NONE OF THEM WERE MUSLIMS

In 1948, British forces in Malaya killed twenty four unarmed civilians. The perpetrators were all vindicated by British authorities, it being asserted that the soldiers had no choice but to shoot them to prevent the unarmed men fleeing into the jungle. Their village was subsequently set on fire, and the survivors prevented from burying the dead for a week.


The British government is not unduly concerned about this event.
The Malaysian government has shown scant interest in raking it up.
It is not an issue.


The victims were not Muslims.


They were Chinese Malayans.


After the world war, Britain was concerned with placating the restless Malays and assuring themselves of a source for rubber and tin. The Chinese Malayans, who had resisted the Japanese, were less important in the grand scheme of things than the Malays, who had quiescently collaborated with the Japanese.
Neither the British nor the Malays were concerned with justice for the Chinese Malayans, who had been particularly brutalized by the Japanese occupiers, or with including the Chinese Malayans in future power structures of the soon-to-be independent Malay state, choosing instead to 'reward' them for their stubborn resistance to the Japanese by a policy of ethnic exclusionism (the seed for apartheid policies against Chinese in modern Malaysia).
This, probably more than anything else, led to an emergency that lasted twelve years.

The Chinese community had been robbed and repressed by the Japanese, the Malays had collaborated, and were well rewarded. When the British returned, the Malays loyally collaborated again, to very great advantage.
Many of the Malayan Chinese consequently saw little choice but to join the insurgency.

The men of the village of Batang Kali who were killed by the British were not Muslims but Chinese. In the eyes of the British, that meant that they were almost certainly rebels. And in the eyes of the Malays, they were Chinese.

Both of those qualities were good reasons to execute them. The British were fighting a war, the Malays were profitably collaborating with the strongest party.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8025383.stm


From that article:
"Four of the Scots Guards gave sworn testimony, confirming that the shootings took place, confirming that the victims were unarmed. "
"We were kept away for a week and when we returned we found the bloated bodies, half eaten by animals."


[More data here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batang_Kali_massacre and here: http://dapmalaysia.org/all-archive/English/2004/jul04/bul/bul2460.htm]


I can understand the British authorities being unenthusiastic about re-examining the facts.
No ex-colonial power is glad to have its misbehaviour highlighted.
The British, French, and Dutch insist that their role in the East was that of enlightened bringers of civilization, law, and order, and that colonialism only benefitted the natives, who were incapable of administering themselves according to the standards of the civilized world. And who really wishes to dispute that?

I can also understand why the Malaysian authorities are not overly concerned - these were not Muslims, and therefore by the standards of Malaysia they can not really count for much.
Besides, there is no point in encouraging ANY sense of grievance among the Chinese. Surely that only leads to trouble?


I'm just noting that this was a war crime. One of many war crimes committed by the colonial powers in the years after the world war - thousands of people were killed or tortured in the eastern territories during the last gasps of the British, French, and Dutch empires.
This is just another war crime which our friends and allies (the former colonial powers) would rather forget. Why bring up dead issues?
After all, they lost their empires.
I also note that the survivors are now few in number, old and frail. When the last of them has died and still no justice has been done, the official version of events will stand. The victims will only be remembered as 24 among the tens of thousands of "communists" killed during the insurrection.
Seeing as so few Muslims died, compared to so many Chinese, the victory was without a doubt well worth it. Especially for the Malays.
And they are wonderful people, the Malays.