Month: September 2006

When I represented Malaysia at the International Parachuting Competition at the Phra Rama 6 Camp, Cha-Am, near Hua Hin back in March 1997, I sang this song with a Thai lady. Everyone kept quiet and started wondering how on earth does this Malaysian know this folk song (Look Thoong) when no one in his sane mind would even think of singing such songs. It is so old school. It is from a movie called “Mon Rak Look Thoong”.

Anyway, I love the ending phrase that says, “That we shall love and promise that we shall be together again.”

My buddy, my son.

Rashid Maidin (a.k.a Rashid Mydin) died this morning at his daughter’s house in Sisakon, Narathiwat, 1st September 2006, one day after Malaysia celebrated its 49th anniversary of Independence, and 55 years after he joined the defunct Communist Party of Malaya that was his vehicle to drive the British out of Malaya.

Rashid Maidin was born in Kampung Gunung Mesah, Gopeng, Perak on 10th October, 1917. He first joined the National Malayan Malay Party (PKMM) that was then banned by the British for being a left-wing organisation opposing the British administration. He was arrested several times by the British during his struggles with the PKMM. He later joined the Communist Party of Malaya in 1951 and became one of the only malay Central Committee members, alongside Abdullah CD, Ahmed Boestamam and Ishak Haji Mohamad (Pak Sako). He was given the responsibility to head the 10th Regiment CPM headquartered in Bentong, Pahang.

After the surrender of the CPM in 1989, Rashid Maidin continued to live at the “Malaysian Village” in Narathiwat, Thailand. A pious person, Rashid Maidin taught children the reading of the al-Quran. The Government of Malaysia organised his Haj trip in 1999.

He is survived by two wives, Hamidah binti Abdul Rashid, who still lives in Gopeng, and Latifah, a chinese convert whom he met in the CPM and settled down with in Thailand.

It is easy to understand why Rashid Maidin chose to join the CPM: as it was the only credible anti-British force that also took up arms against the British. But as history’s lessons often got lost within the struggles of humanity, terrorism only strengthen the people’s resolve to see it end. And the CPM’s struggle to make Malaya a satellite of Communist China was hard to be swallowed by the Malay majority and the Chinese population who were in support of Chiang Kai Shek’s Kuomintang. In the end, the CPM was reduced to its existence as a rag-tag terrorist group with the aim to ensure the survivability of its ideology in Malaysia – its only raison d’être.

Whither the old guard. Back to the ashes and dust. Another chapter ends.