I am writing in reference to your latest article regarding Chin Peng.

My family, a Malaysian family, is currently residing in Europe due to work commitments. Our children attend the international school here and recently our daughter who is 11-years-old was asked to write an article about heroes.

My daughter was keen to write about a political hero (in spite of my cajoling for her to write about scientists as heroes), her rationale being she wanted to write about a Malaysian hero who fought for the country.

A few names were mentioned, Mahathir for standing up to the West, Anwar for his struggle with Reformasi, and Raja Petra, Tun Onn Jaafar and Chin Peng's name also came up.

She decided to write about Chin Peng, the misunderstood and controversial hero in exile. Using the material she was able to get on the net (limited maybe), she wrote her article about his early years, his struggle with Japanese and British and his current struggle to come home.

What really baffled her was, the unwillingness of our government to let him return after the peace accord was signed. She asked me: if Germans were forgiven for World War II and Afrikaneers were forgiven for apartheid, why can't we forgive Chin Peng?

She sees him as a old man wanting to return home, no longer the soldier he used to be and can do no harm to our country.

My daughter's article reminds me of what we learnt about Chin Peng when we were in school in the 1980s. We learnt of Chin Peng, Parti Komunis Malaysia, the Emergency (Darurat), and the new villages.

We learnt he first helped in the struggle for independence and later was a threat to our democracy. By allowing Chin Peng to return, some of the older generation may feel upset but more importantly, we create history for the future generations.  

We will show that Malaysians are capable of reconciliation. This is a headline that we look forward to see in soon in the world news, reflective of the mature Malaysia, the 1Malaysia our government is promoting.
 
To Malaysiakini: thanks for keeping us Malaysians updated, and happy 10th anniversary.