An ageing communist guerrilla who led a revolt that convulsed Malaysia for three decades has asked a court to allow him to return from exile in Thailand, his lawyer said on Friday. Chin Peng, 80, led a guerrilla campaign against Japanese, British colonial, Malaysian and Thai forces over three decades, from the 1940s until well into the 1970s, when it was finally crushed. Only in 1989 was a formal peace treaty signed. "We wish to come back to be good filial children and visit our ancestors, parents and family graves," Chin Peng and some of his colleagues said in a statement to the court. "We have renounced violence, armed struggle once and for all."
| And after you're dead, we'll believe you. |
Malaysia's prime minister said the government would wait for the court's verdict before deciding on the next course of action. "We cannot stop them from filing their application in court," the official Bernama news agency quoted Abdullah Ahmad Badawi as saying. He said the government had decided in October 2003 not to allow Chin Peng step on Malaysian soil because of his links to an outlawed group once involved in terror acts. Chin Peng became the most wanted man in the British Empire in 1948, at the age of 23, soon after being named secretary-general of the Communist Party of Malaya. In his autobiography, Chin Peng: My Side of History, the former guerrilla paints a picture of a 12-year anti-colonial war he says he waged against British and Commonwealth forces in the jungles of what was then called Malaya. |