Batang Kali relatives edge closer to the truth about 'Britain's My Lai massacre'

Batang Kali 'Britain's My Lai massacre'

Batang Kali relatives edge closer to the truth about 'Britain's My Lai massacre'

Key Malayan Emergency notes have been handed to families of the 24 unarmed victims

Owen Bowcott

The Guardian, Wednesday 25 January 2012 15.51 GMT

Prisoners during the Malayan Emergency: the Foreign Office has produced documents about the deaths of 24 Malaysian men in 1948. Photograph: Jack Birns/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Image

Lawyers representing relatives of 24unarmed victims who died at Batang Kali, Malaysia, in December 1948 have finally been provided with key Foreign Office correspondence about past investigations and Cabinet Office guidance on when inquiries should be held.

Even Buckingham Palace has been pulled into the furore surrounding the fate of the villagers, who were rounded up on a large rubber-tapping estate in the colonial government's counter-insurgency operation against communists, known historically as the Malayan Emergency.

A petition to the Queen about the deaths has been handed to the British high commissioner in the Malaysian capital, Kuala Lumpur, and the royal household has replied. The palace, however, has declined to release the text of the letter.

The Foreign Office and the Ministry of Defence have always insisted the villagers were shot while trying to escape detention. The incident has been described by some as the "British My Lai massacre", after the US troop killings in Vietnam.

The Malaysian relatives' hopes have been boosted by a group of Kenyan survivors, mostly now in their 80s, who won the right last summer to sue the British government for damages over claims of torture during the 1950s Mau Mau uprising. A judicial review of the government's repeated refusal to hold a public inquiry into the alleged massacre at Batang Kali is likely to be heard in the spring.

The Foreign Office has refused, so far, to release any additional documents from its still unreleased colonial-era archive. The depository at Hanslope Park, near Milton Keynes, contains thousands of files not yet handed over to the National Archives.

Previously unseen evidence of atrocities from Kenya did eventually emerge from the Foreign Office store, but the Malaysian files have so far remained closed despite repeated requests. The Foreign Office has promised to review the material, although it says it will take time.

Much of what occurred in Batang Kali is agreed. On 11 December 1948, a patrol of Scots Guards surrounded and entered the village, which lies north of the capital. The male villagers were separated. That evening, one of the men was shot by soldiers; the next day a further 23 died. None of the victims were armed and no weapons were found before the killings.

Some of the Scots Guards involved in the incident approached a Sunday newspaper in the 1970s with accounts that disputed the official version of a thwarted escape. Scotland Yard detectives subsequently interviewed the men but were prevented from flying out to Malaysia.

Solicitors have, unusually, been given access to the police files. Soldiers have also been contacted again by the lawyers but none is expected to give evidence unless a public inquiry is ordered.

John Halford, of Bindmans solicitors in London, who is representing the Batang Kali families, said: "We are not asking for anyone to be prosecuted. The surviving soldiers are too old for it to be considered appropriate. But the families want the state to take responsibility for the actions. It's necessary to get to the bottom of what happened. Extrajudicial executions by British troops have not ceased. There are recent examples [Iraq]. These are people who have been wronged and had no remedy at all.

"There should be some resolution. These were extrajudicial killings of civilians that were pre-planned. The Dutch government has now agreed to pay families from Indonesia reparations for a colonial-era massacre that occurred around the same time, in 1947.

"Although [government] solicitors have confirmed that there is material relating to Batang Kali in their secret archives, they say it's not relevant. They won't let us look at it. There was an announcement that it would be publicly accessible, but that commitment hasn't been honoured."

The Foreign Office said: "This event happened over 60 years ago. Accounts of what happened conflict and virtually all the witnesses are dead. In these circumstances it is very unlikely a public inquiry could come up with recommendations which would help to prevent any recurrence."

The FO added: "The families of those who died have chosen to take legal action to challenge this decision and so it would be inappropriate to comment further now that legal proceedings are under way."

On the question of making public the relevant files at the Hanslope Park archives, it said: "The Foreign Office holds 8,800 files from 37 former British administrations, including Malaya. The government plans to make as much of this material as possible available to the wider public, and has confirmed that the files will be reviewed. This review process may take some time."

New documents reveal cover-up of 1948 British massacre of villagers in MalayaForeign Office intervened to halt an investigation in the 1990s by Malaysian authorities into the deaths of 24 unarmed villagersMark Townsendguardian.co.ukSaturday 9 April 2011

Communist prisoners are lined up and shot during the Malaya emergency of the late 1940s. Photograph: Jack Birns/Time & Life PicturesThe Foreign Office intervened to stop a criminal investigation into the alleged massacre of 24 unarmed villagers by British troops, in a cover-up that puts Britains colonial past under renewed scrutiny. Newly disclosed documents reveal that in the 1990s UK officials pressured Malaysian authorities into aborting a police inquiry into the alleged killings by Scots Guards in Malaya in 1948.

They reveal that Malaysian police officers contacted Interpol and were due to visit the UK in 1993 to interview soldiers involved in the shootings, only for the Foreign Office to pressure the countrys high commissioner into halting the visit. One memorandum states that senior Foreign Office officials later met Malaysian police chiefs to discuss closing the inquiry shortly before it was aborted.

The documents, released by Malaysian sources ahead of a judicial review related to the massacre, also reveal how a Metropolitan police investigation in 1970 into the allegations was terminated because an incoming Conservative government did not want the darker aspects of Britains colonial past exposed.

The plantation workers were shot in cold blood by a 16-man patrol of Scots Guards in December 1948. Many of the victims bodies were found to have been mutilated and their village of Batang Kali was burned to the ground. No weapons were found when the village was searched during a military operation against Chinese communists in the post-second world war Malayan emergency.

The British government has refused to apologise for the incident or offer reparations, and last November it said it would not hold a public inquiry into an incident that campaigners dub Britains My Lai massacre. A recent letter from Treasury solicitors indicates that the government is not prepared to discuss whether the killings were lawful or not.

News of the suppressed investigations follows last weeks disclosure of government reports in the high court revealing the extent of British brutality during the Mau Mau rebellion in Kenya.

Four Kenyans who allege that rebels were sexually abused, castrated and beaten while detained under colonial rule in the 1950s will continue their claim for compensation this week.

A separate legal challenge over allegations of colonial brutality will shortly commence, with the Bindmans law firm launching a judicial review over the governments refusal to hold an independent inquiry into the Malaysian killings.

The case is being brought on behalf of four survivors, including one whose father was allegedly beheaded. The governments refusal to reopen the matter has provoked claims that it is carrying on a cover-up that has lasted more than half a century.

Documents released by Tan Kai Hee, founder of the Action Committee Condemning the Batang Kali Massacre, also show that the lead investigating officer in the 1970 Scotland Yard inquiry, Detective Chief Superintendent Frank Williams, had major concerns over a political aspect to the case.

The defence secretary, Denis Healey, had instructed the Met to investigate the incident and arranged for Williams to travel to Malaysia to interview other witnesses and disinter the bodies for forensic examination.

However, the inquiry was abruptly stopped. Previously unreleased documents citing Williamss investigation state: It was patently clear that the decision to terminate inquiries in the middle of the investigation was due to a political change of view when the new Conservative government came into office.

Author Ian Ward, who wrote an account of the massacre, Slaughter and Deception at Batang Kali, said: Personally I was appalled at the cover-up that was instituted and has been systematically renewed year after year since it occurred.

Speaking from Malaysia, Ward said that, since his book was published in 2009, he had obtained notes of a 1994 meeting between two senior Foreign Office officials and a police chief in Malaysia during which they discuss winding up the investigation.

The four Malaysians represented by Bindmans are Loh Ah Choi, who was seven at the time and claims to have witnessed his uncle being shot dead; Lim Kok, whose fathers corpse was allegedly beheaded by the soldiers; Chong Nyok Keyu, whose uncle was allegedly shot and killed; and Wooi Kum Thai, whose father was also killed.

John Halford, a partner at Bindmans, said: This case is all about questions which, when they are finally answered, will bring about accountability for a massacre that was as immoral as it was unlawful. For six decades successive governments have gone to extraordinary lengths to evade answering these questions.

A letter seen by the Observer reveals that the government is threatening the four claimants with legal costs of up to 100,000 if the quest for an inquiry fails. Many will question whether that is something a government with nothing to hide and confidence these killings were legal would resort to, said Halford.

Tan Kai Hee said the British governments decision to refuse a public inquiry into the allegations had left him shocked and deeply disappointed. He added: Many of us had believed for much of our lives that Britain stood for openness, fairness and honour. The current impasse is neither honourable nor moral.

The official British position maintains that the villagers were killed as they attempted a mass escape into the jungle, having been warned they would be shot if they tried. Some of the troops involved have, however, claimed that there was no escape attempt and that they were ordered to take the men out in groups and shoot them.

The original investigation, in December 1948, amounted to a superficial cover-up, according to Halford. Conducted by the Malaya attorney-general, Sir Stafford Foster Sutton, it did not question any survivors or carry out forensic examinations. An undated memo records the attorney-generals view that there was something to be said for public executions.

A BRUTAL CONFLICT

Three years after the end of the second world war, Commonwealth forces became embroiled in a bitter jungle war against a resolute army of Chinese communists whose attacks on industry and rubber-tree plantations threatened Britains colonial interests.

At stake was control of the new Federation of Malaya, a patchwork of states on the Malayan peninsula which were then British colonies. The federation was the successor to British Malaya, the loosely described set of states that were brought under colonial control between the 18th and 20th centuries.

Had the guerrillas prevailed, Malaya would have become a communist republic, tied to China, but after 12 years of fighting the insurgency was defeated.

The British government classified the conflict as an emergency, in deference to the British owners of Malayas lucrative rubber plantations and tin mines, who were insured for losses from theft, but not for those incurred in wartime.

During the first five years alone, the British dropped 545,000 tons of bombs in 4,500 air strikes. More than 500 British personnel, including the high commissioner, Henry Gurney, 1,300 Malayan police and 3,000 civilians were killed. In addition, the British interned 34,000 people and sprayed hundreds of acres with defoliant.

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Revealed: how Britain tried to legitimise Batang Kali massacre

Diplomats introduced 'licence to kill' law over killing of 24 unarmed villagers in Malaysia, according to secret documents

Mark Townsend The Observer, Sunday 6 May 2012

The Scots Guards served in Malaya after the second world war. Photograph: Haywood Magee/Getty Images

Senior British diplomats introduced an extraordinary "licence to kill" law in an attempt to legalise retrospectively the colonial-era killing of 24 villagers by UK troops in Malaysia, the Observer can reveal.

The Batang Kali massacre took place on 12 December 1948, as British troops carried out a counter-insurgency operation against Chinese Malayan communists. The shootings took place after a 16-man patrol group of Scots Guards surrounded a rubber estate at Sunga Rimoh by the Batang Kali river. The bodies of several unarmed villagers were reportedly mutilated and the village was burned to the ground.

An informal investigation of the incident, carried out in 1949, exonerated all the soldiers involved. But claims of a cover-up by families of the victims have ensured that the killings in the village of Batang Kali remain one of the most contentious in British colonial history.

Some have described the episode as "Britain's My Lai," a reference to the murders of Vietnamese villagers by US forces in Vietnam. The campaign for a thorough investigation into the incident will reach a climax in London this week when a court will finally rule on whether to open an official inquiry into the killings. Although some of the Scots Guardsmen are still alive, the victims' families are not seeking criminal prosecutions.

Ahead of the hearing, the Observer has seen documents revealing that after the killings the British authorities hastily passed a regulation empowering troops in the country to use "lethal force" to prevent escape attempts.

According to papers recovered from previously secret Foreign Office archives at Hanslope Park, Buckinghamshire, Regulation 27A was unveiled on 20 January 1949 by Sir Alec Newboult, chief secretary of what was then Malaya, little more than a month after the alleged massacre. They show that Newboult's command authorised "the use of lethal weapons" to "prevent the escape from arrest," so long as a warning was issued first. It explains that the law is applicable to any "officer" belonging to the UK military serving in Malaya.

Tellingly, the regulation has retrospective power, specifying that any "act or thing done before the coming into force of this regulation" should be covered by the command.

The Foreign Office and the Ministry of Defence have said the 24 Chinese labourers were shot while trying to escape detention, an account since questioned by the majority of the soldiers involved.

The sudden drafting of the new regulation, disclosed now for the first time, has been interpreted by lawyers as a clumsy bid to render lawful the killings that had already occurred.

John Halford, of law firm Bindmans, which is representing families of the victims, said: "In their own way, the British officials responsible for Regulation 27A were making legal history, but in the most insidious and immoral way imaginable. This law was carefully crafted to immunise those involved in the killings from the legal consequences of their actions. It was an attempt to use the statute book to excuse and legitimise an atrocity that could never withstand the scrutiny of a court."

The new law also sought to extend the use of lethal force against individuals suspected of merely "consorting" with a person possessing firearms. No weapons were ever found at Batang Kali.

Chin Peng, leader of the communist insurgency, now aged 90, has stated that no one in the village was linked to the guerrillas. At the time, the Batang Kali shootings were celebrated as a victory against the rebels.

Last month it emerged that thousands of documents detailing some of the most unsavoury acts committed during the final years of the British empire were missing. Although papers relating to the Malayan Emergency survive, documents relating to the events at Batang Kali appear to be among those lost, including the first testimonies of the soldiers involved in the killings.

One piece of evidence which will emerge in the divisional court this week details a Malaysian police inquiry conducted in the 1990s, an investigation that was aborted after Foreign Office officials intervened.

A previous inquiry launched in 1970, with a special Scotland Yard task team, was "terminated" by the incoming Tory government. In the same year the People newspaper quoted one of the Scots Guards involved as saying: "Once we started firing we seemed to go mad."

Some of those involved later admitted they had given false accounts to ensure the Guardsmen were absolved.

Lawyers for the families of the 24 victims will claim that unarmed villagers were murdered in cold blood, and that the truth about the killings has been suppressed.

Batang Kali massacre: British soldiers admitted unlawful killings, court told

Lawyers for relatives of those who died in the 1948 mass killing disclose soldiers' Owen Bowcott, legal affairs correspondent

guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 8 May 2012 15.28 BST

Loh Ah Choi (L), Chang Koon Ying (C) and Lim Ah Yin (R), relatives of unarmed Malaysian rubber plantation workers killed in Batang Kali in 1948 arrive at the high court. Photograph: Kerim Okten/EPA

Scots Guards soldiers admitted unlawfully shooting dead 24 Malaysian villagers then covering up the massacre, the high court has been told.

Calling for an official inquiry into the mass killing during anti-insurgency operations in 1948, lawyers for relatives of the victims disclosed for the first time the soldiers' accounts given during police interviews.

The statements were taken in 1970, when the then Labour government ordered an investigation into the deaths.

Six of the eight soldiers interviewed under caution by detectives corroborated accounts that the villagers had been unlawfully killed, Michael Fordham QC, counsel for the Malaysian relatives, told the court.

One member of the Scots Guards platoon, Alan Tuppen, maintained that a sergeant had said beforehand: "The (villagers) were going to be shot and we could fall in or fall out."

William Cootes, another soldier, told detectives he saw as another sergeant "motioned to (a) youth to run and then he shot him".

George Kydd, also a member of the Scots Guards patrol, recalled in 1970 that: "The bandits were then shot but I'm sorry I must tell you the truth, they were not running away.

"There was an inquiry later on and I've got to go along with this, we were told before going in to tell the same story, that is that the bandits were running away when they were shot I don't remember who told us to tell this story but it was a member of the army."

The police investigation was launched after a newspaper carried some of the soldiers' accounts of what had happened 22 years earlier.

The probe was abruptly cancelled, however, in June 1970 after the Conservatives won the general election.

An internal police report by Detective Chief Superintendent Frank Williams, who led the police investigation, contradicted official explanations that there was insufficient evidence.

His report, disclosed to the high court, said: "At the outset this matter was politically flavoured and it is patently clear that the decision to terminate enquiries in the middle of the investigation was due to a political change of view when the new Conservative government came into office after the general election."

Relatives of those killed in Batang Kali, who have twice petitioned the Queen, are challenging the government's continued refusal to hold an inquiry into the incident.

Judicial review of the decision will continue until Wednesday.

Judgment is expected to be reserved.

The Ministry of Defence and Foreign Office maintain that it is too late for lessons to be learned from any inquiry and that most of the witnesses are no longer alive.

Relatives lose court case for inquiry in to 1948 Malaya 'massacre'

Army accused of killing 23 male villagers in Malaya Judges ruled 'impossible' to reach definitive verdict

Richard Norton-Taylor

The Guardian, Tuesday 4 September 2012 17.45 BST

Relatives of Malaysian rubber plantation workers killed in in Batang Kali in 1948. Photograph: Dominic Lipinski/PA

British troops killed 24 unarmed rubber plantation workers, subjected their families to simulated executions, and rounded up women and children during an operation described as a massacre during the anti-communist insurgency in Malaya more than 63 years ago, the high court heard on Tuesday.

However, though this account "could not be the subject of serious doubt", and though it contradicts claims made by successive British governments, two judges dismissed an attempt by families of the victims to set up a public inquiry into the event.

Their lawyers said they would appeal after Sir John Thomas president of the high court's Queen's bench division and Mr Justice Treacy ruled that it would be "very difficult at this point in time" to establish whether the shootings were "deliberate executions".

This was despite their statement earlier in the judgment where they refer to allegations made in 1970 by soldiers that there was a "deliberate execution of the men and it was 'covered up' by the Scots Guards and British army". The judges added: "This is a very serious allegation though one which can properly be made on the evidence."

They ruled: "The first matter in relation to the purpose of inquiry is to consider whether it can establish the facts. There are obviously enormous difficulties in conducting an inquiry into a matter that happened over 63 years ago. Most of the contemporary documents are missing and most of those who were engaged are dead. Nor, in our view, would it be any easier to determine whether the use of force was reasonable or proportionate."

The judges analysed three investigations into the Batang Kali killings in the late 1940s, the early 1970s and the mid-1990s. They said victims' relatives had alleged a cover-up in relation to investigations in 1948 and 1970.

They said it was difficult to escape the conclusion that between 1993 and 1996 departments of John Major's Conservative government decided to "progress any inquiries with as much delay as possible".

Since the account of the villagers and five Scots Guardsmen had never been the subject of a "definitive inquiry", it was "now impossible to reach any definitive conclusion as to how the deaths of the inhabitants came about".

John Halford, of the law firm Bindsman, solicitor for the families, said: "Many of the shameful events at Batang Kali have been firmly established, as has the UK's ongoing legal responsibility for them. If ministers can find the moral courage within themselves to address it, they can do so immediately. If they fail to act decisively to end the ongoing injustices at the heart of this case, the survivors and families of the Batang Kali massacre will continue to pursue legal action and complete the work this court has begun."

Lim Kok, whose father, Lim Tian Shui, was found beheaded, said: "Though thecourt found the government did not need to hold an inquiry on technical grounds, the fact is that the Scots Guards shot innocent civilians, my father included."

Chong Koon Yin, whose father Chong Voon was also killed during the massacre, said: "The truth has not been fully revealed. Without a proper inquiry or a proper acceptance of fault, the government held legally responsible for the killing remains unaccountable."

On 11 December 1948 a patrol of Scots Guards surrounded and entered the village, which lies north of the capital. The male villagers were separated. That evening one of the men was shot by soldiers; the next day a further 23 died. None of the victims was armed and no weapons were found before the killings.

The Malaysian relatives' hopes have been boosted by a group of Kenyan survivors, mostly in their 80s, who won the right last summer to sue the British government for damages over claims of torture during the 1950s Mau Mau uprising.