In January 1947, Rashid Maidin was tasked to attend the (British) Empire's Communist Conference held in London. The Communist Party of Malaya (CPM) delegation included Wu Tien Wang and RG Balan. According to Rashid, the trip by ship took them two months.

"We embarked in Singapore, travelled first to India, stopped at an Indian port for a few days and then went on...We returned and disembarked also in Singapore," Rashid recalled.

"At first, I hesitated to go because I thought my English was not good enough for an international conference but Chin Peng said I was better than others and it would be okay as I could improve it by practicing ... so I went."

Why did Rashid and his fellow delegates do in London besides attending the conference?

"We went around sightseeing with comrades from Asian countries like the Indians ... no, we did not go to naughty places...

The conference, said Rashid, was focused on discussing the post-war future of British colonies.

According to historian Cheah Boon Kheng in his book The Masked Comrades - A Study of the Communist United Front in Malaya, 1945-1948 (Singapore, Times 1979), the chief of CPM's delegation, Wu Tien Wang, "presented a report on Malaya to the conference, in which he recounted the constitutional struggles of the 'democratic movement' in Malaya, including the CPM, MDU (Malayan Democratic Union) and MNP (Malay National Party), and attacked the repressive measures of the British authorities towards the movement, particularly towards the CPM."

Wu also reportedly said "the movement would work for racial unity to counteract the''attempts of reactionary forces to split the solidarity of the people'."

Escape from prison

On the morning of one day in July 1948 while Rashid was staying in a house in Sungai Manik, Perak, he was detained by the British security personnel. A month before - on June 20 - the 'Emergency' was proclaimed to cover the whole of Malaya and mass arrests of communist sympathisers ensued.

"That morning, about 10 policemen surged into the house and told me that 'Tuan' asked me to go with them. They were quite polite and because they outnumbered me 10 to one, they did not handcuff me ... I just followed them into their car," he recalled.

According to Rashid, he was first brought into the Taiping jail when he saw "many people" were also detained and the cells were "crowded". Later, he was transferred to other places and finally landed in a detention centre in Tanjong Beruas, Malacca. Rashid claimed that he saw "hundreds of Malays" also locked up in his camp for being anti-colonial.

"The British later closed all the records of the numbers of anti-colonial Malays being detained by them because they knew the operation would be hated by the Malays who were the majority in Malaya," asserted Rashid.

How then did Rashid manage to end up in the jungle in Pahang as a CPM guerilla after some three years of incarceration? Digging a tunnel like in the movies?

"Hahaha ... I didn't gorek any lubang ... I used my brain ... because they had detained many people, they had to think of providing accommodation for all the detainees ... I knew they needed skilled workers to build those houses and so I applied to be on the construction team," he said with a twinkle in his eyes.

"For a few weeks, whenever I met British military officers and camp commandants in the camp, I greeted them aloud with 'good morning, sir' in English. I smiled at them ... They liked it. They really enjoyed being greeted with the word 'Sir' or 'Tuan'...

"They also thought I was a good guy because I spoke English. So, they started to like me and finally, I was permitted to go outside the heavily-fenced camp and join a 10-man construction team on a jungle fringe," he added.

"The construction site was far away from the detention centre. We were allowed to build our house there first and stayed there overnight for several days in a week ... we went back to report to the detention camp only once a week."

Chinese cowherds

One day, Rashid said he spotted a group of Chinese boys herding cows around his construction site. Rashid befriended them during lunch breaks.

"After a while, I was told by one of them that they were sent by the party to locate me and try to help me to escape... They gave me secret codes and verbal messages to contact this or that person

"After the arrangements had been made, I escaped into the jungle nearby one day during lunch time on the pretext of stomach ache. Following the jungle tracks, I came into contact with the appointed guides who provided shelter and food in the jungle.

"One of the Chinese boys escorted me throughout the journey with a gun. He was from Johor."

From Rashid's recollection, the colonial authorities, having discovered his disappearance, sent planes to 'bom sini, bom sana' (bomb here and there) trying to kill him but after two days of journey in the jungle, he reached safer zones.

According to written record, Rashid first escape in early 1952 and by the end of the year, he had reached a secure base inside the jungle of Pahang manned by Abdullah CD's 10th Regiment - a Malay-majority CPM unit inaugurated on May 21, 1949 in Kerdau, near Temerloh in Pahang.

Four years later, in 1953, Rashid followed the 10th Regiment and other units in their retreat into the Malayan-Thai border area. He was once injured by hostile fire in an encounter with British security forces.

Peace negotiator

In 1955, he was elected as a member of the party's central committee and was later appointed to be a delegate of CPM to the Baling Peace Talk held in December that same year.

In 1959, Rashid married a Chinese female comrade now known as Selamah Abdullah (photo) who gave birth to a child. Rashid was then already married a Malay girl in his kampong as early as 1939 and the union produced four children. Rashid is honest enough to record this in a biographical note published in the history book of the 10th Regiment.

From early 1989 to November the same year, Rashid was again made a peace negotiator on CPM's behalf with the representatives of both the Malaysian and Thai governments, and he was one of the three CPM signatories to the Peace Accords on Dec 2, 1989.

After the signing of the 1989 Peace Accords, Rashid Maidin visited Malaysia.

"As a poor boy born in a backward kampung in colonial time and without sufficient formal education, I am still very grateful to the party which has transformed me into a man who knows politics and the world in all its complexities, and also trusted me for so many years," Rashid said without his usual smile or laughter, at least for that moment.


Monday: Abdullah CD - CPM's Malay front

JAMES WONG WING ON is chief analyst of Strategic Analysis Malaysia. He is a former DAP member of parliament for Kampar (1990-1995) and a former columnist for the Sin Chew Jit Poh Chinese daily (now Sin Chew Daily). He read political science and economics at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia.