The titans of Malay communist leaders

'It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way' (Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities).


As this year marks the 60th anniversary of the end of the Pacific War and the liberation of Malaya, I asked some of the top leaders of the Communist Party of Malaya (CPM) - which was the linchpin of the Malayan People's Anti-Japanese Army (MPAJA) - to recall their personal experiences in this momentous period of the nation's history.

The meeting took place on Feb 20 and 21 in Ban Chulabhorn 12 in Sukhirin, southern Thailand, where some of these almost forgotten heroes and heroines of the Pacific War in Peninsular Malaysia now live in retirement with their children and grandchildren. Many of them are Malay Muslims who speak not only Malay but also Chinese and Thai.

In the self-contained village located deep inside a jungle, I met with CPM chairman Abdullah CD, central committee members Suriani Abdullah @ Eng Ming Ching, Rashid Maidin (photo, above) and Abu Samah Mohd Kassim.

Satellite dishes

Ban Chulabhorn 12 was once the principal base of the Malay-predominated 10th Regiment of the CPM's Malayan National Liberation Army (MNLA).

Although Chulabhorn 12 seems to be isolated from urban centres, it is equipped with parabolic satellite discs which allow its residents to watch television programmes from all over the world without censorship.

They also get to read Malaysian newspapers - Utusan Malaysia, Berita Harian, Sin Chew Daily and Nanyang Siang Pau - although the broadsheets always arrive late by one or two days.

Suriani (photo), like a young aspiring politician, keeps a stack of the photocopies of a feature article on her life published by Sin Chew Daily on Aug 22, 2003. In the article, in bold-character headline, she was dubbed a Malaysian heroine.

On the morning of Feb 21 before I left, there was a young Thai electrician installing a telephone line in Suriani's house, which she shared with her husband - the legendary Abdullah CD.

Besides these high-tech requirements of modern life, the village has a mosque, a primary school, a regimental museum, a community hall, a children's playground, a guest house and a communal canteen.

Most of the predominantly Malay Muslim villagers can understand or even speak fluent Chinese as some of them were once educated in China from 1960s to early 1970s.

Abdullah CD's son-in-law, for example, was a Singaporean Malay who was sent by his communist parents to live and receive early education in China. He speaks perfect Chinese with standard Beijing accent, while his wife was a bilingual broadcasting staff of the China-based Voice of the Malayan Revolution in the 1970s.

All the four veterans are still relatively healthy although they are now in their late 70s and 80s. For example, Suriani, 81, still has a razor-sharp mind.

She vividly recalled how she first met Abdullah CD, Rashid Maidin and R G Balan when they emerged from the underground - some from torture chambers - immediately after the liberation of Ipoh from Japanese occupation in late August and early September of 1941.

Children respectfully address this veteran communist leader as 'Makchik Suriani'.

Rashid the 'joker'

Meanwhile, Rashid Maidin, 87, cracked a series of jokes, especially about "those vainglorious but silly British military officers" who put him under four-year preventive detention from 1948 to 1952.

He said he had stopped playing violin after someone told him the act of playing the musical instrument was macam potong kepala sendiri (like trying to cut off one's head).

Rashid also swore he had stopped smoking cigarettes, as well as cigars, because on one day several years ago, he suddenly came to a realisation that smoking is "the most stupid thing to do in one's life".

His wife Selamah Abdullah, 76 - who like Suriani is Chinese - smiled approvingly as she looked on.

Some of the older generations of Chinese in Perak would attest to the fact that Rashid started smoking cigars and playing violin in the late 1930s and early 1940s in Tanjung Tualang where he worked as a electrical technician on British-owned tin-mining dredges.

Halfway through a joke session, he suddenly turned serious, declaring: "As a poor boy born in a backward kampong in 1917 and without sufficient formal education, I am still very grateful to the party which had transformed me into a man who knows politics and the world in all its complexities, and also trusted me for so many years."

Rashid had the distinction of being a CPM delegate to the 1947 (British) Empire's Communist Conference held in London and the 1955 Peace Talk in Baling, Kedah, as well as one of the three party's signatories of the 1989 Peace Accords with the Malaysian government.

The communist leader also became solemn when he remembered Tu Lung Shan - who has four aliases, Du Lung San @ Li Fuk @ Lai Fook @ Lai Lai Fook. It was Tu who recruited Rashid as a member of the underground CPM in 1941 just before the Japanese invasion. Tu was also the recruiter and mentor of, some of the top CPM leaders, among them, party chief Chin Peng and Suriani.

Rashid remembered that he secretly wept when he heard from underground sources that Tu was executed by public decapitation by the Japanese in Ipoh in 1943 at the age of 21.

Panic-stricken people

On the other hand, Abdullah CD, 81, (photo, with granddaughter) who has written several books and pamphlets on the history of CPM and Malay struggles against British colonialism even before the formation of the party in April 1930, speaks in a very scholastic manner, much like a lecturer of history.

Abdullah joined the MPAJA during the Japanese occupation and worked clandestinely among the rural Malay masses in Perak.

Former Umno founding member and youth leader Abu Samah,79, has an even more colourful personal history in politics and military affairs but he is a reticent man, always smiling quietly.

However, when questions were finally directed at him, Abu Samah (photo) could really give lively details about the muddy and winding roads, as well as panic-stricken people in towns in the East Coast along which his British-sponsored volunteer force had been continuously retreating after the defence against first Japanese amphibious assaults failed in Kota Baru, Kelantan.

Although not many among the younger generation in Malaysia, Singapore and the world now remember their past contributions, sufferings and sacrifices, all of them seemed to be very self-assured of the worthiness and nobility of their anti-fascist cause in the Pacific War as well as the struggle for national independence in the aftermath.

Tomorrow: Suriani, the resistance heroine