The massacre was one of a number committed during the war that saw British extrajudicial killings of unarmed villagers, in violation of the Geneva Conventions,[3] communist and trade union leaders, and the participation of British military forces in headhunting their civilian and MNLA victims.[4]
British headhunting during the Malayan EmergencyBritish soldiers pose with a severed head inside a British military base
Background
After World War II, the British returned to Malaya to recover control from Japanese military forces. During the war, the British government had supported the guerrillas who continued to fight against the Japanese forces. However, following VJ Day in August 1945, many resistance units did not completely disband. The groups instead became the foundation for the independence movement against British rule in Malaya. Some guerrillas turned from agitation to communism and began targeting British commercial interests in the colony by attacking rubber plantations and tin mines. By June 1948, escalating violence and the assassinations of several prominent British landowners led colonial authorities in Malaya to declare an "Emergency".[5]
That gave the Royal Malaysia Police and government greater powers and flexibility in combating the insurgents. Although the British had extensive experience in jungle warfare, most recently in the Burma Campaign during World War II, military leaders had not formalized their experience into a specific jungle warfare curriculum.[4]
Training on soldiers' obligations under principles of international humanitarian law was minimal or even non-existent. Basic training for the troops focused on infantry skills, not their ability to judge the appropriateness of orders in the context of the law of war. The specific jungle warfare training included shooting exercises where soldiers had to quickly distinguish between "enemy" and "friendly" targets, but otherwise continued the focus on infantry skills. Michael Gilbert, a member of the Suffolk Regiment, said that his training "[was] teaching you how to march, how to handle a rifle, and how to behave in a soldierly manner." Raymond Burdett, another member of the Suffolk Regiment, reflected on his experience and said that the trainers sought "to get us to follow instructions, not to question commands."[4]
The quality of officers in the Scots Guards at the time was poor, with high turnover, and some platoon commanders resented being sent to fight a colonial war when they had been trained to fight a war in Europe. The patrol that committed the massacre was led by two sergeants, one with little experience; this was deemed highly unusual by its soldiers. Further, the regimental culture of the Scots Guards looked down on patrols, and the regiment's record of successes against the MNLA was poor before the massacre.[4]
At the time of the massacre, no international law existed that dealt with non-international armed conflict. Two years prior to the massacre, the judges at the Nuremberg trials, which were established by the victorious Allies after World War II, stated that "the laws and customs of war apply between belligerents, but not domestically".[6] The 1949 Geneva Conventions included Common Article 3, which is a "mini-convention" applicable to non-international armed conflict and simply prohibits the murder of non-combatants under the physical control or custody of State or non-state forces. However, Britain ratified the Geneva Conventions in 1957, owning much of its reluctance to apply Common Article 3 to its colonial wars.[7]
Killings
In December 1948, 7th Platoon, G Company, 2nd Scots Guards, surrounded a rubber plantation at Sungai Rimoh near Batang Kali in Selangor. The Guards then rounded up civilians. The Guards separated the men from the women and children for interrogation. The Scots Guards promptly massacred 24 unarmed men from the village with automatic weapons.[8] The only adult male survivor was a man named Chong Hong, who was in his twenties. He fainted and was presumed dead. Other eyewitnesses included the victims' spouses and children, such as Tham Yong, who was 17, and Loh Ah Choy, who was about seven.[9]
Legacy of the massacre
After the massacre, British diplomats introduced Regulation 27A, which authorised "the use of lethal weapons" to "prevent escape from arrest", in an attempt to retrospectively legalise the Scots Guards' massacre of civilians.[10] This new regulation was uncovered within secret documents which had been hidden from public view at Hanslope Park by the Foreign Office, and was known as "Regulation 27A".[10] The UK Foreign Office and various UK governments attempted to hide the existence of the massacre by intervening to block investigations into the Batang Kali Massacre.[10][11][12]
Despite several investigations by the British government since the 1950s, and a re-examination of the evidence by the Royal Malaysia Police between 1993 and 1997, no charges were brought against any of the alleged perpetrators.[13] The British government has never apologised for the killings nor made any attempts to redress the massacre.[14]
Subsequent developments
In 1970, the British Sunday newspaper The People published testimonies by members of the platoon that a massacre had occurred. In response the government referred the matter to the Department of Public Prosecutions, but the investigation was terminated shortly after only a few months due, according to the Director of Public Prosecutions, to a lack of documentation and the difficulty of verifying testimony about an event that had occurred twenty years prior.[4]
On 9 September 1992, a BBC documentary, an investigative report into the massacre, "In Cold Blood", was aired in the United Kingdom and revealed fresh evidence. The documentary included accounts from witnesses and survivors, including confessions of an ex-Scots Guards soldier and interviews with the Scotland Yard police officers who had investigated the case.[15]
On 8 June 1993, with the help of the MCA Legal Bureau, a petition was presented to Queen Elizabeth II asking that justice be done. On 14 July 1993 a police report was lodged by three survivors, accompanied by the MCA Public Service and Complaints Bureau Chief Michael Chong. On 18 September 1993, however, Gavin Hewitt (Head of South East Asia Department of the Foreign Office, UK) stated, "No new evidence has been uncovered by the British authorities to warrant the setting up of another official inquiry into the alleged massacre of 24 villagers in Batang Kali...".[16]
On 30 December 1997, an investigation report was submitted to the Royal Malaysian Police Jabatan Siasatan Jenayah Bukit Aman. The case was closed on the grounds of insufficient evidence for prosecution.[16]
On 13 July 2004, the DAP, a Malaysian political party, raised the Batang Kali massacre in the Malaysian Parliament.[16]
On 25 March 2008, the family members of the massacre victims and several NGOs formed an Action Committee Condemning the Batang Kali Massacre and submitted a petition to the British High Commission in Malaysia. The petition seeks official apology, compensation for the family members of the 24 massacre victims and financial contribution towards the educational and cultural development of the Ulu Yam community.[16]
On 30 January 2009, the Foreign Office in Britain rejected a call for an inquiry into the massacre of villagers.[17] On 24 April 2009, the British government announced that it was reconsidering this decision.[18]
On 30 April 2009, The Independent reported that the British government had agreed to reinvestigate the massacre.[19]
In January 2012, lawyers for the victims and their families were given Foreign Office correspondence and Cabinet Office guidance relating to the incident.[20]
Judicial review
Malaysian victims unsuccessfully petitioned Queen Elizabeth II personally to reopen an inquiry into the massacre in 1993 and in 2004. They tried again in 2008 and failed to receive a reply from the British government until 2011, when the High Court agreed to review the case.[21]
Survivors of the Batang Kali Massacre and relatives of civilians executed by the Scots Guards started a legal battle in 2012 with against the British government over the killings.[22][12] Although many of the Scots Guards who had committed the massacre were still alive, the families and survivors did not seek criminal prosecutions against individual soldiers.[10]
One of the relatives of the victims who shared her eyewitness account was Lim Ah Yin, whose 11th birthday happened on the same day as the massacre. Her father was one of the civilians executed by the Scots Guards, and she noted that the last time she saw her father was when a Scots Guard was pointing a rifle at him and telling him to shut up. A week after the Scots Guards had shot her father dead, both she and her heavily pregnant mother were made to clean up his corpse which was bloated and covered in flies.[12]
“The bodies were covered in flies. They were bloated and swollen, lying in groups of three or four. Finally I found my father. He had been shot in the chest. That day, December 12th, had been my birthday. My mother cried almost every day. She brought me and my sister up. When the baby was born she gave it away for adoption. She only stopped crying when I married and her granddaughter was born. She was 92 when she died."[12]
British courts ruled that although the Scots Guards had massacred innocent civilians and that this was possibly a war crime committed by the British Army, they also ruled that the government was not obliged to hold a public inquiry because the massacre happened too long ago, and that due to a legal technicality nobody could be held legally responsible.[11] This ruling was condemned by various human rights organisations and legal experts who argued that such a decision could be used to justify many historic instances of war crimes committed by the British military.[12]
In May 2012 the judicial review on the British government's position was held at the High Court of Justice in London.[23] On 4 September 2012, the High Court's judges in London upheld a government decision not to hold a public hearing into the killing.[13] It also ruled that Britain was responsible for the killing in Batang Kali. In its written judgement, it said, "There is evidence that supports a deliberate execution of the 24 civilians at Batang Kali."[24]
In March 2014, the Court of Appeal of England and Wales announced it would make a ruling on whether a public enquiry will be held into the killings. The move was welcomed by families of the plantation workers who had died at Batang Kali. The British government had rejected calls for a public hearing, a decision that was upheld by the High Court in September 2012.[25]
In November 2015, the United Kingdom Supreme Court ruled that the British government was not obliged to hold a public inquiry into the 1940s killing by a British army patrol of 24 Malayan villagers even though it may have been a war crime, because the atrocity was committed too long ago.[11] An appeal to the European Court of Human Rights failed when the case was ruled inadmissible on essentially the same grounds in October 2018.[26]
The Malayan Emergency, also known as the Anti–British National Liberation War(1948–1960), was a guerrilla war fought in British Malaya between communist pro-independence fighters of the Malayan National Liberation Army (MNLA) and the military forces of the Federation of Malaya, British Empire and Commonwealth. The communists fought to win independence for Malaya from the British Empire and to establish a socialist economy, while the Malayan Federation and Commonwealth forces fought to combat communism and protect British economic and colonial interests. The term "Emergency" was used by the British to characterise the conflict in order to avoid referring to it as a war, because London-based insurers would not pay out in instances of civil wars.
Search and destroy is a military strategy which consists of inserting infantry forces into hostile territory and directing them to search and then attack enemy targets before immediately withdrawing. First used as part of counterinsurgency operations during military conflicts in Southeast Asia such as the Malayan Emergency and the Vietnam War, the strategy was developed to take advantage of new technological capabilities available to Western militaries such as the helicopter, which allowed for the adoption of new tactics like the air assault.
The Federation of Malaya was a federation of what previously had been British Malaya, comprising eleven states that existed from 1 February 1948 until 16 September 1963. The Federation became independent on 31 August 1957, and in 1963, Malaysia was formed when Malaya united with Singapore, North Borneo, and Sarawak.
The Scots Guards are a regiment of the British Army. The regiment cherishes its traditions, especially on the parade ground where the scarlet uniform and bearskin have become synonymous with the regiment and the other Guards regiments. The regiment takes part in numerous events, most notably the Beating Retreat, Changing of the Guard, Queen's Birthday Parade, Remembrance Sunday and State Visits. The Guards' regiments ceremonial uniforms differ from each other only slightly, the differentiations being in the tunic and the type of plume on the bearskin, if any, they have. The Scots Guards uniform consists of tunic buttons in threes, the Order of the Thistle on the shoulder badge, the Thistle on the collar badge and no plume on the bearskin.
Sook Ching was a mass killing that occurred from 18 February to 4 March 1942 in Singapore after it fell to the Japanese. It was a systematic purge and massacre of 'anti-Japanese' elements in Singapore, with the Singaporean Chinese particularly targeted by the Japanese military during the occupation. However, Japanese soldiers engaged in indiscriminate killing, and did not try to identify who was 'anti-Japanese.' Singapore was a crucial strategic point in World War II. From 8 February to 15 February, the Japanese fought for control of the city. The combined British and Commonwealth forces surrendered in a stunning defeat to the outnumbered Japanese on 15 February which led to its fall. The loss of Singapore was and still is Britain's largest surrender in history.
Chin Peng, born Ong Boon Hua, was a Malayan communist guerilla leader and politician, who was the long-time leader of the Malayan Communist Party (MCP) and the Malayan National Liberation Army (MNLA).
The Malayan Communist Party (MCP), officially the Communist Party of Malaya (CPM), was a Marxist–Leninist and anti-imperialist communist party which was active in British Malaya and later, the modern states of Malaysia and Singapore from 1930 to 1989. It was responsible for the creation of both the Malayan Peoples' Anti-Japanese Army and the Malayan National Liberation Army.
The Briggs Plan was a military plan devised by British General Sir Harold Briggs shortly after his appointment in 1950 as Director of Operations during the Malayan Emergency (1948–1960). The plan aimed to defeat the Malayan National Liberation Army by cutting them off from their sources of support amongst the rural population. To achieve this a large programme of forced resettlement of Malayan peasantry was undertaken, under which about 500,000 people were forcibly transferred from their land and moved to concentration camps euphemistically referred to as "new villages".
The Min Yuen was the civilian branch of the Malayan National Liberation Army (MNLA), the armed wing of the Malayan Communist Party (MCP), in resisting the British colonial occupation of Malaya during the Malayan Emergency, The Min Yuen was mainly charged with supplying communist revolutionaries with food, information, and medical supplies.
Batang Kali is a town and mukim in Hulu Selangor District, Selangor, Malaysia. The city is designated as a transit point to Genting Highlands, a renowned resort city. Originally just a small town gaining traction due to the development of Ligamas, Batang Kali is now quickly emerging as one of the fastest-growing suburb in Hulu Selangor District.
This article lists important figures and events in Malayan public affairs during the year 1948, together with births and deaths of significant Malayans. Malaya left the British colonial Malayan Union; the Federation of Malaya took place on 1 February.
Karak is a small town in Bentong District, Pahang, Malaysia. Located at the foothills of Malaysia's Titiwangsa Mountain Range, it is well known as a rest town along the Federal Route 2 from Kuala Lumpur to Kuantan and lends its name to the Karak Highway, or the Kuala Lumpur-Karak Expressway linking it to the country's capital of Kuala Lumpur.
New villages, also known as Chinese new villages, were internment camps created during the waning days of British rule in Malaysia. These camps were originally created as part of the Briggs Plan, first implemented in 1950 to isolate guerillas from their supporters within the rural civilian populations during the Malayan Emergency. Most were surrounded by barbed wire and watchtowers to stop people from escaping, with guards being ordered to kill anyone who attempted to leave outside of curfew hours.
The Malayan National Liberation Army (MNLA), often mistranslated as the Tentera Pembebasan Kebangsaan Malaya, 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). Their central committee was a trade union activist known as Chin Peng who had previously been awarded an OBE by the British for waging a guerrilla war against the Japanese occupation of Malaya. Many MNLA fighters were former members of the Malayan Peoples' Anti-Japanese Army (MPAJA) which had been previously trained and funded by the British to fight against Japan during the Second World War.
The British Military Administration (BMA) was the interim administrator of British Malaya from August 1945, the end of World War II, to the establishment of the Malayan Union in April 1946. The BMA was under the direct command of the Supreme Allied Commander South East Asia, Lord Louis Mountbatten. The administration had the dual function of maintaining basic subsistence during the period of reoccupation, and also of imposing the state structure upon which post-war imperial power would rest.
The Communist insurgency in Malaysia, also known as the Second Malayan Emergency, was an armed conflict which occurred in Malaysia from 1968 to 1989, between the Malayan Communist Party (MCP) and Malaysian federal security forces.
British war crimes are acts committed by the armed forces of the United Kingdom that have violated the laws and customs of war since the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907, from the Boer War to the War in Afghanistan (2001–2021). Such acts have included the summary executions of prisoners of war and unarmed shipwreck survivors, the use of excessive force during the interrogation of POWs and enemy combatants, and the use of violence against civilian non-combatants and their property.
Counter-terrorism in Malaysia is a series of measures implemented in Malaysia to detect and prevent terrorism as well as to minimise damages from such terrorist acts should they occur. These measures involve all levels of security services including military, police, border and infrastructure security, civil defence, medical readiness and psychological preparedness. Malaysia also participates actively in international counter-terrorism efforts. The Internal Security Act 1960 (repealed 2012, replaced with Security Offences Act 2012 was enacted to prevent terrorism in Malaysia.
William Boyd McCleary is a retired member of HM Diplomatic Service originally from Belfast, Northern Ireland.
↑ Hale, Christopher (1 October 2013). Massacre in Malaya: exposing Britain's My Lai. Stroud: The History Press. ISBN978-0752487014.
↑ Siver, Christi (2018). "Enemies or Friendlies? British Military Behavior Toward Civilians During the Malayan Emergency". Military Interventions, War Crimes, and Protecting Civilians. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan / Springer Nature. pp.2–8, 19–20, 57–90. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-77691-0. ISBN978-3-319-77690-3. British efforts to educate soldiers about the Geneva Conventions either did not ever reach units deployed in Malaya or left no impression on them...All of these regiments went through the introductory jungle warfare course and received the same instruction about 'snap shooting' and differentiating between targets. Differences in training do not seem to explain why some units killed civilians while others did not.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
Scots Guards 
