Day: September 4, 2011

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Ask Kambeng, But Kambeng Stupid

A friend pointed me to this blog belittling a military tradition. As an ex-military officer, I take offence in this, be it from the Opposition, or from the supporters of the government of the day.

Click Here To See How Stupid This Is

The Cenotaph seen in the video was built by the British Administration to honour the fallen during the First and Second World Wars, and the First Malayan Emergency. It was first located at a roundabout near the old KL Railway Station, and the Masjid Negara. That road was first called VICTORY AVENUE. This cenotaph was moved to the present location near the National Monument in 1964 because of a construction. The construction of our National Monument was commissioned in 1963, and completed in February of 1966. That area was called CENOTAPH ROAD after the First Monument. It now bears a Malay name, JALAN TUGU.

In the video, you see a group of kids from an International school paying respect to the fallen dead – Commonwealth Soldiers whom had fallen protecting this soil during the two world wars, and the First Emergency, while the “Last Post” is played by buglers from the 1st Royal Malay Regiment. This, I’m sure, was taken during WARRIORS DAY to honour the dead.

This nation owes the current peaceful situation to the fallen dead: men and women who were not only Malays, but also Punjabs, Indians, Chinese, Australians, British, New Zealanders and others. This is NOT the only site where the dead are being honoured. The same is being done every year at God’s Little Acre in Taiping, and in Sandakan to honour the Australian soldiers who perished during a forced March by the Japanese to Bongawan.

War knows nothing of colour of skin, the God you hold, the food you eat – buried in this land are Muslims, Jews, Taoists, Buddhists, Christians, Hindus, what-have-yous; who lost their life so we could live in peace and prosperity. We don’t honour them because they are Muslims or Colonialists, we honour them for the greatest sacrifice that they have done. In the UK, are the names of six Malay men who were lost on board the HMS Banka, a Royal Navy ship that was sunk by the Japanese. They are being honoured annually by the British.

Were we involved during the First World War? There wasn’t much action here in Asia, but in October of 1914, there was the Battle of Penang: the German cruiser Emden sunk the Russian cruiser Zhemchug. 89 crewmen were killed. 82 are buried in Penang. The other seven bodies were never found.

Of course, I don’t expect ignorant keyboard soldiers whom have not spend even a second in His Majesty’s service to understand military tradition. All that ever comes from them are incomprehensible filth. it shows what their brain is made of.

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Hatyai Accord: The Failure of the Domino Theory – Part 3

As mentioned in the previous posting, the CPM split into two factions in October 1974: the CPM and the MPLA (CPM-Marxist-Leninist).

In 1975, the Chinese-backed Khmer Rouge ousted the Cambodian military government and began a reign of terror. In Vietnam, Soviet-backed North Vietnamese Army rolled into Saigon, effectively ending the Vietnam War. By December 1975, Laos too, fell to the Communists. In South-East Asia, there was real fear that the ASEAN nations would be next to fall to Communism – the Domino Theory was born.

Both the CPM and MPLA’s spirit were boosted by this new turn of events. Their activities peaked in 1975. There were bombings of the National Monument (Tugu Negara), the Police Field Force camp in Jalan Pekeliling in Kuala Lumpur Having scored a morale-boosting victory by assassinating the Inspector-General of Police, Tan Sri Abdul Rahman Hashim, a year earlier, they set their sights on Tan Sri Yuen Yuet Leng’s predecessor, Tan Sri Jimmy Khoo Chong Khong, the Chief Police Officer of Perak. Tan Sri Khoo was ambushed near the Ipoh General Hospital by the same assassins that murdered the IGP. His brave driver, Sergeant Chong, returned fire despite having being hit repeatedly by the assassins’ bullets. Sergeant Chong died soon after, but not before injuring one of the assassins in the head that then led the police to them.

Between 1976 and 1977, the Malaysian media was filled with nothing but stories of ambushes and attacks by the communist terrorists against the police and the military.

When Chairman Mao Zedong died, Deng Xiaoping returned to mainstream politics. Given his rapport with Chin Peng, the CPM was fueled to up the revolutionary ante. However, in 1978 Deng visited Thailand, Kuala Lumpur and Singapore, and was convinced to stop exporting Communism. As a result, in 1981 Deng ordered the ‘Suara Revolusi Malaya’ to stop broadcasting. The CPM had had to relocate the radio station to South Thailand and renamed it ‘Suara Demokrasi.’ Starved of support, the CPM and MPLA were riddled with internal strife and political cleansing (including the execution of suspected counter-revolutionaries) that their effectiveness was greatly reduced. The MPLA changed its name to the Malayan People’s Army (MPA) in 1982. One of the last gunbattles that occurred in the vicinity of Kuala Lumpur was in May 1983, on the day my paternal grandmother died. A patrol car chanced upon a group of Min Yuens and communist terrorists near what was Mimaland in Gombak. In the gunbattle, one policeman and one CT were killed, while the other policeman and another CT were injured.

The West Betong and Sadao groups of the CPM decided to surrender themselves to the Thai government in 1987 when they realised their struggle was not achieving any success, and with no clear political or military objectives.

On 2nd December 1989, the Communists gave up armed struggle and signed a peace treaty with the governments of Malaysia and Thailand, ending the Second Emergency.
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So, were the communist terrorists freedom-fighters as claimed by some parties?

When the Federation of Malaya achieved independence, the CPM had lost all clout in fighting “imperialism” and “colonialism”; yet it continued to do so, and even refused to recognise the formation of the Federation of Malaysia in 1963 by supporting the Indonesian campaign of lynching Malaysia (Ganyang Malaysia). Let us also not forget that the CPM’s counterparts in especially Sarawak continued to wage war against the government ’til 1989. Among those killed fighting the terrorists in Sarawak was Superintendent Joni Mustapha, a Sarawak hurdler in 1958-59. Joni was loyal to his men. He was in a cinema in Sibu watching a movie with his son when he got word that his men were pinned down by heavily armed terrorists upriver. He left his son behind and travelled by boat to reach his men. He was felled by machinegun fire, but remained to direct the firefight against the terrorists until he died. Seeing his commander die, Corporal Nguing, an Iban warrior, unsheathed his machete and charged at the terrorists only to be mown down.

Therefore, the communists terrorists not only fought against what some perceived as the “puppet-regime” in Kuala Lumpur, they fought against Malaysians on every inch of this hallowed soil trying to introduce communism, and turn this beloved country of ours into either a China-leaning satellite, or a Soviet-leaning one. It was never a nationalistic fight for freedom as claimed by some mentally-skewed politicians and their supporters either. There is nothing nationalistic about joining the forces of a foreign-nation to lynch your own people, if the CPM ever regarded Malaysians as their own. Remember, the CPM waged war against the Malaysian people for 32 years after the independence.

Was the fight against the communists solely a malay struggle as claimed by a former Minister? No. Kanang ak Langkau is an Iban. So was Corporal Nguing. Tan Sri Khoo Chong Khong, Tan Sri Yuen Yuet Leng, Colonel Chong Kheng Lay – chinese. Former DSP Jeganathan, whom I had the honour of working with, is an Indian. He was absorbed into the Special Branch from Jabatan Talikom to set up the police VHF network, jungle-bashing, ploughing his way through to construct towers in the jungle with the communists hot on him. Inspectors Kamalanathan and Robert Cheah were injured when a grenade was lobbed into the Ipoh coffee shop where they were having coffee. I worked briefly with Kamalanathan who still limped in 1995 with a shrapnel lodged inside him decades after the incident.

It was a war against all of us, Malaysians – free and independent Malaysians, by godless creatures who call themselves freedom fighters, a war that none of us Malaysians should ever forget, and against those none of us should ever support.

The people of Malaysia, the Malaysian Armed Forces, the Royal Malaysian Police, should always be on guard for a resurgence of communism in Malaysia. The peace treaty of 1989 was just a declaration of the end of an armed struggle; not the giving up of the communist ideology.