Sarawak struggle for independence

SARAWAK'S STRUGGLE FOR INDEPENDENCE

(From an internet posting 05/05/2022)

A LITTLE KNOWN AND WELL-HIDDEN BRITISH COLONIAL ARRANGEMENT IN S. E ASIA 

(A comment made in relation to colonial crimes of Great Britain)  

One of the forgotten British imperialist crimes was the bloody annexation of Sabah & Sarawak into the Malayan Federation renamed "Malaysia" on 16 Sept 1963.

The Malaysia federation proposal was a plan to consolidate British strategic interests in S E Asia by annexing the colonies of North Borneo and Sarawak and independent Brunei with Singapore into the Malayan Federation.

The Borneo people strongly opposed this as a neo-colonial plan by the British in collusion with Malaya.

Facing a strong united opposition the British Special Branch instigated an uprising in Brunei (on 8 Dec 1962) whose people also strongly opposed Malaysia. This immediately aborted the independence movement's plan to go to the UN to seek support for independence as the Brunei People's Party leading the delegation was made illegal and "banned". The uprising was also used as propaganda against the opposition to promote Malaysia and inflicted a culture of fear on the people that has lasted till today.

Under the pretext of suppressing the "rebellion", mass arrests and detention took place in Sarawak of over 6,000 to 10,000 "suspected communists".

The suppression drove many into Southern Kalimantan Indonesia where they formed armed resistance guerilla forces and fought the British (till 1970) and Malayan occupation army till 1990. Many of those arrested were detained for over 20 years without ever being tried in an open court - but the world does not know about these cases. This was British justice.

The guerilla war was a silent war as the British and Malayan governments kept tight control over the news of the independence war from the outside world because the British and allies did not want their dirty deeds of yet another re-drawing of the colonial map to be publicised. 

To secure Malaysia for Malaya the UK had to deploy some 50,000 air sea and land forces including Australian and New Zealand, armed forces to suppress the independence fighters. They did not finish their unsavoury assignment till 1970. The Five Powers Defence Arrangement was set up in 1971 and this has been maintained till today showing the importance of the 

area to the western imperial alliance. 

They boast that this was their most successful decolonisation since most of their other neo-colonial creations in Africa and the Caribbean had failed. But the other side is a lie they spread that Malaysia was peacefully created and approved by the Borneo people. 

To maintain their foreign-imposed rule of Sabah and Sarawak the Malayan regime had to use "emergency laws" and repressive laws of arrest and detention from 1963 to 2012 to suppress and control the people under a state of fear from openly opposing their colonial rule.

The people's grave fears of re-colonisation have become true as the resource-rich Borneo territories have been the best gift Malaya could get from Britain and exploitation and expropriation of their petroleum resources have developed Malaya and enriched their elites. The 2 countries have been kept backward and undeveloped as they were before 1963 and in fact, reduced to being vassals or dependencies with limited self-government. 

In recent years, the younger generation awakening to the reality of their respective countries' colonial status, has become active in campaigning to seek independence by peaceful means.

Last December a group of 12 Sarawkians filed a legal suit in the Kuching High Court against the British Malayan and local puppet Sarawak governments seeking declarations to invalidate the Malaysia Agreement 1963 and declarations that Sarawak has the right to exit from the Malaysia federation.