Bamboo torture is a form of torture and execution where a bamboo shoot grows through the body of a victim. It was reportedly used in East and South Asian countries such as China, India, and especially Japan, but claims of its usage lack reliable evidence.
A "Madras civilian", in his travel description from 1820s India, referred to this use of bamboo as a well-known punishment in Ceylon. [1] The use of live trees impaling people as they grow was recorded in the 19th century, when the Siamese used nipah palm sprouts in the same way as bamboo torture on the Malays during the 1821 Siamese invasion of Kedah, among other punishments. [2] [3] [4]
After World War II, stories circulated of Japanese soldiers inflicting "bamboo torture" upon Allied prisoners of war, securely tying the victim in place above a young bamboo shoot. [5] Over several days, the sharp, fast-growing shoot would first puncture, then completely penetrate the victim's body, eventually emerging through the other side. [6] In her Hakka Soul memoir, Chinese poet and author Woon-Ping Chin [7] mentions the "bamboo torture" as one of the tortures that locals believed the Japanese performed on POWs. [8]
The cast of the TV program MythBusters investigated bamboo torture in a 2008 episode and found that a bamboo shoot can penetrate through several inches of ballistic gelatin in three days. For research purposes, ballistic gelatin is considered comparable to human flesh, and the experiment thus supported the viability of this form of torture, though not its historical accuracy. [9] [10]
Bamboos are a diverse group of mostly evergreen perennial flowering plants making up the subfamily Bambusoideae of the grass family Poaceae. Giant bamboos are the largest members of the grass family, in the case of Dendrocalamus sinicus having individual stalks (culms) reaching a length of 46 meters (151 ft), up to 36 centimeters (14 in) in thickness and a weight of up to 450 kilograms (1,000 lb). The internodes of bamboos can also be of great length. Kinabaluchloa wrayi has internodes up to 2.5 meters (8 ft) in length. and Arthrostylidium schomburgkii has internodes up to 5 meters (16 ft) in length, exceeded in length only by papyrus. By contrast, the stalks of the tiny bamboo Raddiella vanessiae of the savannas of French Guiana measure only 10–20 millimeters (0.4–0.8 in) in length by about 2 millimeters (0.08 in) in width. The origin of the word "bamboo" is uncertain, but it probably comes from the Dutch or Portuguese language, which originally borrowed it from Malay or Kannada.
The Hakka, sometimes also referred to as Hakka-speaking Chinese, or Hakka Chinese, or Hakkas, are a southern Han Chinese subgroup whose principal settlements and ancestral homes are dispersed widely across the provinces of southern China and who speak a language that is closely related to Gan, a Han Chinese dialect spoken in Jiangxi province. They are differentiated from other southern Han Chinese by their dispersed nature and tendency to occupy marginal lands and remote hilly areas. The Chinese characters for Hakka literally mean "guest families".
Glutinous rice is a type of rice grown mainly in Southeast East Asia, the northeastern regions of India and Bhutan which has opaque grains, very low amylose content, and is especially sticky when cooked. It is widely consumed across Asia.
The Jingpo people are a Southeast Asian ethnic group who are the largest subgroup of the Kachin peoples. The greater name for all the Kachin peoples in their own Jingpo language is the Jinghpaw. Other endonyms include Zaiwa, Lechi, Lisu, Maru, Hkahku, etc.
The Semang are an ethnic-minority group of the Malay Peninsula. They live in mountainous and isolated forest regions of Perak, Pahang, Kelantan and Kedah of Malaysia and the southern provinces of Thailand. The Semang are among the different ethnic groups of Southeast Asia who, based on their dark skin and other perceived physical similarities, are sometimes referred to by the superficial term Negrito.
Public humiliation or public shaming is a form of punishment whose main feature is dishonoring or disgracing a person, usually an offender or a prisoner, especially in a public place. It was regularly used as a form of judicially sanctioned punishment in previous centuries, and is still practiced by different means in the modern era.
Malaysian Chinese, Chinese Malaysians, or Sino-Malaysians are Malaysian citizens of Han Chinese ethnicity. They form the second-largest ethnic group in Malaysia, after the Malay majority, and constitute 22.4% of the Malaysian total population. Today, Malaysian Chinese form the second largest community of Overseas Chinese in the world, after the Thai Chinese. Malaysian Chinese maintain a significant and substantial presence in the business sector of the Malaysian economy.
Chin Peng, born Ong Boon Hua, was a Malayan communist politician, guerrilla leader, and revolutionary, who was the leader and commander of the Communist Party of Malaya (CPM) and the Malayan National Liberation Army (MNLA). A Maoist, he led the CPM as secretary general from 1947 until the party's dissolution in 1989.
Jakunpeople or Orang Ulu/Orang Hulu are an ethnic group recognised as Orang Asli of the Malay Peninsula in Malaysia.
The Asian conical hat is a simple style of conically shaped sun hat notable in modern-day nations and regions of China, Vietnam, Korea, Japan, Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Bangladesh, India, Nepal, and Bhutan. It is kept on the head by a cloth or fiber chin strap, an inner headband, or both.
The Chin people are an ethnic group native to the Chin State of Myanmar. Strictly speaking, the term "Chin" only refers to the 53 sub-tribes of the Chin ethnic group, divided and recognized by the Burmese government. They speak the Kuki-Chin-Mizo languages, which are often mutually unintelligible but are closely related.
Cài is a Chinese-language surname that derives from the name of the ancient Cai state. In 2019 it was the 38th most common surname in China, but the 9th most common in Taiwan, where it is usually romanized as "Tsai", "Tsay", or "Chai" and the 8th most common in Singapore, where it is usually romanized as "Chua", which is based on its Teochew and Hokkien pronunciation. Koreans use Chinese-derived family names and in Korean, Cai is 채 in Hangul, "Chae" in Revised Romanization, It is also a common name in Hong Kong where it is romanized as "Choy", "Choi" or "Tsoi". In Macau, it is spelled as "Choi". In Malaysia, it is romanized as "Choi" from the Cantonese pronunciation, and "Chua" or "Chuah" from the Hokkien or Teochew pronunciation. It is romanized in the Philippines as "Chua" or "Chuah", and in Thailand as "Chuo" (ฉั่ว). Moreover, it is also romanized in Cambodia as either "Chhay" or "Chhor" among people of full Chinese descent living in Cambodia and as “Tjhai”, "Tjoa" or "Chua" in Indonesia.
The Malayan National Liberation Army (MNLA) was a Communist guerrilla army that fought for Malayan independence from the British Empire during the Malayan Emergency (1948–1960) and later fought against the Malaysian government in the Communist insurgency in Malaysia (1968–1989). Many MNLA fighters were former members of the Malayan Peoples' Anti-Japanese Army (MPAJA), including its leader Chin Peng.
The Kempeitai East District Branch was the headquarters of the Kempeitai, the Japanese military police, during the Japanese occupation of Singapore from 1942 to 1945. It was located at the old YMCA building, at the present site of Singapore's YMCA Building on Stamford Road. Opened in 1911, the distinctive Art Deco YMCA building was the site of interrogation and torture of many innocent civilians, including the war heroine Elizabeth Choy. After the war, the Singapore government erected several memorials with some at the former massacre sites. In 1995, the former site of the old YMCA building was gazetted by the National Heritage Board as one of the eleven World War II sites of Singapore.
Tamil Malaysians, also known as Malaysian Tamilar, are people of full or partial Tamil descent who were born in or immigrated to Malaysia from Tamil Nadu, India and the Tamil regions of north-east Sri Lanka. The majority of 1.8–2 million people 80% of the Malaysian Indian populations in Malaysia were from Indian Tamil ethnic groups from Tamil Nadu and Sri Lanka. The bulk of Tamil Malaysian migration began during the British Raj, when Britain facilitated the migration of Indian workers to work in plantations. There are, however, some established Tamil communities from before British colonialism.
The Second Larut War took place in 1865 and was sparked off by a gambling quarrel in June of that year between members of the two opposing secret societies.
Bamboo shoots or bamboo sprouts are the edible shoots of many bamboo species including Bambusa vulgaris and Phyllostachys edulis. They are used as vegetables in numerous Asian dishes and broths. They are sold in various processed shapes and are available in fresh, dried, and canned versions.
The Bamboo network or the Chinese Commonwealth is used to conceptualize the links between businesses run by Overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia. It links the Overseas Chinese business community of Southeast Asia, namely Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, the Philippines, and Myanmar with the economies of Greater China. Overseas Chinese companies in Southeast Asia are usually managed as family businesses in a centralized bureaucratic manner. In an article in The New York Review of Books, Indian critic Pankaj Mishra called it a "largest economic force in Asia outside of Japan".
Cheq Wong people are an indigenous Orang Asli people of the Senoi branch in Peninsular Malaysia. Although they have the physical appearance of the Senoi sub-group, the Cheq Wong language that they speak is closely related to the Northern Aslian languages.