Forgotten Wars_ Freedom and Revolution in Southeast Asia - Christopher Bayly [257]
There was another diary, this written by a woman, Tung Lai Chong of Amoy Street in Singapore’s Chinatown. The entry for 6 July reads:
At about 2 p.m. I received a note from Wah requesting me to go up immediately. I am happy and only feel a bit uneasy when I think of mother. However, there is no time for me to hesitate now. Nothing can change my mind except to say sorry to mother as I must fulfil my promise to serve for the freedom of the people in Malaya. So, at about 4 p.m., after my meal, I bid goodbye to my house people. At five, I reach the paradise of liberty. Henceforth, I have to lead a camp life. It is a hard one, but I have confidence in it. I can endure the hardship. At night, we have to sleep in the open air.
There were three women with her. ‘We love each other’, she reported the next day, ‘and the boys do try their best to help us.’ On 8 July they heard that the area was ‘occupied by the enemy’, and they removed to the rubber estates. On 10 July three of the gang went out to ‘hit the “dogs”’; they struck one down. The group moved to a safer place. The last entry was for 13 July: ‘Many of our comrades say that I am losing weight. Yes, it is true. I think it is because of the effect of the kind of life I am leading now. I have no worry here, except at night, when we fear that the enemy might come and attack us.’ It is very probable that Tung Lai Chong perished with Liew Yao in the firefight on 16 July.67
The man who led the attack on Liew Yao, with his ‘killer squad’ of twenty Chinese detectives dressed in black, was Superintendent Bill Stafford, a former stoker with the Royal Navy in the Far East, who had turned policeman in Hong Kong, and had been parachuted behind the lines many times during the Burma war. His trademark was the revolver slung under each armpit, and he was photographed in Time Life, complete with bandoleer and Sten gun. He slept in a mirrored room with a handgun under his pillow. His maxim was ‘the only good communist is a dead communist’. To the Chinese he was Tin Sau-pah – ‘The Iron Broom’. He had found Liew Yao on a tip from his barber.68 Police methods were tough. There were reports of beatings and the settling of old scores. One member of the Singapore Special Branch, Ahmad Khan, described the interrogation of one of the first suspects to be pulled in, an Indian. He had been grilled for a month in Kuala Lumpur, then Ahmad Khan was sent for. After spending twenty-fours hours with him in Kuala Lumpur, he took him to the isolated hill town of Kuala Kubu Bahru to unnerve him and break him down. A successful interrogator, he maintained, found out all there was to know about a suspect: ‘his attachments, whether he loves his mother or father or wife… Whether he is a truly family man or is not interested in family life. Whether he is a drunkard. Whether he likes money. You have to find out first the weak points in him. Then you can later press him on his weak points.’ Then ‘mentally you overpower him…72 hours I worked without sleep, without proper food, without a wash, 72 hours continuously.’ The man broke and a series of offensive operations were mounted on the back of it.69 It was to become a curiously intimate war. The MCP lost a number of key leaders in this way, and, as in the time of Lai Teck, double agents were played back into the ranks of the guerrillas.
Operation Frustration was a catalyst to MCP recruitment. For ex-MPAJA members who fell into the hands of the police the likelihood of banishment to China was very strong. It was a widely held belief, supported by evidence from the newspapers, that those banished were immediately arrested and killed