Pit bull Terrier, a restricted breed; Time to regulate pet shops!

Cross-bred bull terrier a restricted breed, says vet dept D-G

PETALING JAYA: The dog that attacked and killed 74-year-old Yip Sun Wah is a miniature bull terrier cross which is a restricted breed in Malaysia.

Restricted breeds were not suitable as household pets, said Veterinary Services Department (DVS) director-general Datuk Dr Abdul Aziz Jamaluddin.

Such breeds, he added, were only meant for the use of military and enforcement agencies and not to be kept as pets.

He added that bull terriers were allowed to be kept as guard dogs providing they were given proper training and schooling.

“When an application is made to the local council for a licence for a restricted breed, the municipal agency will only issue the licence based on our recommendation,” said Dr Abdul Aziz. He said the DVS has published a guidebook to outline breed classification.

The guidelines can also be obtained at http://www.dvs.gov.my/web/guest/listband.

Dr Abdul Aziz also said restricted breeds were not supposed to be sold in pet shops.

He added that the DVS was currently doing a trace to determine the supplier and find out how a restricted breed could have been made available to the owner.

“I will instruct our enforcement unit to check all pet shops to see if they are selling banned and restricted dog breeds,” said Dr Abdul Aziz.

Meanwhile, dog trainer Wellington Ho said bull terriers have very powerful jaws.

“There is a mechanism in the jaw which tends to lock up when it is clamped shut,” he said.

However, Ho was quick to point out that he personally knew of domesticated bull terriers that have been properly socialised.

“They have very sweet temperaments once they are properly socialised,” he said.

The dog that killed Yip had a valid licence issued by the Subang Jaya Municipal Council.

The case will be investigated by the police under Section 304(a) of the Penal Code for causing death by negligence, which carries a maximum of two years' jail, a fine or both. - The Star

Images for the american pitbull graphics

Time to regulate pet shops, say canine welfare groups

By WANI MUTHIAH wani@thestar.com.my

PETALING JAYA: Canine welfare groups are outraged over the death of 74-year-old Yip Sun Wah after he was mauled by a miniature bull terrier cross.

They claimed that one of the reasons behind Yip's death was the poor regulation of pet shops, which sell restricted breeds suspected of being obtained from backyard breeders.

Save a Stray founder Jacqueline Tsang said Yip's tragic death was due to irresponsible breeders who did not ensure the bull terrier's owner had the expertise to handle the dog.

“I also hold the enforcers liable for not ensuring the restriction (on restricted breeds) was being properly implemented,” said Tsang.

Canine rescue project Malaysian Dogs Deserve Better coordinator Irene Low said it was time for the authorities to seriously regulate pet shops that sold such animals.

“Only then can backyard breeders, who carry out unethical breeding, be put out of business as they would not have a platform to sell their dogs and puppies,” she said.

According to Low, unethical breeders also had a tendency to cross-breed dogs that were not compatible with each other.

“When indiscriminate cross-breeding is done, it can seriously affect the dogs' temperament,” she said.

Furry Friends Farm founder Sabrina Yeap said the temperament of a dog was usually influenced by the environment it was brought up in.

“Whatever the breed, what matters most is the upbringing. I personally know of bull terriers that are loving family pets,” said Yeap.

KL Pooch Rescue co-founder Shannon Lam said the loss of a father and husband to any violent attack was unspeakable.

“Equally tragic is a society that seeks to punish a beast for behaving as such rather than punishing those who are behind its aggression,” she added.

Meanwhile, sources say several rescue groups are getting together to request the authorities not to euthanise the dog.

Dog trainer and G-Pet Boarding and Training Centre Carlos Huertez said he would take the dog in if the authorities were willing to hand over the bull terrier.

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American Pit Bull Kills Jogger !
Killer dog's owners make appearance at victim's funeral

American Pit Bull Kills Jogger !

SUBANG JAYA: A man who just turned 74 a few days ago was killed by a american pit bull while jogging in his housing area.

Yip Sun Wah died at the scene after the dog bit him on the neck and almost tore off his left ear in the 9.50am incident in Jalan SS19/5B, about 1km from Yip's house here.

The dog ran out of its owner's house and attacked Yip for almost four minutes before returning home.
A car salesman, who only wanted to be identified as Addy, 44, said he was on his way to meet a customer when he saw Yip being attacked by the dog.

Deadly bite: A family member mourning over Yip’s body in front of a house in SS19, Subang Jaya yesterday.

 

He said he tried to hit the dog with his umbrella but it was too aggressive and only stopped attacking after Yip was motionless.

It is learnt that the owner had just got the animal about three months ago after her house was robbed.

Subang Jaya OCPD ACP Yahaya Ramli said the 25-year-old female accountant had bought the animal from a private kennel. He said she has a licence to keep the dog.

“We have released her after recording her statement,” he added.

ACP Yahaya also said the dog had escaped from the house through the rubbish compartment door which was not properly secured.

The victim's body was sent to the University Malaya Medical Centre while the dog is now with the Shah Alam Municipal Council.

ACP Yahaya said the animal would be tested to ascertain if it has any disease.

The victim's eldest son Hon Mun, 51, said he was informed of the incident by an eyewitness who called him using his father's mobile phone.

“I rushed to the scene immediately but my father was already dead,” he said, adding the victim had been jogging in the area for the past 20 years.

The case is being investigated under Section 304(a) of the Penal Code for causing death by negligence which carries a maximum two years' jail sentence or a fine or both.

Meanwhile, Subang Jaya Municipal Council director Dr Roslan Mohamed Hussin said it had started checking residential areas in the township for breeds that were said to be aggressive and dangerous.

“Seven dog breeds, namely Akita, Neapolitan Mastiff, American Bulldog, Dogo Argentino, Fila Brasileiro, Japanesa Tosa and American Pit Bull are predisposed to aggressive or dangerous behaviour,” he said.

The council is also enforcing a directive from the Selangor Veterinary Department to ban these “unmanageable or possibly dangerous” breeds.

By RASHITHA A. HAMID rashitha@thestar.com.my

Pit Bull Kills 74year old Jogger in Subang Jaya

Dangerous animal: The pit buill being taken away by a man believed to be a family member of the dog owner.

Images for the american pitbull graphics

Batang Kali massacre: British soldiers admitted unlawful killings

Lawyers for relatives of those who died in the 1948 mass killing disclose soldiers' accounts given during police interviews in 1970

Loh Ah Choi (L), Chang Koon Ying (C) and Lim Ah Yin (R), relatives of unarmed Malaysian rubber plantation workers killed in Batang Kali in 1948 arrive at the high court. Photograph: Kerim Okten/EPA

Scots Guards soldiers admitted unlawfully shooting dead 24 Malaysian villagers then covering up the massacre, the high court has been told.

Calling for an official inquiry into the mass killing during anti-insurgency operations in 1948, lawyers for relatives of the victims disclosed for the first time the soldiers' accounts given during police interviews.
The statements were taken in 1970, when the then Labour government ordered an investigation into the deaths.

Six of the eight soldiers interviewed under caution by detectives corroborated accounts that the villagers had been unlawfully killed, Michael Fordham QC, counsel for the Malaysian relatives, told the court.

One member of the Scots Guards platoon, Alan Tuppen, maintained that a sergeant had said beforehand: "The (villagers) were going to be shot and we could fall in or fall out."

William Cootes, another soldier, told detectives he saw as another sergeant "motioned to (a) youth to run and then he shot him".

George Kydd, also a member of the Scots Guards patrol, recalled in 1970 that: "The bandits were then shot but I'm sorry I must tell you the truth, they were not running away.

"There was an inquiry later on and I've got to go along with this, we were told before going in to tell the same story, that is that the bandits were running away when they were shot … I don't remember who told us to tell this story but it was a member of the army."

The police investigation was launched after a newspaper carried some of the soldiers' accounts of what had happened 22 years earlier.

The probe was abruptly cancelled, however, in June 1970 after the Conservatives won the general election.

An internal police report by Detective Chief Superintendent Frank Williams, who led the police investigation, contradicted official explanations that there was insufficient evidence.

His report, disclosed to the high court, said: "At the outset this matter was politically flavoured and it is patently clear that the decision to terminate enquiries in the middle of the investigation was due to a political change of view when the new Conservative government came into office after the general election."

Relatives of those killed in Batang Kali, who have twice petitioned the Queen, are challenging the government's continued refusal to hold an inquiry into the incident.

Judicial review of the decision will continue until Wednesday.

Judgment is expected to be reserved.

The Ministry of Defence and Foreign Office maintain that it is too late for lessons to be learned from any inquiry and that most of the witnesses are no longer alive.

guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 8 May 2012 15.28 BS 

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Agony of British Massacre Victims' Descendants in Batang Kali, Malaysia

They want proper closure and compensation.

 The Batang Kali killings have been compared with the My Lai massacre, which prompted outrage over the U.S.military campaign in Vietnam

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2136559/Ruling-Britains-My-Lai-historic-killings-compared-Vietnam-massacre.html#ixzz1uFc1npkL

NOTHING can shatter one’s world as much as the brutal murder of a loved one. The tragic account of beheaded headman Lim Tian Swee is one that still remains fresh in the memory of son Lim Kok – even 64 years after the horrific massacre that took place on Dec 21, 1948, in Batang Kali, Selangor.



Lim Kok was about nine years old when he received news from other villagers that his father had been decapitated and his head thrown into the river.

“My father was working as headman of a rubber tapping estate – which was managed by a distant granduncle – who paid salaries to the workers and looked after their welfare,” says Lim, 73. “He was my family’s sole breadwinner. Life became tough for us all after father was gone. My mother had to seek the help of friends and relatives to raise the rest of us. I was sad, yet I was also too little to understand any fear that came from the implications of my father’s killing.”


Chong Koon Ying at her father’s grave.
 
After the murder, Lim, who is the eldest of he children, went to stay with the granduncle in Kuala Lumpur where he studied. His mother, however, stayed behind in Ulu Yam Baru to look after her other children. The granduncle helped subsidise Lim’s living expenses and studies and the boy would return on and off to Ulu Yam Baru to see his mother and siblings.

“Thanks to some funds and assistance from this granduncle too, we managed to provide my father with a proper burial according to Buddhist rites ... even if the head could not be traced.”

Lim returns to the burial ground every year to offer prayers to his father during Qing Ming (a festival during which people pay respect to their ancestors).

He is one of four descendants who left Malaysia for London to attend today’s judicial review test case to hear a proper investigation into the massacre by British soldiers of 24 unarmed villagers at Batang Kali in 1948.

Wong Then Loy was just a child when he helped his father collect the victims’ bodies for burial.

“My only wish is for the trial to grant us sufficient compensation and a proper apology for the misdeed that was unleashed against the 24 people.

“Coming back to Batang Kali is a grim reminder of the suffering and misery that we had to endure and the poverty that my siblings, especially, had to grow up with – after all these decades, we are hopeful that fairness and justice will prevail,” he said before leaving for London.

Ulu Yam Baru village headman cum the Action Committee Condemning the Batang Kali Massacre chairman Chin Fo Sang recalls listening to stories of how the villagers were rounded up and divided into five different groups before being executed. “After they were all killed, some of the bodies were left by the riverside and others placed in groups inside plantations.”

Chin, 64, was only about two months old when the episode unfolded back in December 1948. Many of the tales were related to him by his parents, relatives and villagers much later.

The clear gentle waters of the river into which Lim’s father’s severed head was thrown belie the horror swept away by torrents of time. The head, says Chin, was washed down to a Malay village where it was discovered by horrified local women. “They threw it back into the river and it was never seen again. This is why till today, Lim’s father is without a head,” says Chin.

That serene-looking river is where Lim Kok’s father’s head was thrown into.
 
Chin leads us back a short distance away where a single wooden house stands amidst thick foliage and shrubs mixed with a few banana trees. “This is the site where the first victim, Luo Wei-Nan, was executed. The story goes that the soldiers herded him here before shooting him in the back. The bullet penetrated through the body and left such a gaping puncture that his internal organs all spilled out,” Chin says softly, the horror still clear in his voice.

Chong Koon Ying was 11 when her father Chong Man was shot. “We heard a lot of gunshots – the booming noise they made – but we were not allowed to see what happened. I could see thick smoke billowing about right after, though.

“Later, a lorry whisked all the women and children away and we were not allowed to even go back to our houses to collect any of our clothes or belongings.

“We were left homeless overnight after our village was set ablaze. Some people who saw us seated aimlessly on the streets (in the nearby town they had been taken to) took pity on us and found us a decrepit house for shelter.

“Because there were so many families cramped into one small space, the children had to sleep on the floor while my mother slept seated on a stool.”

Choking with emotion, Chong says she was married off at 16 while her siblings had to be given away for adoption as her family had nothing to survive on.

“We had to be split up when food and everything else became scarce,” says Chong, now 73. “I tried finding my sister but to no avail. And when I found my brother, he was badly beaten up. I could never forget how my heartbroken mum died when she found out.”

Chong who is now living in KL, having shifted after her marriage, says her children and grandchildren have been told of this savage murder that tore families apart and left traumatised women and children incapacitated.

“What else can I ask for now except for cash compensation. My parents are gone; at the very least, monies should be paid for the hardships and our pain, although no amount can bring them back.”

There is an interesting story surrounding the last surviving witness to the massacre, Tham Yong, who died in 2010. Her fiance was one of the 24 shot dead while his brother was the victim who fainted and happened to survive the massacre. Tham Yong later married him and son Chong Nyok Keyu is now taking up the fight following her passing.

Another witness is Wong Then Loy who was just eight when he helped his dad to collect the corpses, a week after the massacre.

“The bodies had rotted, some had dried up; some even had huge maggots crawling out,” recalls Wong, 73. “As a kid, I wasn’t afraid of seeing the worms since I was used to following my father deep inside the jungle before we were chased out to stay in the new villages.

“Of course, I also didn’t know exactly what had happened except that they were dead bodies. My father related to me the stories later while I also gathered bits of excerpts from wives of the deceased and some neighbours.”

His father helped to engrave names on the tomb stones after the dead had been identified by their relatives. Some remained unidentified and unclaimed so they were buried together in one plot – Wong recalls some of these were young men, barely 20.

“The poorer families could not afford coffins so their loved ones were buried without any, while some others made the funerary box by nailing planks together,” he remembers.

The original victims are long gone, but the voices of these departed souls have certainly not been silenced. Their next-of-kin are determined to secure justice for this massacre that took place in the jungle a whole lifetime ago.

Representing them are four claimants at today’s judicial review application in London: Chong Nyok Keyu, Loh Ah Choi (nephew to the first victim to be shot, Luo Wei-Nan), Lim Kok, and Wooi Kum Thai.

By MARTIN VENGADESAN and LIM CHIA YING
star2@thestar.com.my

This article, together with a video documenting the Batang Kali massacre site and interviews with the descendants, can be downloaded from The Star Apps’ May 2 issue.

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• Batang Kali massacre hearing due to start at high court (guardian.co.uk)

Batang Kali massacre by the British: justice for the dead!

More than 60 years after British troops killed 24 villagers at Batang Kali, Selangor, the case against the soldiers is going to be heard in the British courts today. 

IN 1948, the Malayan Emergency was just heating up. The country may have been weary of four brutal years of Japanese occupation during World War II, but the brief post-War dominance of the Communist Party of Malaya (CPM) was clearly at odds with the desire of the British authorities to reclaim a territory whose raw materials would help rebuild Britain itself.

By 1948, this had erupted into an undeclared war that would be waged until 1960. British forces sought to subdue the Communists, who had gained a degree of popularity for their resistance towards the Japanese. It didn’t help that in China, Mao’s Communist Party was on the verge of defeating the Kuomintang nationalist party.

Uneasy lie the dead: This cemetery in Batang Kali, Selangor, is where about half of the massacred victims were buried.

 

It was against this backdrop that the 7th Platoon of G Company, of the second battalion of Scots Guards unit of the British Army, belied its centuries-long reputation for honour. On Dec 12, 1948, under the leadership of Sgt Charles Douglas, the Guards surrounded a rubber estate near Batang Kali, Selangor. Looking for Communist guerillas who habitually moved in and out of the local population, they shot and killed 24 ethnic Chinese villagers before razing the village.

The next day, The Straits Times carried a report stating “Scots Guards and Police were today reported to have shot dead 25 out of 26 bandits during a wide-scale operation in North Selangor.” It called the killings the “biggest success as yet achieved in one operation in Malaya since the Emergency began.”

It was a bold-faced lie. The troops may have been acting on false information or may have panicked but there is little doubt that many innocent people were killed. Worse still, the incident was hushed up, only surviving as whispers through time.

There were, however, some survivors. One man fainted and was presumed dead, while some women and children of the men killed lived to tell the tale. According to them the Scots Guards had separated the men to be interrogated before the situation turned into a rampage of indiscriminate shooting.

This lush green spot is where dark deeds took place 64 years ago today.

 

“At the time we didn’t hear much,” recalls Prof Emeritus Tan Sri Dr Khoo Kay Kim. “We just heard some rumours. I would not call it the norm, but no doubt there was tension. What happened at Batang Kali was part of the complexity of society which can lead to such tragic situations. It is almost unavoidable in times of conflict and when there is hatred between ethnic and territorial groups. I see it as a conflict of cultures.

“From what I understand, they were innocent men. But the Chinese may well have reacted in a peculiar way that would have seemed suspicious to the British, who were paranoid and ignorant of local ways. The British always had problems with the Chinese community.

“That is why Governor Sir Shenton Thomas tried to come up with a programme to Anglicise the Chinese, but they were not easily controlled. At that point (in 1948) the Chinese were under the influence of the leftists and the secret societies. They were themselves enemies and in some ways it mirrored the conflict in China between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party.”

Prof Datuk Dr Shamsul Amri Baharuddin laments the tragic loss of life. “At the time the British would have had their own people on the ground. But informers can make the biggest mistakes, sometimes even on purpose. It is possible that the informer didn’t like these people. In this case, it is likely that the British acted on wrong information.

This is apparently the tombstone of the first victim, Luo Wei-Nan.>

 

“It is difficult to be an informer/undercover agent because both sides will crucify you. In fact in the 1940s, the leader of the Communists, Loi Tak, was a triple agent, a Vietnamese who worked for the Japanese and the British while leading the CPM!

“The conditions of war generates different dynamics, which we can still see today in Afghanistan and Iraq where there are many vendetta killings and economic killings done under falsified circumstances.”

Leon Comber played a critical role in the formative years of the Malaysian police force’s Special Branch and spent many years countering the Communist insurgency. The author of Malaya’s Secret Police, 1945-1960: The Role Of The Special Branch In The Malayan Emergency has no light to shed on the Batang Kali incident but does concede that, at the time, there was much mistrust between the Chinese community and the British.

Comber had come over to Malaya as part of the re-occupying forces that took over as the Japanese surrendered. In 1946 he was appointed to the police force in Malaya. He served as OCPD (Officer in Charge of Police District) KL South; at that time KL was divided into north and south zones for policing.

The Emergency was a savage war in which an estimated 12,000 people died. Did Comber ever have to do anything he was ashamed of?

File photo from May last year when four claimants, (from right) Wooi Kum Thai, Loh Ah Choi, Lim Kok and Chong Nyok Keyu announced that they had been granted funds by the United Kingdom Legal Service Commission to take their case to British courts. Today, the four are in London for the beginning of their case.

 

“Personally I didn’t, nor did I order any men under my command to do so. But I certainly heard rumours about dubious interrogation techniques. Apparently the head of the Special Branch, Richard Craig, issued a pamphlet which referred to undesirable methods of obtaining information. I was taken aback when I heard that. But if my fellow colleagues knew anything, they kept it to themselves.”

Indeed, secrecy was very much the order of the day as the colonial government maintained strict control over the media to ensure that only their viewpoint got through to the people. Little was known at the time of the Malayan Emergency’s many flash points like the standoff in Bukit Kepong, Johor, on Feb 23, 1950, between police officers and Communist guerillas that ended with more than 20 fatalities on each side. Across the pond, on Dec 3, 1949, the British governor of Sarawak, Sir Duncan Stewart, was stabbed to death by teenage Malay nationalist Rosli Dhobi.

A few years after the Batang Kali massacre, the Briggs Plan was put in place to win the hearts and minds of the local population. Devised by General Sir Harold Briggs shortly after his appointment in 1950 as the Emergency’s director of operations, the plan comprised the forced resettlement of rural Chinese population into “New Villages” where education, health services and homes with water and electricity were provided. Even as the Emergency continued and news remained tightly controlled, the Batang Kali massacre reared its ugly head from time to time. Soon after the incident, in 1949, an investigation by the Attorney General, Sir Stafford Foster-Sutton, concluded that the villagers would have escaped with their lives if not for the soldiers opening fire – yet, no action was taken.

In fact, only the soldiers themselves were questioned as witnesses; no villager was asked for testimony. The cover-up echoed that of another British colonial massacre in Amritsar, India, in 1919 when Colonel Reginald Dyer ordered the shooting deaths of hundreds of unarmed Indian civilians.

Following the My Lai massacre in the late 1960s during the Vietnam War, when US troops unable to distinguish friend from foe slaughtered all the villagers in My Lai, the Batang Kali incident was revisited by British newspaper The People. Then British Secretary of State for Defence (from 1964 to 1970) Denis Healey set up a team to investigate the incident. But the case was soon dropped for “lack of evidence”, despite statements made from former members of the patrol that made it clear they had been ordered to lie about the killings during the 1949 investigation.

Still later, in 1992, In Cold Blood, a BBC documentary was aired about the killings, making it obvious that a travesty had occurred, not just with the killings but with the cover-up that followed. Journalists Ian Ward and Norma Miraflor also painstakingly put together Slaughter And Deception At Batang Kali (Media Masters, 2009), another work that endorses this viewpoint.

MCA Public Services and Complaints Department head Datuk Seri Michael Chong became involved with the case during the filming of In Cold Blood.

“It is not only me who is fighting this case,” he says. “Over the years many fought it. Even (Malaysia’s first Prime Minister) Tunku Abdul Rahman fought it before independence. But when I came to it in 1992 it had been forgotten. All the time there had been a ding-dong and finally after a change of government in the UK, the case was closed.

“In late 1992, a group of BBC journalists came down with a few ex-Scot Guards who were all in their 70s or 80s. They were not involved in the massacre but had been asked by their Commanding Officer to help with the post-massacre clean-up. They came and asked the villagers to remove the bodies. After so many years they felt bad.”

Chong was outraged by the injustice and decided to act. “Along with the lawyers Vincent Lim and Datuk Lim Choon Kin, I took an interest. We went to see the place and met the survivors. In 1993 we called a press conference and, with the victims’ descendants, we lodged a police report in Batang Kali.

“After that, we drafted a letter to Her Majesty the Queen to investigate this old case and seek for justice. We went to see the then High Commissioner, H.C. White, and were given assurances that the letter would be passed to her. Meanwhile, we also worked with the police. I was cautioned by the Malaysian police not to stir up this sentiment.

“To be very frank, some leaders also asked me why I wanted to bring up this old matter. They neither supported me or were against me at first. But later on they gave me their moral support.

“For me, this has never been about the publicity. I just want justice for the victims. I want the British Government to recognise and admit that such an incident happened. They were all shot in the back of the head from a close distance. This is cold-blooded murder. They were never Communists, but simple rubber-tappers. They were not even sympathisers.”

Eventually, through the perseverance of people like Chong, the British Government relented and agreed to hear the case.

Lawyer Quek Ngee Meng is part of a new generation of Malaysians who feel that there is no statute of limitations on justice.

“Back in 2004 my father, the late Quek Cheng Taik, used to visit the hot springs in Ulu Yam near Batang Kali to treat an illness. He used to go from Serdang to that area and eventually bought a house in Ulu Yam. He listened to the stories of villagers.

“It is still a talked-about topic there more than 60 years on. Those killed were from Ulu Yam. If you go there you won’t miss the cemetery. Every Qing Ming (a day to pay respect to one’s ancestors) they go back.

“They still feel it. It is still a stigma. The official account says they were suspected of being bandits. When we followed the case, we found a lot of cover-ups.”

But what can be accomplished after so many years?

“I think the first thing is an admission and an apology” says Quek. “The victim’s families also lost their bread-winners so we are also seeking compensation.

“Over here there are still about five witnesses to what happened. In Britain some soldiers are still alive. I think there are more than 10 on the British side. There are many who have passed away in Malaysia, most recently Tham Yong in 2010. But we documented their testimony.

“When pursuing this case, the famous human rights law firm Bindmans backed us and were willing to procure legal aid. Before they (the United Kingdom Legal Service Commission) granted us that aid, though, they checked that we needed the funds. They also checked if there was any merit in the case. Their estimate is a 50% to 60% chance,” says Quek.

Today and tomorrow, the team in London will be applying for a judicial review to quash the earlier decision by the British Government not to investigate the tragedy.

Quek says incidents like Batang Kali were not necessarily unique at the time. “There are many other cases of injustice during the Emergency. You must understand, this was at a time when the British thought all Chinese were Communists. The Chinese had to prove they were not Communists.

“But even in such circumstances you must follow the rule of law. If they are identified by informers they should have been detained and questioned. But they were not.”

Quek makes a final point about the upcoming trial. “We made a lot of progress with the (British) Labour Government, but since the Conservative-led coalition took power, they have not been so straightforward with us.

“They have made a lot of representations using technical points trying to claim that it was the Selangor Government who had jurisdiction and we should take action against the Sultan instead of them!

He adds that, “This is a landmark case with an individual suing the British Government, and I am looking forward to the trial.”

It remains to be seen if justice will indeed finally be served.

By MARTIN VENGADESAN and LIM CHIA YING
star2@thestar.com.my

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