KUALA LUMPUR, Sept 23 — DAP MP for Ipoh Barat M. Kulasegaran has little taste for Marxist theories, but the career of Malayan Communist Party (MCP) leader Chin Peng had exerted a fascination for him since the federal legislator’s youth.
“Perhaps, it was a sense of geographical solidarity more than class solidarity that drew me to him,” said the DAP national vice-chairman about his interest in Chin Peng’s career.
“Chin Peng was from Sitiawan where I was also born. That led me to recreate the trails he might have trekked during the Japanese Occupation and later against the British when he led MCP against both forces,” said Kulasegaran.
The Ipoh lawyer devoured Chin Peng’s memoir My Side of History when it was published in 2003.
“I read it in a way that allowed me to recreate the paths and trails Chin Peng must have travelled against the background of what I knew of Sitiawan and that part of Perak where he carried out his work for MCP.”
It helped that Kulasegaran had devoured in his youth another book – The Jungle is Neutral – by Spenser Chapman which was a riveting chronicle of the British officer’s exploits and survival in the jungles of Malaya during the Japanese Occupation.
In the book, Chapman also told of the collaboration he received from MCP guerillas, led by Chin Peng, in their joint activity in causing as much disruption to the Japanese invaders during World War II.
In reading Chin Peng’s memoirs against the background of Chapman’s exploits, Kulasegaran had a good grasp of what he wanted to know from Chin Peng in 2009 when Kula visited him in Bangkok.
“I asked Chin Peng the details of how he evaded capture by the Japanese and later by the British,” Kulasegaran said.
“Chin Peng told me of how he would emerge from the MCP base in the hills of Bidor, near Cameron Highlands, and cycle along paths in rubber plantations to the coast to meet up with contacts and to obtain and convey information.”
“I also asked him about a place called Lumut Kiri, a remote part on the Perak coast which in those days would have not been accessible by any means except by foot.”
In late 1943, Chin Peng cycled to near Lumut Kiri before walking the rest of the way to that remote corner to meet with British personnel sent by submarine to contact and re-supply elements of the Malaysian Peoples’ Anti-Japanese Army, of which the MCP was the backbone.
Kulasegaran had spoken out in Parliament against the government’s decision in violation of the terms of Hatyai Peace Accords of 1989 that barred Chin Peng from returning to Malaysia.
“They should have allowed him to return. Now, the decision to bar his ashes from being interred in his parents’ graves at the cemetery in Pundut village in Lumut adds insult to injury,” he said.
