As someone who grew up in Ayer Tawar, a town next to Sitiawan, I fully understand the points made by A Kid Then, Now A Senior Citizen. I can testify that the things he said in his open letter to Chin Peng concur with what my family had told me. The arrogance of the murderers and pattern of brutality are similar. They were brutal and killed point-blank.

The father of my favourite teacher was killed by a communist member who lived two doors away from our family. After he was found guilty by the British administered court, he was deported to China. Unlike Chin Peng, five years ago this member came to Malaysia to visit his relatives.

During my childhood days, I used to play at a house next door. There I saw holes all over one of the wooden walls. My old neighbour told me that they were bullet holes left by the communists who were hunting for him because of his refusal to support them.

My grandfather was quite well-to-do during those days. My father told me that my grandfather had to live like a nomad. Even when he slept at home he was geared and prepared to escape through the back door whenever the communists came for him or rather his money.

Eventually he died of a sickness he contracted from sleeping away from home. From the symptoms that my family described, the sickness is similar to dengue fever. After he passed away, they continued to knock at my grandmother's door.

The family lived in fear and my father heard similar remarks that "you are only a little boy, we will not harm you" whenever he tried to escape from them.

Years later, my grandmother would point out to us one by one those communists who had bullied them. She did that every time one of them died and the funeral preparations was underway. Her timing puzzled me.

Later I figured that it was because she couldn't wait to tell us about the culprits who had made her suffer, but she would not say it while they were alive for fear that we would do or say anything silly.

My family also told us about the torture they faced at the hands of the Japanese. At one time the men from the village were confined in a cinema without food for days. Later truckloads of them were sent for execution, never to be seen again.

My grandfather was pulled aside to be executed but immediately let off after a cough came from spy inside a parked van. The cough was interpreted as a signal to the Japanese that he was not the right guy. He was so paranoid after that incident that he went into hiding for weeks in the woods, without telling anyone at home.

I belong to the younger generation and thus am not in the position to say that A Kid Then is wrong for calling Chin Peng to stay away from Malaysia. I was not in his shoes. However, from the stories I heard from my ancestors, and later with the chance to know who the culprits were, I figure that most of them fit the profile of gangsters today.

They were lazy criminals and parasites of society. They were the ones who bullied and executed, while most of the real communists left for the jungle later.

I am of the opinion that if the Japanese, who were more brutal, are allowed to invest and come into the country by the thousands, why not Chin Peng? They all held different ideologies.

The Japanese killed to conquer, but Chin Peng fought for the country. It was history. If we chose to remember the bad, then let's chase out the Japanese too. They killed and brutalised more people.