Malaysia's communist veteran Chin Peng has filed an appeal to the Kuala Lumpur High Court against an earlier decision ordering him to produce his birth or citizenship documents before his homecoming case can proceed further.

According to one of Chin Peng's lawyer Darshan Singh Khaira (left), the appeal against the decision made in chambers by Justice Mohd Zabidin Mohd Diah of the Appellate & Special Powers Division of the Kuala Lumpur High Court on Tuesday was filed yesterday.

Other members of Chin Peng's legal team are Raja Aziz Addruse, Chan Kok Keong, Patrick Leong and Yau Wai Leong. Raja Aziz, a former president of the Malaysian Bar Council, is also a leading authority on constitutional and human rights laws.

The defendants named by Chin Peng in his case are the government of Malaysia, home affairs minister, inspector-general of police and chief of defence forces. They are represented by federal councils Azizah Nawawi and Suzana Atan.

The defendants have not filed any affidavits in defence yet although the case was first filed by Chin Peng more than two years ago on March 4, 2005 at the Penang High Court.

No provision

Darshan also told malaysiakini that under Article 3 of the Agreement Between The Government Of Malaysia And The Communist Party Of Malaya To Terminate Hostilities, there is no provision or requirement for Chin Peng to produce or show his birth or citizenship documents as a precondition for his return to Malaysia.

Article 3 (Residence in Malaysia) reads:

  • 3.1 Members of the Communist Party of Malaya and members of its disbanded armed units, who are of Malaysian origin and who wish to settle down in Malaysia, shall be allowed to do so in accordance with the laws of Malaysia.

  • 3.2 Members of the Communist Party of Malaya and members of its disbanded armed units, who are not of Malaysian origin, may be allowed to settle down in Malaysia in accordance with the laws of Malaysia, if they so desire.

The agreement is one of the two parts of the 1989 Peace Accords officially and publicly signed between CPM and the Malaysian government on Dec 2, 1989 in Haadyai, Thailand.

The other part of the Accords is termed Administrative Arrangement Between The Government Of Malaysia And The Communist Party Of Malaya Pursuant To The Agreement To Terminate Hostilities.

Three signatories of the 1989 Peace Accords for the Communist Party of Malaya (CPM) are Chin Peng (secretary-general), Abdullah CD (chairman) and the late Rashid Maidin (central committee member).

Many have returned

In the 1989 Peace Accords, CPM also undertakes, as a quid pro quo, to cease all its armed activities and disband its armed units.

Since the conclusion of the 1989 Peace Accords, many former personnel of CPM's armed units like Ibrahim Chik have returned and settled down in Malaysia. Other prominent veterans of the party who have visited Malaysia include the late Rashid, Abdullah CD, Suriani Abdullah and Abu Samah Mohd Kassim.

The Setiawan-born Suriani, who prior to marrying Abdullah CD and converting, was known as Eng Ming Ching. She was a schoolmate of Chin Peng in Setiawan's Nan Hwa School.

In her memoirs Setengah Abad Perjuangan, she recalls that she and her husband were once granted audience by Sultan Azlan Shah of Perak in a palace in the 1990s when they visited Malaysia.

"In any event, the court should allow testimonies of Chin Peng's local relatives and acquaintances to serve the purpose of ascertaining Chin Peng's national origin," Darshan added.

Malaysiakini understands that Chin Peng's legal team has prepared such testimonies in the form of sworn affidavits.

Darshan said, Chin Peng's birth and citizenship documents had been seized by the authorities at the onset of the 'Emergency' in June 1948 when the colonial forces raided offices and houses of communists, real or suspect.

In his popular memoirs Alias Chin Peng: My Side of History (Singapore, Media Masters, 2003) which he authored with veteran Australian journalists Ian Ward and Norma Miraflor, he reveals that he was born on October 21, 1924, "in an upstairs backroom of No 36, Jalan Kampong Koh, a two-storey shophouse in a long row of similar small business establishments the likes of which still dominate the southern Perak township of Sitiawan, some 50 miles southwest of Ipoh" (p.31), attended the Nan Hwa school in Sitiawan (p.33) and "the graves of my grandfather, parents and my brothers" are still located in a Chinese cemetery, "halfway between Sitiawan and Lumut". (p.509)

Yesterday, malaysiakini reported that in a newly released history book on the British Empire in Asia, Forgotten Wars: The End of Britain's Asian Empire (Penguin/Allen Lane, 2007), two world-renowned historians Christopher Bayly and Tim Harper reaffirmed the fact that "Chin Peng was born Ong Boon Hua, in Sitiawan in Perak, where his parents ran a bicycle shop" (p.35)