Diplomats introduced 'licence to kill' law over
killing of 24 unarmed villagers in Malaysia, according to secret
documents
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.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/may/06/britain-batang-kali-massacre-malaysia