The lofty silence of number three court from the High Court, Queen's Bench Division with its book-lined, panelled walls could scarcely are already more removed from a sweltering Malayan rubber plantation on December 11 1948.

the Chinese woman

Nevertheless the nasty, brutish events of that day â€" which ended with the shooting dead of 24 Chinese rubber tappers â€" came alive again in the court as modern Britain is yet again made to come to terms with her imperial past and a few of the items were done in her name.



Sixty-four years after troopers with the Scots Guards shot the unarmed workers they dubbed 'bandits', Sir John Thomas, president from the Queen's Bench Division, had been asked by relatives of the dead men to analyze 64 numerous years of cover-up and obfuscation from the Secretary of state for Defence as well as the Foreign Office. Both ministries declare that the men were shot while wanting to escape. The relatives hope for either an inquiry in to the deaths or perhaps an apology in the British government. They're not seeking compensation.



From the day of the incident towards the appearance of three surviving relatives sitting wretchedly at the front from the court like they might have just go the



Sungei Remok estate near Batang Kali, north of Kl, the military as well as the civilian authorities have consistently enveloped the events of December 11 and 12 1948 in a cloud of incompetence, lies and official contempt for that lives of ordinary people.



Repeatedly, tries to get at the truth have been dismissed and untruths given to Parliament by ministers.



Remarkably, the presentation with the case for the defendants, the Foreign Office as well as the Secretary of state for Defence was equally badly handled, with counsel betraying an astonishing degree of ignorance from the legal status from the forces which were deployed within the British colony during the Malayan Emergency when Malaya, an important way to obtain foreign currency for London, was threatened by insurgent Chinese communists. About the international scene, Mao Tse-Tung was well in order to vanquishing the allied-backed regime of Chang Kai-Chek who does later flee to Taiwan.



The Malayan Emergency was barely six months old, and British commanders were under time limits to create results, each time a 14-man Scots Guards platoon entered the 646-acre plantation along with a Chinese Special Branch officer and two police constables, a Malay as well as an Indian.



The boys ended up briefed that the plantation would be a hotbed of communist party members and activity. With a official versions of the incident, these folks were to detain and question workers to begin concerning the activities of communists in your community.



The squad was led by a sergeant and the deputy while the balance of 7 Platoon, G Company, 2nd Battalion of the Guards was developed up of National Servicemen. The boys quickly took control of the kongsi long houses where the workers endured their loved ones.

the Chinese woman

Some of the males are dragged behind the homes once they are not designed on top of answers. Rifles and pistols are fired near their heads in mock executions; one collapses apparently using a cardiac arrest and is also shunted aside.