MALAYA QUIET

Timaru Herald, Volume CLVIII, Issue 23331, 15 October 1945, Page 4

MALAYA QUIET

People Loyal To Empire Control In Outer Areas SINGAPORE, October 12. Virtually alone among the reoccupied Far East, Malaya has no major political problem to contend with. There is still some violence in the more remote areas and even in the larger towns, but this is exclusively the responsibility of gangsters who have taken the opportunity to indulge in a little terrorism. The country as a whole is quiet, and the population still takes any opportunity to give a spontaneous welcome to Allied servicemen. The penetration of British troops into all parts of Malaya is now complete, but in many areas only small numbers have arrived. These areas are being controlled by the Malayan people’s anti-Japanese army in co-operation with the Communists and are being handed back to the British without the slightest demur. The Mpaja and Communist organisations are the direct outcome of the work done by the secret force of British Army officers and men who operated behind the Japanese lines throughout the occupation, building up the resistance movement and the guerrilla forces which kept the Japanese grip on the country confined to the larger centres. Discipline is perfect, and there is no suggestion of an irridentist movement which might easily have arisen among people armed by us and able to acquire almost unlimited

supplies of Japanese arms. The work of these bodies has been the roundingup of Japanese, taking over arms dumps, preserving law and order and administering towns and districts until the British take over. Everywhere throughout Malaya the traveller comes across detachments of Mpaja or Communists carrying out police duties in towns and villages. Their flags and banners are everywhere, but there is no suggestion that they are antiBritish or anti-European. They are strongly anti-Japanese and as strongly pro-Malayan.

Traitors Rounded Up A great deal of the work of rounding up collaborationists and traitors has been in the hands of Mpaja. It is work they obviously enjoy doing. A small party of correspondents who spent the night in a little village in a remote part of Negri Sebilan were courteously received by the 18-year-old local commandant and given accommodation in the town gaol, which is the headquarters. After a meal the leader talked of the success he had in capturing two collaborationists who. he said, he had to rescue from the townspeople and invited the correspondents to see the prisoners. The first, a Chinese, was sitting in a cell bolt upright, perfectly motionless, and obviously in the last -stages of terror. He was not bound or manacled, but the other man '■'ho had been “rescued" was tied to his chair. He was in an appalling state, covered in blood from innumerable knife wounds and seemed to be near death. Tn the morning before the correspondents left they were invited to look again at the commander’s prisoners. The first apparently had not moved. He still sat perfectly motionless and exuded terror. The injured man was obviously dead. The incident was an example of what happened fairly frequently, specially in the early days of the reoccupation and demonstrates the moderation of the people who have good reason to hate those who accepted Japanese domination and sent many thousands of loyal Malayans to their death.

Japanese Brutality One almost incredible example of brutality occurred in the Important town of Batu Pahat. As soon as the Japanese walked in they assembled more than 50 of the leaders of the Chinese and Malay communities and shot them. The Japanese then declared the town and a large area round it a “black area,” and later assembled about 1000 men. women and children and murdered the lot. No one travelling through Northern Johore and the area north of that state and talking to the people can be unimpressed by the obvious loyalty of the people to the Empire arid, particularly, to their own country Malaya. There is a general demand that the people of Malaya should be given a more important place in the administration of the country. This demand may be largely satisfied by the new political development of Malaya foreshadowed in the British Government announcement of to-day.