Insurgency’s Decline and End in Peninsular Malaysia and in Sarawak
The 1970s and 1980s saw the CPM intensify its activities of terrorism and
clashes with the security forces. Communist groups attempted to blow up the
National Monument in Kuala Lumpur, carried out ambushes of police field forces and succeeded in assassinating the police chief of Perak state and the
Inspector-General of Police. These activities were due to a rivalry among
three factions in the CPM. The split had been over party purges and strategies
and each faction tried to outdo the other in militancy and violence. The
communist threat was so serious during the administration of third Prime
Minister Hussein Onn (1976-81) that it was alleged the government had been
infiltrated and there was communist influence among UMNO politicians.
These allegations arose in the heat of UMNO politics during the party’s
annual elections for top posts, and were taken so seriously that two UMNO
deputy ministers and several Malay journalists were detained for communist
activities.
However, in 1973-4 a major victory was scored by the government
when one of the Sarawak Communist Organization’s (SCO) leaders, Bong
Kee Chok, was persuaded to surrender with 481 followers. The group made
up about 75 % of the total communist force in the state. The rest followed
suit under another peace accord in 1990. The Chinese-led insurgency in
Sarawak began immediately after the Brunei uprising in December 1962
when SCO members joined the Brunei rebels in the jungles and teamed up
with Indonesian troops under Indonesia’s ‘confrontation’ of Malaysia. The
insurgents formed the North Kalimantan Communist Party (NKCP) in 1970.
Communism had spread from China through Sarawak’s Chinese schools in
the 1940s, and after the war spread further in the labour movement and
through infiltration within Sarawak’s first political party, the predominantlyChinese
Sarawak United People’s party, which was formed in June 1959.30
To reduce the local people’s support for the insurgency in Sarawak, the
federal government decided in 1965 to introduce ‘controlled areas’ by
resettling some 10,000 settlers in the First Division and the Third Division
near the border areas with Indonesian Kalimantan. The settlers were placed in
three ‘new villages’ fenced in with barbed wire, similar to those set up during
the 1948-60 Emergency in Malaya. 31 As a result of this operation, the
insurgents like their counterparts in Malaya could not receive food supplies
and other means of support from their Chinese and Dayak supporters.
Skirmishes with the security forces took place intermittently until overtures
were made by the Sarawak Chief Minister Abdul Rahman Ya’akub to the
insurgents and he succeeded in persuading them to lay down their arms.
Communist influence in the SUPP was only brought under control after the
party adopted a change of policy after the riots on May 13, 1969, when it
finally supported the formation of Malaysia and agreed to join the ruling
Alliance coalition in the Sarawak Council Negri. In Peninsular Malaysia, the split in the CPM eventually brought the
surrender of two factions which had merged and comprised 700 guerrillas.
They surrendered to Thai troops in December 1987, and it was reported that
only 1300 guerrillas of the original CPM’s 8th, 10th and 12th Regiments
remained active.32 On 5 November 1989 the Malaysian government revealed
that it was holding discussions with the CPM and the Thai military
commanders and groups close to the CPM. The talks had gone on for almost
a year. On 2 December 1989 the CPM agreed to end its armed struggle and
signed separate formal peace treaties with the Malaysian Government and
Thailand’s southern military commanders. 33 It was this agreement that
persuaded the Sarawak guerrillas in the NKCP to lay down their arms as well
in 1990. Six months later, the Deputy Inspector General of Police reported
that the CPM had fulfilled its obligations by surrendering its arms, which
were destroyed. He also reported that CPM members were helping to find
effective ways to destroy some 45,000 booby traps laid by its guerrillas along
the Malaysian-Thai border.