‘Chinese Go Home’ rekindles another emergency atrocity

 

From Kua Kia Soong

“Chinese Go Home” is a fresh endeavour into filmmaking by University of Cambridge historian Rachel Leow. Screened to a Malaysian/international audience on International Women’s Day by Hikayat art space, the 20-minute film recounts the harrowing stories of banishments and deportations (euphemistically called ‘repatriations’ by the colonial power) as told by two women whose family members were deported at the start of the Emergency. Refreshingly so, Leow allows this story, too often framed by male narratives, to be told by women.

As a Malaysian who grew up during the Emergency, this racist slogan “Chinese Go Home” bandied around by politicians as well as racial supremacists through the years leading up to independence still rings in my head.

This is because its communalist intent is still present in present-day Malaysian politics as the Johor sultan’s recent admonition to Malaysians to refrain from calling other citizens “pendatang” (immigrants) testifies.

As a human rights defender in the human rights organisation Suaram, “Chinese Go Home” rekindles memories of yet another atrocity inflicted by the colonial power during the Emergency, namely, the deportation of more than 20,000 Chinese from Malaya to China even though many of them were local born Malayans.

A smaller number of ethnic Indians and Javanese were likewise deported to India and Java respectively. This method of “banishment” used by the British colonial power is not as well-known as the initial mass detentions and later, the Briggs’ Plan of containment of half a million Chinese Malayans in “New Villages”.

Communalist intent of ‘Chinese Go Home’ slogan

The repression during the Emergency provided British imperialism with an opportunity to deflect the anti-colonial forces and effect the neo-colonial accommodation they preferred.

The entire colonial strategy – especially the aftermath of the Malayan Union crisis – had convinced the British that the custodians of an independent Malaya would be the traditional Malay ruling class. This was in keeping with the communalist strategy that the British colonial power followed since the start of colonisation.

The divide-and-rule strategy was conceived as soon as the British decided to intervene in the Malay states in the third quarter of the nineteenth century. The main axis of this strategy was to prop up the traditional Malay rulers and to create a class of colonial civil servants from these aristocratic elite to satisfy the myth of “Malay sovereignty” at the time.

This, in turn, allowed the colonial power to treat the non-Malay population as dispensable commodities depending on the prevailing economic conditions. This would later serve as a bulwark against the demands for civil rights by the non-Malay population during the independence struggle.

Thus, the British promoted the idea of the “special position of the Malays” by confining the Malay peasantry to the “Malay Reservations” to produce rice and other food for the workers in the capitalist sector and at the same time, to prevent their integration into an anti-colonial movement.

This proved to be useful during the propaganda war against the insurgents in the Emergency when the Malay kampung folk were warned against following the “alien communist terrorists” and the incompatibility of Islam and communism.

How did the Brits get away with this banishment caper?

When the Emergency was declared, the colonial power took advantage of the Emergency Regulations to either imprison or deport hundreds of political activists and trade unionists. There were three distinct stages in the methods used by the Brits to deal with the insurgency. The first method was of course, through arrests and detentions. Soon, the detention camps were overflowing and that was when they resorted to banishments.

By the end of 1948, more than 13,000 people had been accounted for by these means. Deportation was the favourite method used to deal with the militant masses, at least until the logistics got out of hand. At the very start of the Emergency, the British colonial government barely managed to get away with this drastic method of repression, as is clear from the following colonial office dispatch:

“… propose to expel Chinese from Malaya at the rate of 2,000 a month. In normal conditions in China, we would certainly have expected very vigorous representation from the Chinese government about the regulations … However, the reactions of the Chinese Central Government, whose days are numbered, are not of great importance one way or another. It will almost certainly be replaced … I must say that I think that the absence of any check on the executive in this mass expulsion of residents of Malaya is unfortunate, and that in practice grave injustice is liable to be done to individuals. I should have thought it possible, by the exercise of ingenuity, to have provided for some sort of review of executive action in appropriate cases. Certainly, had such provision been made, the scope for propaganda against barbarous British injustices would have been less … The fact is that Whitehall has been presented with a fait accompli.”

When this dispatch reached the Foreign Secretary’s office, the response was as smug as could be expected:

“The Regulations are a step in the right direction though possibly rather a drastic one. However, due no doubt to the Chinese government’s preoccupation nearer home, I think we have got away with it this time … I think we should say nothing in our reply to the Colonial Office to suggest that we are in any way displeased.”

The British High Commissioner, Sir Henry Gurney insisted that they should say “… not banishment but repatriation”.

Soon, banishments became problematic as logistical and diplomatic hurdles got in the way because of the chaotic situation in China with its own refugees’ problem. Thus, by January 1949, there were only 262 deportations. The solution was subsequently found in “collective repatriation”, families and all, and by 1953, more than 20,000 Chinese, including many who were born in Malaya, had been deported.

Before long, another colonial solution was found in the Briggs’ “containment” Plan of resettling the half a million Chinese “squatters”, regarded as the vital supporters of the guerrillas since by then deporting them all proved to be too big a logistic problem.

The Briggs Plan involved moving them en masse into “New Villages”, which were no more than concentration camps with high barbed-wire fences, heavily armed police guards, curfews and other prohibitive regulations. The rest is history.

Truth and reconciliation

Leow’s film provides us with one way of documenting insights into the reality faced by the more than 20,000 Malayans who were deported at the start of the Emergency and the effect this had on their families left behind. The country owes them that recognition of their citizenship rights, especially if they were local born.

To put this traumatic part of our history to rest, a Truth & Reconciliation Commission can elaborate on this process of restitution of justice, dignity and reaffirm the equal status of all Malaysians irrespective of ethnicity, religion or gender, who regard Malaysia as their home.

‘Chinese Go Home’ can be viewed on YouTube.

Kua Kia Soong is adviser to human rights NGO, Suara Rakyat Malaysia (Suaram). - FMT

The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of MMKtT.