In response to ' Scrap double standards and let Chin Peng return ', I will offer a perspective that supports the viewpoint of A Kid Then, Now a Senior Citizen .

My uncle (my mother's brother) was a police inspector during the Emergency (1948-1960) and was murdered by Chin Peng's communist terrorists in a deadly ambush when he tried to go to the aid of a constable who was shot riding the point vehicle.

He was 26 then and left behind a young wife and son barely two years old. I was not around then but the details were explained to me by my mother. She added that the funeral pyre had to be watched over by members of the police force until it was reduced to ashes since the CTs often destroyed them while they were burning to show their terror-inflicting capabilities.

I had only a series of faded photographs (that my grandfather framed) showing the young man, alive and looking smart in his uniform, the corpse, the funeral and the pyre with several police guards standing with rifles at a safe distance. My grandfather was proud of his son who had made the grade to police inspector at that young age - which I was told was not an easy thing with the British. How much it must have devastated him I will never know but he never mentioned his son's name and maintained silence over the subject until his death in 1968.

I have no objections to reading Chin Peng's account of events and would encourage all Malaysians to read about our recent history from any source, at the very minimum. However, I will differ in my viewpoint on letter writer Why Not as far as his suggestion that Chin Peng "fought for the country".

True, Chin Peng fought the Japanese with Force 136 aided by the British commando training in the jungles. His agenda however, if you read all about his activities from both the British and Malayan articles, was more personal in nature. He was seeking personal aggrandisement as the people's champion.

Shortly after the Japanese surrendered, it was Chin Peng's CTs that suddenly appeared at various town centres around Malaya trying to make it appear as if they were solely responsible for the Japanese defeat; the British put an end to that in short order. Chin Peng was completely indoctrinated into the communist views, knew the power of unions (and used it well) and knew the weaknesses of the British.

His initial call to rally the people of Malaya behind him was based on the premise that (a) the British will not leave - we (the CTs) will drive them out and (b) non-Malays are not citizens and should take part in this struggle to gain equality with the Malays. The British, as many wrongs as they did in Malaya, made one (of a few) pride-salvaging gesture - by agreeing to grant independence with a definite time-frame.

If any argument has to be made in Chin Peng's favour here, I will concede that he may have hastened the process to Merdeka (by a couple of years) and, more importantly, inadvertently prompted Umno (indirectly) into relenting on the equal citizenry to all Malayans issue, regardless of ethnic origin in order to deny the CTs a basis for the latter's struggle.

Let me explain: Umno (under Dato Onn bin Jaffar) rejected the British proposal of "citizenry for all Malayans regardless of ethnic origin" twice before 1951. Ironically, Dato Onn did an about-turn, and shortly after, left Umno and started a party that ran on equal citizenry footing! Anyway, that's another story.

Further down the road, after much negotiations mostly due to Tungku Abdul Rahman's credit, Umno saw the need to share citizenship status with non-Malays if they were to galvanise the support of all Malayans. Note that they rejected it twice - in 1946 during the Malayan Union and again within the 1948 constitution.

Anyway, here is where the accolades for Chin Peng have to end. Chin Peng, realising that his original clarion call (independence and equal citizenry) had no basis, resorted to the standard communist and Marxist methods of using brutal force to support his cause. Over 1,000 civilians and security force members were killed by the CTs in 1951 (more in some years) for no apparent reason other than suspected "support for anti-communist activities".

For civilians, these activities meant such things as going to work to tap rubber or mine tin as these were viewed by the CTs as supporting the colonial masters. During those days, large numbers of Chinese had dispersed to the countryside raising crops and farm animals following the Japanese purges in the towns during the occupation. Chin Peng's CTs exploited these farmers on the fringes for some time until the Briggs re-settlement plan with the introduction of New Villages (Kampong Bahru - that's where the term came from, originally).

The plan saw whole settlements in the countryside moved into barbed wire compounds. With the CTs being deprived of food, the plan worked and forced Chin Peng to the conference table. When Chin Peng attended the Baling talks he was suffering from beri-beri.

The tragedy of these events is that it need not have happened. Chin Peng could have used his brilliant orchestration of the trade unions, his grassroots connections and his opportunistic talents to run for peaceful elections. The irony of it also is that he stood a good chance of winning the bulk of the non-Malay votes with his anti-Japanese credentials.

Instead, Chin Peng chose terror as a weapon of choice over the ballot box. Freedom fighters rarely kill their own countrymen; Chin Peng did not fight for his country - he fought for an ideology he believed in and killing fellow innocent (and largely, poor) Malayans was calculated "collateral damage" that he accepted as a "fair" price.

Also, just as letter writer Why Not recounted Japanese atrocities to the Malayan people, my grandfather told us many stories of the "free-movies" in theaters followed by mass rounding up of Chinese patrons into trucks which ended up along beaches or rubber estates for summary executions. My mother recounted many nights (for over three years) where she and her sisters helped hide a number of these Chinese farmers in my grandfather's home.

However, comparing Chin Peng with Japanese investors (and blanket-indicting the latter) in the country is irrelevant unless one of the Japanese investors is shown to be a former war criminal (one of the Japanese "terror" officers) who administered Japanese Malaya during the war.

I read that Chin Peng would like to "pay respects to his fallen comrades". How about asking him to visit every bereft parent (if they are still alive), mother and child (killed by him and his CT friends) in Malaya and asking their forgiveness. Chin Peng must know how difficult it must have been for young widowed mothers (who had almost no chance of re-marrying) to raise their very young children during those days when money was incredibly hard to come by.

What possible line of work could a young stay-at-home mother go into that would have provided adequate food and shelter to her fatherless child during those hard times? Mark Twain once said, "the only reason we do not cry at other people's funerals is because we are not involved". It is very easy to take a "detached view" and say that "all is forgiven" and throw in a few of the standard clich "that was long ago", "time heals everything" etc. when you are not impacted in one way or another by the events of the Emergency.

Chin Peng's hand is tainted with the blood of too many innocent Malayans. He cannot and should not be allowed to step foot into Malaya. To invite him to Malaysia would be to dishonour the many brave and young Malayans (whom we have all forgotten about) who went to work to provide for their families and who lie silent in so many graves across the peninsula.