The
new Paktan Harapan administration was recently defeated when it tried
to amend the Federal Constitution to do justice to the Borneo States by
undoing the 1976 amendment so as to bring back the original wording used
to describe the constituents of the Federation of Malaysia in the
Malaysia Agreement 1963.
Voices demanding the rights guaranteed to the two Borneo states under
the Malaysia Agreement have in the past year not only sounded louder,
but also more vociferous
/vəˈsɪ.fə.rəs/ . This sentiment, seen by some to be mere
parochialism (
uk)
/pəˈrəʊ.kiə.lɪ.zəm/, may in fact be inarticulate, nascent
/ˈneɪ.sənt/ nationalism that,
having taken root in the Borneo territories, did not hitherto find the
opportune circumstances to grow due to the enforced merger made
expedient by the exigencies
/ˈek.sɪ.dʒən.si/ of post-colonial regional politics of the
nineteen fifties and sixties.
Caught between the competing interests of the Big Powers of the USA and
Britain, and of the interests of the smaller regional powers of
Indonesia and the Philippines, the legitimate rights and interests of
the peoples the Borneo territories had counted for very little, if
anything.
Two books that did look at this “big picture” behind the merger of
Malaya and Singapore with the Borneo colonies with clear authoritative
details are Dr Stanley S. Bedlington’s Malaysia and Singapore: The
Building of New States (1978), and Dr Matthew Jones” Conflict and
Confrontation in South East Asia 1961-1965, Britain, the United States
and the Creation of Malaysia (2001).
To be fair, Bedlington did mention that the “local leaders in Sabah and
Sarawak reacted strongly and adversely” to Tunku’s proposal. His
assessment was equally accurate in characterising the Cobbold Commission
as a “British contrivance activated and organized by British
officials.” That the “Commission was an Anglo
Malayan exercise was
immediately obvious from the fact that it did not include a single
Bornean representative.”
Moreover, it did not conduct any referendum in either British North
Borneo or Sarawak to measure objectively the wishes and inclinations of
the people on the issue of the “Malaysia” merger to assist in its
enquiry. Bedlington added that the population of the two States was
subjected to “sustained pressure” by British colonial officials to
accept the merger.
Matthew Jones in his book noted that the Governors of the two crown
colonies were sceptical of the Commission, with Governor Goode of
British North Borneo calling the exercise “a farce
/fɑːs/ ’. However, he
observed, “objections from the local colonial service were not going to
be allowed to interfere with the priorities that had already been
established in London and Kuala Lumpur”.
It is this aspect of the merger that this review seeks to revisit in the
light shed by a recent book that has examined in detail the real forces
behind the proposal for merger, how the true wishes of the majority of
the populations of the two Borneo territories were seriously subverted
/səbˈvɜːtId/,
if not deliberately misconstrued
/ˌmɪs.kənˈstruː/ and ignored, and how the voices of
opposition to the merger were traduced
/trəˈdʒuːs/. The book, The Genesis of
Konfrontasi: Malaysia, Brunei and Indonesia 1945-1965 (Petaling Jaya:
Strategic Information and Research Development Centre, 2014), by an
Australian historian, Dr Greg Poulgrain, reveals surprising facts that
have been censored or hidden from the public all these years and, in the
process, cast the whole project of Malaysia itself in a fundamentally
different light.
Poulgrain has combined archival research at the Colonial Office, U.K.
with interviews of surviving protagonists
/prəˈtæ.ɡə.nɪst/ of the formative era of
Malaysia who had played various roles in that period, thereby
challenging the conventional version of the formation of Malaysia.
For these invaluable sources of information on and insights into
Sarawak’s history, future historians will be hugely indebted to Dr
Poulgrain as will be seen below from his exemplary interview of Capt.
Albert Young on the discovery of oil in off-shore Sarawak. Considering
that the area of focus of Poulgrain’s professional interest is
Indonesia, not Malaysia, his book covers a lot more ground than just the
formation of Malaysia,and, remarkably, contains much new material
relevant to Sarawak.
Poulgrain firmly places the origin of the “grand design” for merging the
five British-controlled territories of Malaya, Singapore, North Borneo,
Sarawak and Brunei at Whitehall contrary to the conventional accounts of
its origin. Citing a classified Colonial Office paper, “Political
Objectives in British Territories of South East Asia” of 10th March,
1953, Poulgrain reveals that the British government (Her Majesty’s
Government, or HMG) was “engaging in deliberate deception” for, while
paying lip service to the Third Rajah’s aspiration for self government
for Sarawak embodied in the preamble to the 1941 Sarawak Constitution,
HMG was already planning for “some form of constitutional association”
for the Borneo Territories and the Malaya/Singapore bloc coming together
as a “British South-East Asia Dominion” in the early fifties.
On April 2, 1955, Commissioner-General Malcolm MacDonald informed the
British Secretary for the Colonies, Alan Lennox-Boyd, that “the Bornean
leaders are perhaps less aware than those in Malaya of our grand
design.”
Despite that, Alan Lennox-Boyd on November 29, 1956, informed the
Governor of North Borneo, Sir Roland Turnbull, “The possibility of a
federation of North Borneo and Sarawak and indeed of all three Borneo
territories ... is a matter for the people of the territories themselves
to decide.” Yet, as Poulgrain notes, at no time did it [HMG] envisage
self-government by the people of Sarawak.
However, it must be noted that the colonial officers in the two
territories were initially adverse to the idea of a merger of the Borneo
states with Malaya and Singapore which they considered premature.
More concerned with their populations of different ethnicities living in
harmony, they had in mind a more gradual move towards independence with
the possibility of first forming a Borneon federation before a merger
with their more politically savvy neighbours across the South China Sea,
Malaya and Singapore. The “Borneo Proposal” was put forward in 1958,
but, as Poulgrain notes, it was already foreshadowed by the 1953 paper,
so even though the 1958 proposal presented the facade
/fəˈsɑːd/ of official
approval, “there was already an alternative plan” afoot. The Borneon
proposal was in fact disparaged
/dɪˈspæ.rɪdʒ/ by the noted historian on South East
Asian history, K.J. Tregonning as “a disguised MI5 exercise”.
Despite that, it is still widely believed and propagated that the
proposal for the
“Malaysia” merger with the Borneo territories was made
by then Prime Minister of Malaya, Tunku Abdul Rahman, on May 27, 1961,
to the Foreign Correspondents” Association Club in Singapore. The
British had more than ample reasons to let Tunku take the credit for
what was in fact their brainchild, given the potential of the material
benefits at stake for Britain.
It may be noted here that after the war, British interests in Malaya in
the form of investments exceeded those that they had in India and the
revenue from rubber and tin was sorely needed for post-war debt payment
and reconstruction. The financial stake in having a peaceful merger of
the Borneo territories and Singapore with Malaya was, therefore, huge.
Lee Kuan Yew, having been elected the Prime Minister of the
self-governing colony of Singapore, then assisted the British to push
forward the idea at the same time consolidating his own party’s position
against that of the Barisan Socialis [Socialist Front] whom he
characterised, together with the Chinese opposition in Sarawak, as
having been directed to oppose the Malaysia plan by outside powers,
namely, Indonesia and China.
Lee between September 13 and October 9, 1961, made the 12 radio
broadcasts (published as The Battle for Merger) in favour of the
merger.
To Poulgrain, however, the primary impetus
/ˈɪm.pɪ.təs/ for forming Malaysia was oil,
not ethnicity, even though much was made in the press then and in the
mainstream books since of the Tunku’s insistence in having the Borneo
colonies aboard in order to balance out the large Chinese population in
Singapore with the indigenous populations in the Borneo territories.
In fact, as Poulgrain points out, by the time Malaysia was formed in
1963, the Chinese were the largest ethnic group in Sarawak, according to
the census taken in 1962. The real focus was, therefore, on Brunei
which Britain was determined to retain as “the biggest single source of
dollars in the Sterling area.”
The oil industry being under the sole dominion of the Sultan of Brunei,
it was to the advantage of the British Malayan Petroleum (BMP), the
forerunner to the present Brunei Shell Petroleum Company (BSP) and a
subsidiary of the transnational Royal Dutch Shell Group, to continue the
one-to-one arrangement to maintain its monopoly.
As early as March 1956, the Sultan of Brunei, wary of the merger
becoming a means of an enforced sharing of its oil wealth, had issued a
press statement rejecting the notion of Brunei merging with Malaya.
This was followed by the redefinition of the maritime boundaries by
Britain in September 1958 by the Queen’s “Order in Council” separating
the offshore areas of Brunei from those of North Borneo and Sarawak.
Poulgrain notes that the delineation of new boundaries for Brunei was in
contradiction to the purported intention of closer Borneo association,
and, from the perspective of the Sultan, this timely redefinition of
Brunei’s boundaries could only have been interpreted as support for his
wish that the sultanate (and with it, the oilfields) remain distinct
from any merger, amalgamation or plan for closer association.
Poulgrain continues, “remarkably the boundary line between Brunei and
Sarawak deviated in favour of Brunei to include the giant South West
Ampa oilfield in Brunei territory. Even though a solution for the
decolonisation of the Borneo territories had not yet been concluded,
this arrangement prepared for an eventuality whereby Brunei and its rich
offshore prospects would remain under a British monopoly and under a
British defence treaty.”
Poulgrain’s interviews in 1991 with both Captain D.R. Gribble, and
Captain Albert Young confirmed that the huge oilfield was known to the
authorities in 1958, years before its “official discovery” in 1963.
As for the oil in Sarawak territory, the British were prepared to
surrender that to the new federation under control of Malaya. Sir
Anthony Abell, then Governor of Sarawak, in April 1956 observed in a
communication to the Colonial Office that “the politicians in both
Malaya and Singapore were showing considerable interest in the Borneo
territories “including its empty spaces, its potential wealth, and its
oil”.
Poulgrain inexplicably added that it is “noteworthy” that the Governor
could admit that Malaya had “imperialistic design” on the Borneo
territories, and then to treat this as a reason for merger.
He observed however, that the prospects of exchanging the existing
colonial master for another one would certainly not be welcomed by those
Sarawakians (and Sabahans) with a historic fear of Malay domination. In
fact, by 1949, in “Malaya, anti-Chinese sentiment [had become] enmeshed
/enˈmeʃt/
with anti-communism.” Public Record Office documents reveal that the
largest riots – called the Communist Front Riots of October 1956 – were
deliberately provoked, for example, in Singapore by the authorities to
enable the arrest of some prominent anti-British activists.
In addition, Poulgrain makes a vital contribution to the formation
narrative by drawing attention to the shadowy yet critical, but hitherto
unknown, role played by the Deep State of the British Establishment in
the shaping the final configuration of the Federation. In the face of
post-war demand for decolonisation, the UK, to prime her political
successors in the areas she would be vacating, was motivated by “the
need to ensure that the Borneo territories, Brunei in particular, would
be politically and militarily secure.”
To ensure that (political control ) was met, the “second-in-command of
MI5 of Britain was seconded for one year’s term of duty to reorganise
and expand the Special Branch”. From that point onwards, Whitehall moved
quickly to protect most, if not all, of its interests in the region.
Of critical concern to the colonial authorities was the surging
sentiment among the local politicians in the three Borneo territories
for self rule before merger, and of pre-empting the merger by forming a
federation of the Borneo territories. A meeting was held in Jesselton
of the representatives from the three territories, Ong Kee Hui, from
Sarawak, A.M. Azahari, from Brunei and Donald Stephens, from North
Borneo and a joint statement in favour of a Borneon Federation issued in
August 1961.
The insistence of the Brunei nationalist, A.M. Azahari, upon his return
to Brunei after his participation in the independence movement for
Indonesian Merdeka, that self-determination for the Borneo territories
must precede federation, “based on the consent of the people, not on the
fiat
/ˈfiː.æt/ of the colonial rulers,” raised the ire of the British authorities
in London.
Poulgrain notes that “British Intelligence aided by misinformation fed
by the British Malayan Petroleum (BMP) corporate intelligence network,
continued to depict Azahari as anti-British, an “irresponsible
opportunist,” and a subversive
/səbˈvɜː.sɪv/ backed by Indonesia. On the role of BMP
providing intelligence to the British authorities, Poulgrain has this to
say: “Because [BMP] intelligence sources had the power to restrict
information being relayed to Sir Anthony Abell, this would suggest that
the Seria oilfields, and not Kuching, had become the real centre of
political power.”
An example of the depth of the research Poulgrain conducted on the
subject is his reference to an incident recounted by Kee Tuan Chye in
his book, Old Doctors Never Fade Away (1988). Having collapsed with
acute appendicitis in January 1959 on the eve of the third PRB congress
in Brunei, Azahari was not operated on upon admission to Brunei Hospital
by attending Doctor Joseph Wolf because he was prevented from doing so
by “strict orders from [the British authorities] higher up.”
So Azahari discharged himself and flew to Singapore whence he had
intended to fly to India for the surgery, but once there, the Indonesian
Embassy offered a mercy mission to fly him to Jakarta for the
operation.
He then spent forty-five days recuperating in Indonesia, thus lending
fuel to the British Establishment’s narrative of the depth of his
complicity with the ruling party in Indonesia at the time. Poulgrain,
relying on his interviews in 1990-91 of Azahari then in exile, said that
this deliberate depiction of Azahari as having a political affiliation
with Indonesia served to alienate the Sultan from Azahari despite his
close relationship with the royal family of Brunei.
At the time Poulgrain did his research, the Azahari “files” had not been
released from the archives, the files having been classified for a
period of fifty years. Meanwhile, the colonial authorities in Sarawak
witnessed an awakening of political consciousness, brought about
undoubtedly by the “wind of change” speech made by the British Prime
Minister Harold Macmillan and talks between London and Kuala Lumpur in
early 1960.
All this together with the preparation for elections to the new
municipal and district councils led to the formation of political
parties among the various ethnic communities. The first, the Sarawak
United People’s Party (SUPP), was registered in June 1959, with the
slogans, “Sa’ati” and “Sarawak for Sarawakians,” aspiring for the unity
of all ethnic groups in Sarawak to fight for independence so that
Sarawakians could enjoy the abundance of their natural resources instead
of being exploited by a colonial power.
However, these first indicators of the infusion of a nationalist spirit
within Sarawak were construed by the British colonial government to be
moving in a direction that was likely to jeopardise “the grand design”
of the British, who were then already experiencing difficulties trying
to impose the same on their colonies in Central Africa and in the West
Indies.
In July 1960, Sir Alexander Waddell, the new Governor of Sarawak, issued
a White Paper, entitled “Subversion in Sarawak’, warning of communist
activity among the Chinese educated.
SUPP, aware of the attempt by the colonial government to alienate the
general public, especially the natives and their leaders, from the party
warned party members, “of people against the SUPP who were always
trying to paint it red,” and advised “those with artistic inclinations
and talents not to carry this pot of paint into the party premises’.
In August of the same year, the editor of a Chinese newspaper was
deported to China despite the fact that he was born in Sarawak, and,
therefore, technically a British subject at the time. Tim Hardy, then
the deputy head of the Special Branch, Sarawak, recounts in his book,
The Reluctant Imperialist (2009), what followed: [When news of a
“communist organisation” (CCO) filtered up], “the affected governments
wanted information.
Malayan and Australian Cabinet ministers together with Singapore-based
brass hats and big-shot spooks came to Kuching looking for
on-the-spot-news. ... The Americans were prodding London – what are you
doing about the lefties in Borneo? London prodded Kuala Lumpur and
Singapore, and at the end of the chain it was Kuching that took the
jabs.”
Poulgrain’s book confirms that the authorities went beyond just
isolating the pioneer political party of SUPP from broadening its
membership base among the indigenous groups to the extent of attempting
to sabotage the party.
The Anglo-American intelligence organisation based in Singapore,
Security Intelligence Far East (SIFE), stepped in as agent provocateur
/prəˌvɒ.kəˈtɜːr/
to “politically engineer” an entrapment set-up. William Andeas Brown
(CIA), assisted by Frank C. Starr (CIA) and John Slimming (MI6), in 1962
ran a covert arms-running operation supplying rifles to the so-called
underground Sarawak Chinese youths with strong historic ties with the
Chinese across the border in Indonesian Borneo. Sir Alexander Waddell
later in an interview in 1991 with the author confirmed the involvement
of the CIA in 1962 in instigating the “leftist” elements in the party by
supplying them with rifles.
So apart from these connections that were politically engineered by the
Establishment, there was otherwise nothing tangible to connect the
Brunei Malays in the North to the Sarawak Chinese located in the First
Division at the southern end of Sarawak. This was confirmed by Hardy,
who did not think much of the Chinese schooled Marxist ideologues that
preached anti-colonialism and proletarian /ˌprəʊ.lɪˈteə.riən/revolution. According to him,
“What support there was for [them] came not from the advocacy of Maoism
which few people either understood or desired but from its
uncompromising opposition to plans to federate the country within
Malaysia, a prospect that left the majority of Chinese fearful of Malay
domination.
The analysis of this British colonial officer of the situation in
Sarawak on the eve of Malaysia is most telling: “On its part, the
Malayan government more or less openly promised to bankroll any
political party that would do its bidding in Sarawak.
Five brand new parties registered in quick succession, each claiming to
represent group interests but each in turn doing no more than provide
the screens behind which opportunists hoped to lay hands on Kuala
Lumpur’s money and influence. KL knocked them all together into a
pro-Malaysia “Alliance” which by “winning” the 1963 elections cleared
the way for KL and London to claim that absorption within a Malaysian
federation was confirmed as the choice of the majority of Sarawakians.”
Azahari’s Partai Rakyat Brunei (PRB) was in fact “well penetrated” by
agents-informers of the Special Branch including Zulkifli and H.M.
Salleh at the executive level. This penetration would later allow Roy
Henry, the head of the Special Branch, to engineer a “false flag”
operation in instigating the Brunei Rebellion in late 1962.
The penetration is perhaps not surprising, considering that the British
secret service in Malaya had even recruited the Secretary-General of the
Communist Party of Malaya (CPM), Lai Teck, as a double agent for the
British. He was the Secretary-General of CPM from April 1939 to March
1947 when he absconded with the party funds. The Brunei State
Intelligence Committee was linked to the Special Branch in Sarawak and
Brunei.
The London head office of British Malayan Petroleum (BMP) was also in
close liaison with the Colonial Office. In the early 1950s, BMP had set
up its own oil intelligence network which closely collaborated with
Special Branch to look after its own interests, which no doubt included
confidential information of the discovery of the giant West Ampa
oilfields.
The secret required political discretion to ensure that British
interests remained paramount and, secondly, political manipulation, to
ensure that those interests were implemented.
Roy Henry of the Special Branch of Sarawak and Brunei in his open
admission in 1991 to Poulgrain of his role in starting the Brunei
Rebellion, supplied the key to the “spontaneous outbreak” of the
rebellion in Seria. as well as confirmation that “Konfrontasi ... was a
joint program set by British and American Intelligence.”
When H.M. Salleh of the PRB executive decided in the absence of PRB
leader A.M. Azahari from Brunei to launch an ill-prepared and ill-timed
armed rebellion before dawn on December 8, 1962, those Chinese youths in
faraway countryside of First Division of Sarawak, who managed to escape
the dragnet of arrests coordinated by the Special Branch, had to flee
across the border to seek refuge in Indonesian Borneo.
In the wake of “Operation Cold Store” of February 2, 1963, in Singapore,
followed by its counterpart in Malaya on February 13, 1963, “the
leading figures in the left-wing political parties in Sarawak, Singapore
and Malaya were detained prior to the formation of Malaysia.” The way
to the formation of “Malaysia” now appeared cleared in one fell swoop
with the arrest of the political activists who could reorganise and lead
any grassroots resistance.
It is now clear from the evidence Poulgrain uncovered in the British
archives and further supporting evidence gathered from the oral
interviews provided to him by the British government and security
service officials that these coordinated moves to put the blame on “the
Communists” collectively, “was a political contrivance
/kənˈtraɪ.vəns/.” The Brunei
Rebellion also “cemented the relationship between British oil interests
and the Brunei Sultan; and it led on to Konfrontasi which forced the
decision of Sarawak into joining the proposed Federation of Malaysia” as
well as securing Brunei oil for the British.
These research findings of Poulgrain have been confirmed and supported
by the independent research of Dr Yong Kee Howe, the Malaysian
anthropologist and ethnographer, in his book, The Hakkas of Sarawak:
Sacrificial Gifts in Cold War Era Malaysia (2003). Yong documents the
harrowing experiences of those who opposed the colonial authorities in
their push for merger in interviews with the survivors of the era in his
field work in Sarawak in the nineties.
Yong has given voice to the surviving victims of state/governmental
violence that had hitherto remained mute, unexpressed and silent in the
written records deposited in the official archives.
Setting aside political correctness, Yong’s blunt characterisation of
“the annexation of Sarawak into [the greater Malaysia Plan] in the
context of the Cold War military gift economy” receives confirmation
from two surprising yet conventional sources. First, the historian Dr
Tan Tai Yong makes the following assessment in his book, Creating
“Greater Malaysia” (2008):
The Tunku was therefore clearly not interested in having Singapore; the
real prize he was after was the Borneo Territories, and Singapore was
the price he had to pay to secure it. … There was clearly no cultural or
social basis for the state; Malaysia was strictly a product of
political expediencies
/ɪkˈspiː.diənsiz/.
The second source is none other than Tunku Abdul Rahman himself, the
former Prime Minister of Malaya and then of Malaysia, who in the early
1980s engaged in a series of conversations with Abdullah Ahmad, which
was later published in 2016 in a book entitled, Conversations with Tunku
Abdul Rahman. The Tunku candidly admitted thus:
“Yes and they [the British] gave us Sarawak, Sabah and Singapore and so
many other things in 1963 [with the formation of Malaysia]. The British
could have given Singapore, Sabah and Sarawak independence, but they did
not. Instead, they handed them to us”.
Given that its primary focus is on the Indonesian policy of Konfrontasi
in response to the proposal to bring the Borneo territories into a
federation with Malaya and Singapore, The Genesis of Konfrontasi covers
in great detail the upheaval in the regional politics resulting from the
proposal, in particular the moves deliberately engineered by the major
powers behind the scene. This review in contrast focuses only on that
portion of the book that touches on Sarawak, in particular, the devious
/ˈdiː.viəs/ manipulations and stratagems driven by a hidden agenda to “push” her
involuntarily into a federation.
In this respect, the book deserves to be read by all Sarawakians, and,
yes, studied, for it is an instructive trove of information that
hitherto has remained personal or been deliberately kept hidden/censored
from the general public.
My comments:
I must thank these people for their efforts to expose the immoral and devious acts of the British government and the Malayan government in this criminal breach of decolonisation process of international law to let Sarawak and Sabah to become independent and free.
