exclusive

According to the Communist Party of Malaya secretary-general Chin Peng, his memoirs "will be ready for publication at the end of this year".

This former recipient of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) also revealed recently to malaysiakini in an exclusive interview that his memoirs "would map out the history of the party's struggle, starting from its inception until it agreed to disband its armed units after signing a peace treaty with Malaysia and Thailand in 1989".

Chin Peng, now 76, became the 11th secretary-general of the outlawed communist party in 1947.

He also told malaysiakini that his book will recount his "soul-searching thoughts" on the victories and mistakes committed by the pro-Beijing CPM, provide analyses on why the communist bloc collapsed in 1990 and how the event has affected communist parties globally.

From what Chin Peng has revealed about his memoirs, we can expect it to be an intellectual bombshell that could challenge some misconceptions, misperceptions, stereotypes and misinformation about the party, personalities and history as propagated passionately by its ideological and partisan opponents for the past 71 years.

Of course, Chin Peng himself had also been a passionate partisan from the time he joined the party in 1939 at the age of 15 to 1989 when he signed the peace treaty.

The other side of history

The truth will emerge only after two sides of the story are told, read, understood and publicly discoursed. We have heard and read enough of the version of history as told by the victors. It is time we lend our ears to the other side.

It will certainly not be easy for younger generations of Malaysians, Singaporeans and Britons to understand the history that spanned more than 70 years, and its interactions or interplays with the various regional and global forces at work in the period.

Love it or loathe it, Marxism-Leninism or communism had been a global ideology since the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 until 1991 when the Soviet Union imploded.

Thus, CPM was more than a political party in the sense we understand the term now. It was a Malayan section or chapter of international communism linked organisationally to the Communist International (Comintern) and later Communist Information Bureau (Cominform), both based in Moscow.

Only after the Sino-Soviet split in 1969 did CPM denounce "Soviet revisionism" and formally aligned with the Communist Party of China as an alternative centre of international socialist revolution to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

British ally

However, as we shall see later, Moscow and Beijing were not the only global links that CPM had. Between late 1941 and mid-1947, CPM was an ally, both politically and militarily, of the British and the worldwide anti-fascist united front that comprised the United States, nationalist China and France.

The armed forces of CPM, namely the Malayan People's Anti-Japanese Army (MPAJA) trained and advised technically by the British special operation officers to fight the Japanese in the Malayan jungles emerged from their hideouts on Aug 14, 1945 as part of the victorious Allied Forces to regain control of strategic towns and villages, and impose law and order before the return of the British on Sept 5, 1945.

Later, Chin Peng as a representative of CPM and MPAJA was awarded the OBE. London also invited MCP representatives to join in the military procession of Allied Forces to celebrate the worldwide liberation from the Axis Powers.

Chin Peng, whose real name is Ong Boon Hua, was then not the leader of CPM. At the age of 21, he was merely a regional commander of MPAJA from Perak.

He was, however, trusted as a remarkable leader of the anti-Japanese guerilla forces, by both the British as well as the then CPM secretary-general, Loi Tak @ Lye Teck @ Wright @ Lloyd, of mixed Chinese-Vietnamese parentage but spoke English, Chinese, French and Chinese dialects fluently.

Not a new party

In any case, CPM was not a new party or political force. By 1945, CPM had been in active existence in Peninsula Malaya and Singapore for more than 15 years.

According to historian, Yong Ching Fatt in his research monograph, The Origins of Malayan Communism (Singapore, South Seas Society, 1997), "the first representatives' conference of CPM was held on a Chinese rubber estate, north of the Buloh Kesap railway station on the Singapore-Kuala Lumpur truck line" (p 129).

The inaugural meeting of CPM was, according to Yong, addressed by an individual called Nguyen Ai Quoc. He later known as Ho Chi Minh, the father of Vietnamese independence.

Ho, then acting as a full-time agent or representative of the Communist International (Comintern) based in Moscow, spoke in English to some 20 communist activists who were all Chinese, enjoining them to "to study the Malay language and enlist Malay recruits as communists, not as nationalists..." (p128).

Ho's speech in English was translated into Chinese by Fu Tai-Keng, a propagandist well-verse in Marxism, Leninism and world affairs.

As to why there was no Malay and Indian delegates to the inaugural meeting of CPM, Yong suggests that "the conspicuous absence of Malay delegates was due largely to the arrests of key Malay communist leaders by the British in early 1930".

"It was not surprising that no Indian attended it because Indians were then more concerned about Indian nationalism which aimed at improving the welfare of the Indian community internally and that of India externally." (p130)

'Lenin of Malaya'

The inaugural meeting finally elected a central committee under the leadership of its first secretary-general, Lei Kuang-juan, a professional labour organiser. However, soon after Lee was elected as leader, he was arrested by the Special Branch of the Strait Settlements

He was convicted, sentenced and finally deported to China. Lee was eventually executed by the right-wing Nationalist regime in China in 1932.

Lee was replaced by Lin Chin-chung who serve as the second secretary-general from May 1930 to June 1931 when he was demoted for reasons unknown and transferred to Penang. Other subsequent party chiefs included Fu Hung-chi, Ho Wen-han, Au Tech-siu, Li Chi-sin, Ch'en Liang, Ts'ai Pai-yun and Yang Shao-min.

In 1939, Loi Tak @ Lye Teck @ Wright @ Lloyd, a man with mixed Chinese-Vietnamese parentage who was admired and respected as "the Lenin of Malaya" succeeded Yang Shao-min as the 10th CPM secretary-general.

Loi Tak first appeared in the circle of Malayan communists in Singapore in 1934.

When Loi Tak first arrived in Singapore claiming to be a Communist International agent from Moscow, Chin Peng was only a 10-year-old schoolboy in his hometown of Sitiawan in Perak.

A year later, Loi Tak was elected as a member of the central committee of party, and in 1936, the deputy secretary general. As we shall see later, Loi Tak was embroiled in the most sensational political scandal in CPM history.

He finally stood down in 1947 after leading the party for eight years. In the wake of Loi's downfall, Chin Peng became the new CPM secretary-general. He was only 23 years old.

This is the third of a seven-part series on the 'Life and times of Chin Peng', exclusively for Malaysiakini subscribers.

A date with the 'terrorists'

Village of ex-communists finds new hope

Chin Peng's memoirs to be released this year

Chin Peng and other ex-communist leaders not coming home

'We did not praise Mahathir': ex-CPM leader Chin Peng

Ex-communist leader says Bernama report misleading