country.

Paul Chin said Chin Peng’s one-time right-hand man Abdullah CD is expected to be among former party members and leaders who will attend the funeral.

Meanwhile, Opposition leaders continued to appeal to the Govern­ment to allow Chin Peng’s remains to be brought back to his hometown in Sitiawan, Perak.

PKR adviser Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim said: “Let bygones be bygones.

“It is clear the rakyat generally rejects the communist ideology. However, the late Chin Peng chose the path of peace in the end after failing to reach an agreement at the Baling Talks in 1955.”

He added that the CPM chief entered a peace treaty with the Government in 1989.

DAP national chairman Karpal Singh said the Government should honour the 1989 Haadyai Accord, which was one of the treaties signed by Malaysia with the CPM and Thai authorities.

Seputeh MP Teresa Kok called on the Government to reconsider its decision.

PAS central committee member Dr Dzulkefly Ahmad said Chin Peng’s ashes should be allowed to be brought back into the country in the name of justice.

“I recall they (CPM) agreed to lay down their weapons and, as far as I am concerned, that is a ceasefire.”

- The Star/Asia News Network

Sitiawan folk whisper about Chin Peng's death

SITIAWAN: Folk in Chin Peng’s (pic) hometown only whisper about the passing of this divisive figure, and dare not make their opinions known publicly.

A number of people declined to talk when The Star approached them for their thoughts on the late Communist Party of Malaya secretary-general, though the general feeling is that the people in this town felt that the body of Chin Peng, or Ong Boon Hua, 89, should be interred here.

“This is where he was born, grew up and studied,” said a 52-year-old salesman, who wished to remain anonymous.

“For what he has done, it was done because he loved the country.”
The salesman said the bloodshed that occurred during the Emergency era was unavoidable, and it was unfortunate that murders were part and parcel of strife.

“The people are scared to talk about the return of Chin Peng’s body, but they felt that the Government should honour the agreement that was signed in Haadyai then,” said the salesman, who added that it was fact that Chin Peng was born here.

“His younger brother’s grave is here, along with that of his parents and grandfather. He also studied and grew up here.”

At the Kong Hock Kong Lumut Pundut burial ground where Chin Peng’s family members were buried, its caretaker, known as Tay, said Chin Peng’s brother and relatives would come and pay their respects every Qing Ming (All Souls Day).

“I’ve seen them a couple of times, but never talked to them,” said the 40-year-old Tay.

Opposite the shophouse along Jalan Raja Omar, where Chin Peng grew up, a coffeeshop owner, known as Foo, 69, said Chin Peng’s family often came to his shop for drinks whenever they came to pay their respects.

“Even back in the 40s, his late parents would also come here for coffee.

“But I don’t remember seeing Chin Peng,” he said, adding that he was a young child then.

He added that Chin Peng’s family sold bicycles at the shophouse.

According to Foo, Chin Peng was a former student of SMJK Nan Hwa here.

“His name is inscribed in a special school magazine dated 1948,” said Foo.

Meanwhile, Perak police chief Senior Deputy Comm Acryl Sani Abdullah Sani said police were monitoring the situation closely to prevent any untoward incidents.

- Contributed by IVAN LOH The Star/Asia News Network

Related post:
Chin Peng, a hero or zero?

Chin Peng, a hero or zero?

Ironically on the 50th anniversary of Malaysia Day, Chin Peng the exiled former communist leader has died in Bangkok.

Chin Peng, flanked by C.D. Abdullah and Tan Sri Rahim Noor, during the signing of the Peace Accord in Haadyai in 1989.

Chin Peng’s legacy after his death in a Bangkok hospital remains a hot dispute in Malaysia today.

GOVERNMENT ministers, including Home Minister Datuk Seri Dr Ahmad Zahid Hamid, were quick to denounce Chin Peng as a criminal, while DAP leader Lim Kit Siang and website bloggers have come out to acknowledge the role and struggle of the clandestine Communist Party of Malaya (CPM), which Chin Peng led against British rule, saying it hastened the achievement of Malaya’s national independence in 1957.

Even before his death, while the Government had banned films on the CPM and his return to Malaysia from exile, his role had been grudgingly accepted by even those who once fiercely opposed him.

Since 1989, public controversy has swirled over the party’s role and its real contribution to the achievement of Malaya’s independence in 1957. Some people have argued that while the party’s struggle for independence was valid up to 1957, its continuation thereafter against the popularly elected governments of Malaya and Singapore has been difficult to justify.

Nevertheless, first Prime Minister Tunku Abdul Rahman in his memoirs, Lest We Forget (1983), acknowledged the communists’ role in the struggle for independence: “Just as Indonesia was ρghting a bloody battle, so were the communists of Malaya, who, too, fought for independence.”

Chin Peng’s application to return to Malaysia to launch his memoirs in September 2003 was rejected by the Home Ministry. He finally lost his appeal against this ban in the Federal Court in 2009.

PAS leaders, including Mat Sabu, and its party organ Harakah have recognised the role played by the CPM’s Malay leaders, Rashid Maidin and C.D. Abdullah, in the CPM’s armed struggle in achieving Malaya’s independence. Even former Inspector-General of Police Tan Sri Rahim Noor has echoed this recognition.

Former Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad, who played a crucial role in initiating the negotiations to end the CPM’s armed struggle, half-heartedly recognised the role of Rashid Maidin and other Malay communists in Malaya’s independence up to 1957, in a foreword he wrote in a book on the CPM.

Ong Boon Hua, alias Chin Peng, was the CPM’s secretary-general for 42 years. Until his memoirs, Alias Chin Peng: My Side of History, was published in 2003, much of his life and leadership of the party remained shrouded in secrecy and he is best known for his wartime (1942–45) exploits as a guerilla leader.

At the end of World War II, Chin Peng’s heroic role as an anti-Japanese resistance leader was highlighted in Spencer Chapman’s account, The Jungle Is Neutral (1952), in which he is portrayed as the key link between the resistance movement in Malaya and the British armed forces based in Kandy, Sri Lanka.

Post-war Malayan newspapers called him “Britain’s most trusted man”. For his wartime services he was awarded two military medals and an Order of the British Empire (OBE), which was revoked when the CPM took up arms against British rule in June 1948.

Born in Kampong Koh, in Sitiawan, Perak, on Oct 21, 1924, Chin Peng became a communist at 15. He adopted the alias “Chin Peng” because all secret cell members were required to conceal their true identities from the police.

In the interwar period it took great intellectual and moral courage to join the banned CPM as once its members’ identities became known, the British police hunted them down.

Chin Peng found the communist ideology attractive as it stood for social justice, the elimination of poverty, a new classless world order and the end of imperialism.

His father from Fujian province, emigrated to Singapore where he met and married Chin Peng’s mother. They moved to Sitiawan where they ran a bicycle business.

The second of 11 children, Chin Peng studied at the Hua Chiao (Overseas Chinese) Primary School in Sitiawan, and later brieςy attended a secondary school, the Anglo-Chinese Continuation School.

While there, the police discovered his communist activities and he disappeared underground to evade arrest.

Within the movement, he worked ρrst in 1940 as a probationary member, in charge of members in the Sitiawan district, then transferred to Ipoh to do propaganda work, and was subsequently appointed the party’s state secretary in 1942, the year he married a party comrade, Lee Khoon Wah, who was from Penang. They had three children.

In 1941, during the Japanese occupation, the British administration, accepted the CPM’s offer of volunteers to ρght the Japanese behind enemy lines.

 

Wanted man: The bounty on Chin Peng's head is equivalent to millions of ringgit today.

In Perak, Chin Peng was responsible for establishing communication and supplies lines between the urban areas and the guerrilla forces in the jungle camps. He was the liaison ofρcer between the British special operations group, Force 136, and top party ofρcials in the Blantan highlands in 1943 and 1945, to discuss the airdrop of money and arms to the guerilla groups.

At the end of the war, in recognition of his wartime services, Chin Peng was awarded a military medal in Singapore and later in London he received a second medal.

In 1947, the party’s central committee purged its secretary-general, Lai Tek, after Chin Peng and another committee member, Yeung Kuo, exposed him as a British agent.

Chin Peng was elected to replace him and the party began to adopt a “militant” line against the British administration.

After British intelligence uncovered information that the party was planning an insurrection, the colonial government decided to seize the psychological advantage by declaring an emergency in Malaya in June 1948.

This was in the wake of widespread labour unrest, including the murder of white planters on rubber estates, which it blamed on the CPM.

The British put up a reward of 250,000 Straits dollars on Chin Peng’s head. This offer was given wide publicity in the local and foreign press.

The Malayan Emergency lasted from 1948 to 1960, in the midst of which, Malaya secured independence on Aug 31, 1957.

In December 1955, Chin Peng and two CPM leaders, Rashid Maidin and Chen Tien, attended “peace talks” in Baling, Kedah, with Tunku Abdul Rahman, who was then Malaya’s chief minister, David Marshall, Singapore’s chief minister, and Tun Tan Cheng Lock, the MCA leader.

At the Baling talks, Chin Peng rejected the offer of amnesty when he failed to secure legal recognition for the CPM, and refused to accept the condition that the police screen his guerillas when they laid down their arms.

However, he made the surprising offer that the party would cease hostilities and lay down its arms if the Tunku secured the powers of internal security and defence in his talks on Malaya’s independence with the British Government in London.

It strengthened the Tunku’s bargaining position in the talks, which allowed him to win Malaya’s independence.

“Tunku capitalised on my pledge and gained considerably by this,” claims Chin Peng in his memoirs. In 1960, the Tunku’s Alliance government ended the Malayan Emergency. An ailing Chin Peng left for Beijing to recuperate and reorganise the party’s struggle.

He remained in Beijing for 29 years and did not return until 1989 to bring the CPM’s armed struggle to a close after negotiating a peace agreement with the Malaysian and the Thai Governments in Haadyai.

Chin Peng, in his book, described himself as a nationalist and freedom ρghter.

He took responsibility for the thousands of lives lost and sacriρced in the cause of the communist struggle. “This was inevitable,” he said, in an interview with me in Canberra in 1998. “It was a war for national independence.

- Contributed by Cheah Boon Kheng

> Cheah Boon Kheng was Professor of History at Universiti Sains Malaysia until his retirement in 1994. He was a visiting fellow in Singapore, Canberra and at USM. He is the author of several books, including The Masked Comrades (1979) and Red Star Over Malaya (1983). 

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Tracing the origins of the formation of Malaysia Sept 16 

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Don't burn money, use it wisely

It is time to learn from our past and put our skills and resources into positive value creation.



NEXT month will be 68 years since the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings in Japan.

To some, it is just another month at work. Some may celebrate their birthday, some become parents and for some, it may coincide with festive celebrations. Certainly few of us are old enough to remember the impact of the devastating events.

Being an avid reader, this date reminds me that the real tragedy of war is that it uses man’s best skills to do man’s worst work.

The creativity and perseverance that led to the discovery of the power of atoms, which could light up the world and potentially solve our energy issue, was used to create hell on earth.

The discovery of neutron by James Chadwick in February 1932, Niels Bohr’s discovery of fission and ultimately, Leo Szilard’s method of producing a nuclear chain reaction or a nuclear explosion, of which he even filed a patent, would lead to the creation of what was euphemistically called Little Boy.

Hardly little at all, for the bomb had the power of more than 20,000 tonnes of TNT, which destroyed most of Hiroshima, killing an estimated 130,000 people on Aug 6, 1945. Three days later, a second bomb, nicknamed Fat Man, was dropped on Nagasaki, killing between 60,000 and 70,000 people.

Looking at the incident as a case of creative discoveries being used for war efforts, one can’t help but reflect on how much of these resources could be used if such a detonation did not take place.

Going beyond the obvious tragedy of the loss of human life, there is the immense economic cost of cleaning up contaminated areas, reconstruction of buildings, productivity lost due to the physical injuries and sickness of the casualties, loss of national income, psychological damage, etc. How does one quantify that?

To me, it’s very clear that we need to divert our military resources to build more educational and medical institutions, research facilities, provide housing or even venture capital funds for start-ups that could create a world that is different, not destructive.

The 34th US President, Dwight D. Eisenhower, said in a speech to the American Society of Newspaper Editors that “every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those whose hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed”.

And he was a military man, the former supreme commander of the Allied Forces during World War II.

We may not be sure of how much Eisenhower’s grasp of value is, but it makes sense.

He said that the cost of a modern heavy bomber could finance a modern brick school in more than 30 cities.

It could even contribute to two electric power plants, with each serving a town of 60,000 in population. It could even construct two fully equipped hospitals.

As headlines blaring financial uncertainties continue today, it is a good time to wonder where all the money is going, and where are all the innovators and entrepreneurs to lift the standard of living and to fulfil the needs of society?

According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, nearly RM6 trillion is spent annually on military, defence and armaments.

In economics, the idea of opportunity cost always arises in business. An entrepreneur will always need to consider the cost of giving up something in order to achieve a business objective.

So what is humanity giving up by laying down arms?

- Open Season by LIM WING HOOI The Star
Business writer Lim Wing Hooi believes that the human race needs to invest wisely in its own future.

Japan glorifies war criminals in annual visits to Yasukuni Shrine!

Japan's frictions with  neighbors have resurfaced after a group of 168 Japanese lawmakers on Tuesday paid their respects at the controversial Yasukuni Shrine, which glorifies war-dead including those guilty of atrocities. It was the first time in eight years that a group of over 100 Japanese politicians visited the shrine. On the same day, a fleet of Chinese marine surveillance vessels drove Japanese boats out of waters surrounding the Diaoyu Islands, thwarting the provocative attempts of around 80 Japanese right wingers.

The South Korean government has issued a strongly worded complaint over the Japanese politicians' visit to the shrine. China and South Korea have shown their shared outrage over the Yasukuni Shrine issue, but Japan seems to have disregarded this.

There are not many extreme right wingers in Japan, but Japanese society has still been tilting further toward right-wing views.

These days, provocations have been coming from Japan's deputy prime minister, a group of over 100 lawmakers and the right wingers creating waves over the Diaoyu Islands issue.

The Chinese government is taking the lead in dealing with Japan. However, it has little leverage when dealing with various forces within Japan. This reality cannot be changed in the near future. This means the Chinese government's stance has to be tough. Chinese marine surveillance vessels have done a pretty good job on this occasion. Since the Diaoyu crisis broke out last year, the tough resistance of the Chinese government against Japan has made it the main force in safeguarding the sovereignty of the Diaoyu Islands.

The latest situation involving the Diaoyu Islands has demonstrated the contrast in terms of strength between China and Japan as well as the changing East Asia strategic arena.

The Yasukuni Shrine visits are evidence of Japan's reluctance to accept reality. Japanese society is becoming increasingly radical, but continues to take a careful approach in maritime conflicts with China.

Japan lacks a clear strategy in East Asia. Encountering China's rise, it hasn't formed a policy that helps it maximize its interests, and instead shows resentment and anxiety. Its alliance with the US cannot help it solve its own strategic dilemma.

The gradual decline in Japan's power is the reason for its lack of confidence.

Japan is like a marijuana smoker, who enjoys the excitement of the moment but is ultimately damaging itself at the same time. Japan will fall by itself. China doesn't need to launch fierce counterattacks. Instead, it can just express its firm stance to make Japan feel scared. 

China needs to create diplomatic leverage over Japan, which could help it express its determination when dealing with issues related to sovereignty and historical matters, and bring the Sino-Japanese conflict under control. - Global Times

Japan shrine visit angers South Korea

Taro Aso, Japan's deputy prime minister and finance minister, bows at the Yasukuni shrine in Tokyo. Photograph: AFP/Getty

South Korea has abruptly cancelled a trip to Tokyo by its foreign minister in protest at visits to a controversial war shrine over the weekend by Japanese cabinet ministers, including the deputy prime minister.

Visits to the Yasukuni shrine – which honours 14 class-A war criminals among 2.5 million other Japanese war dead – have traditionally angered China and South Korea, which view the site as a symbol of Japanese militarism.

Four ministers in the conservative administration of Shinzo Abe paid visits to the shrine, including his finance minister, Taro Aso.

The separate visits, to mark the beginning of the shrine's annual spring festival, come amid tensions with China over a longstanding territorial dispute in the East China sea.

Beijing did not immediately respond but South Korea said on Monday that its foreign minister, Yun Byung-se, would not be making a two-day visit to Tokyo due to begin this Friday.

"Amid this kind of atmosphere our stance is that it will be difficult to hold a productive discussion and Yun decided not to visit to Japan this time," an unnamed South Korean official told the Yonhap news agency.

Abe did not visit the shrine but sent a decorative branch of a cypress tree as a ritual offering, with his name and title written beneath, according to media reports.

China is unlikely to overlook the visit while the two rivals continue to stake rival claims to the Senkaku islands, known as the Diaoyu in China.

For many in China and South Korea, visits to Yasukuni in central Tokyo are proof that Japan's modern leaders have yet to atone for their country's military misadventures on the Asian mainland in the first half of the 20th century.

Despite his nationalist leanings Abe did not visit during his previous year-long premiership from 2006 to avoid inflaming opinion in Beijing and Seoul.

He later said he regretted the decision and with his popularity ratings high at home speculation is mounting that he may be less willing to consider sensibilities in China and South Korea, particularly if his party wins key upper house elections in July, giving it control of both Diet chambers.

Aso, who also serves as deputy prime minister, has a reputation for angering Japan's neighbours; in 2003, he praised the country's 1910-1945 colonisation of the Korean peninsula and has refused to apologise for his family firm's past use of Korean forced labourers and allied prisoners of war.

Aso, a former prime minister, wants class-A war criminals "delisted" from Yasukuni, thereby removing the biggest obstacle to members of the imperial family resuming their annual visits.

On Sunday, he bowed in the Shinto shrine's worship hall and left without speaking to reporters.

The other visitors included Keiji Furuya, a state minister in charge of resolving the abduction of Japanese nationals by North Korea during the cold war. "It is natural for a lawmaker to offer heartfelt condolences for spirits of the war dead who sacrificed their lives for the nation," he said.

Abe visited the shrine in 2012 while leader of the then main opposition Liberal Democratic party, drawing criticism from China.

In late March, the Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Hong Lei said the objections over Yasukuni centred on a desire for Japan to "face up to and reflect on its history of aggression and respect the feelings of people from the victimised countries, including China". -

Sources:

Japanese Occupation survivors tell their stories

IN 1942, the Japanese invaded Malaya, and thus began three-and-a half years under the rule of a nationalistic and iron-fi sted army. This year is the 70th anniversary of the fall of Malaya to the Japanese. Stories abound of how Malayans at that time were treated and how many escaped the suffering and torture under the Japanese. MICHELLE CHUN speaks to four people who lived to tell their stories. 

Chye ... I will never forgive the Japanese>>

Seow ... my mother’ssacrifi ce saved my life 

HE was only six years old when the Japanese came. Now, 70 years later, Seow Boon Hor remembers clearly what happened the day the Japanese came to his village in Parit Tinggi, Negri Sembilan in search of informers.

His entire family was massacred that day but he managed to survive, all because his quickthinking mother – who was heavily pregnant at that time – shielded him with her body.

It was her act of sacrifice that saved his life. “My mother threw herself on top of me, and as the soldier stabbed her, the knife went through her and into me too. After the third stab, which was to my side, I fainted.

Zainul ... did not suffer much from the occupation

 “When I woke up, an old man from the village who had found me told me to follow him, so I turned to my mother and pulled her arm, telling her it was time to go.

 “But the old man said, ‘Your mother is dead, we must leave her’,” he said with glistening eyes.

Clad in a patterned shirt and black trousers, Seow sat on a plastic stool next to his mixed rice stall in Section 19 as he recalled the events as if they had happened just yesterday. Of the 600 villagers bayoneted that day, only five survived.

 “We wanted to make a run for the hills, but suddenly heard the footsteps of Japanese soldiers, and quickly played dead until they left.”

 Tay ... hid in a jungle for three months.

Another survivor who lived to tell his tale is Chye Kooi Loong, who was 12 years old when the war broke out.

“It seemed like a dream when we heard the Japanese had reached Malaya, we always thought the war would stay in China. My father was an accountant, a rare profession in those days, so we were evacuated to the hills of Kampar,” the 83-year-old said in a phone interview.

He attended a Japanese school because all students who attended were given weekly rations of rice, sugar, and coconut oil.



“In school, we were taught that people from the Land of the Rising Sun were very courteous, but it was the exact opposite – there was a lot of violence and killing. One thing I cannot forget is when a village ‘aunty’ objected to Japanese soldiers taking her chickens, and was killed. Killed over chickens!” he said.

However, not all Malayans experienced the hardship Chye and Seow faced at the hands of the Japanese. One of them is Datuk Zainul Aziz, who worked as an assistant at the Japanese Naval Hospital in Penang.

“At that time, all of us had to attend Japanese school, and everybody had to work otherwise there would be no food on the table.

“I went for an interview at the hospital, and even though I was 13 the doctors employed me to help treat the wounds of Japanese soldiers and learn about medicine,” the 84-year-old said in a phone interview.

Zainul said that he has no ill-feelings towards the Japanese because he did not suffer much at their hands, having been given food and rations while working in the hospital.

“My family members also did not suffer much as they went to work for the Japanese,repairing ships and such.”

Another survivor, Elijah Tay, 79, also did not bear the brunt of the Japanese army’s violence throughout the occupation period.

“The Japanese invaded Malaya when I was about eight; we hid in a rubber estate for three months before coming out,” he told the Sun in his Malacca home on Feb 4.

“My mother would play the piano in my father’s Chinese school, which had closed down, and a Japanese soldier heard her playing one day and came in to listen.

 “He became a friend of my father’s, helping him to open a private school in Labis, where my mother taught the students Japanese songs for the annual concert,” he said.

When the Japanese army heard the students sing, Tay recalled, they were so impressed the captain ordered that no one was to enter the school without his permission.

 “Elsewhere, the Japanese were killing, looting and raping.

“What happened to us was nothing less than a miracle,” Tay said.

 It is because of the atrocities committed by the Japanese that forgiveness is difficult for many survivors, even today.

 “I will never forgive the Japanese; I cannot be friendly with them because I cannot forget what they did,” Chye said.

Seow, on the other hand, said today’s eneration cannot be blamed for the acts of those in the past.

 “I have forgiven them, I suppose. We cannot blame the Japanese today for what was done before, and many have shown remorse. When I visited Japan, four ex-soldiers who were part of the Japanese army to Malaya knelt in front of me and begged for forgiveness,” he said.

But for Chye and many others, an official apology from the Japanese government is a necessary first step towards closure.

 “The Japanese need to formally acknowledge and admit they committed atrocious crimes during the Japanese occupation of Malaya, and not that we were treated well as is currently written in their history books,” he said.

 For the first time ever, eyewitness accounts of the events that occurred in Malaya during Japanese rule have been preserved in a video documentary, produced by History Asia in conjunction with FINAS, Novista and Primeworks Studio. The documentary, Rising Sun over Malaya, will premiere on History Channel (Astro Channel 555) on Feb 15 at 10pm.

NEWS WITHOUT BORDERS

theSun ON MONDAY | FEBRUARY 13, 2012

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