Suriani Abdullah, a well-known leader of the outlawed Communist Party of Malaya (CPM), died peacefully at 6am today at her home in Narathiwat, Thailand, after battling ill health for almost five years.

NONE Suriani, 89, who suffered severe memory loss, leaves behind a husband - former CPM chief Abdullah CD - and daughter, Karisma.

ACMP spokesperson, who wished to be known only as Mat Amin, said the community of ex-soldiers who lived in the same village as Suriani gave their leader a tearful goodbye as they were parting with "a comrade and a mother whom they loved dearly".

"Although bedridden, she was always asking after the village and its progress. She was always motivating us to increase our income and was very concerned about the well-being of the village and its people," he said, in an email to Malaysiakini.

NONE Suriani was born in 1924 as Eng Ming Ching, in Setiawan, Perak, and joined the underground CPM in 1940 at the age of 16.

She was then actively involved in organising women workers in the Kinta Valley and later participated in the anti-fascist guerrilla, the Malayan People's Anti-Japanese Army (MPAJA).

She studied at the Nan Hwa High School in Setiawan together with CPM secretary-general Chin Peng and in 1975, became an elected member of the CPM's central committee member.

Despite her ill health, Suriani was never alone, as she had the constant company of her daughter and other female friends who would visit her from time to time.

Joys and difficulties shared together

"Upon hearing about her demise, her friends automatically stopped working and started to mourn her departure," said Mat Amin, who was also a former soldier of CPM's 10th regiment.

"She was where we would go to share our problems or happiness, we shared our joys and also our difficulties together," he added sadly.

Suriani's body was carried to the funeral site - about one kilometre away - by her friends who did not want to send her away by car, and who preferred to take turns to carry her coffin on their shoulders.

NONE According to social political commentator James Wong Wing Hon, Suriani, in the 1950s, "was proclaimed, in absentia, ‘a resistance heroine' of the Pacific War at an international conference in Beijing".

"She only reappeared in public view on Dec 2, 1989 as a VIP at  the ceremony in Haadyai witnessing the signing of the Peace Accords between the Communist Party of Malaya and the governments of Malaysia, as well as Thailand," said Wong, who runs a blog called 'Clare Street' as well.

"In the mid-1990s, Suriani and her husband Abdullah CD - also chairperson of CPM - was granted an audience in a palace by His Highness Sultan Azlan Shah of Perak.

"Later in 1999, they performed the Haj at the holy city of Mecca," added the former DAP Kampar MP.