![New Village in Malaya, 1950s](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/57/New_Village_in_Malaya%2C_1950s.jpg)
The Briggs Plan ( ms, Rancangan Briggs) was a military plan devised by
British
British may refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies.
** Britishness, the British identity and common culture
* British English, ...
General
Sir Harold Briggs shortly after his appointment in 1950 as Director of Operations during the
Malayan Emergency (1948–1960). The plan aimed to defeat the
Malayan National Liberation Army
The Malayan National Liberation Army (MNLA), often mistranslated as the Malayan Races Liberation Army, was a communist guerrilla army that fought for Malayan independence from the British Empire during the Malayan Emergency (1948–1960) and l ...
by cutting them off from their sources of support amongst the rural population. To achieve this a large programme of
forced resettlement
Population transfer or resettlement is a type of mass migration, often imposed by state policy or international authority and most frequently on the basis of ethnicity or religion but also due to economic development. Banishment or exile is a ...
of Malayan peasantry was undertaken, under which about 500,000 people (roughly 10% of
Malaya's population) were forcibly transferred from their land and moved to concentration camps euphemistically referred to as "
new villages".
During the Emergency, there were over 400 of these settlements. Furthermore, 10,000
Malaysian Chinese suspected of being communist sympathisers were deported to the
People's Republic of China
China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...
in 1949. The
Orang Asli were also targeted for forced relocation by the Briggs Plan because the British believing that they were supporting the communists. Many of the practices necessary for the Briggs Plan were prohibited by the
Geneva Conventions
upright=1.15, Original document in single pages, 1864
The Geneva Conventions are four treaties, and three additional protocols, that establish international legal standards for humanitarian treatment in war. The singular term ''Geneva Conve ...
and
customary international law which stated that the destruction of property must not happen unless rendered absolutely necessary by military operations.
History
British authority in Malaya's rural areas had been only tenuously re-established after
the surrender of the
Empire of Japan
The also known as the Japanese Empire or Imperial Japan, was a historical nation-state and great power that existed from the Meiji Restoration in 1868 until the enactment of the post-World War II Constitution of Japan, 1947 constitu ...
at the end of the
Second World War
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposi ...
. The British regarded a group of about 500,000 "
squatters
Squatting is the action of occupying an abandoned or unoccupied area of land or a building, usually residential, that the squatter does not own, rent or otherwise have lawful permission to use. The United Nations estimated in 2003 that there ...
", largely of
Chinese descent
Overseas Chinese () refers to people of Chinese birth or ethnicity who reside outside Mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan. As of 2011, there were over 40.3 million overseas Chinese.
Terminology
() or ''Hoan-kheh'' () in Hokkien, ref ...
, who practised
small-scale agriculture
A smallholding or smallholder is a small farm operating under a small-scale agriculture model. Definitions vary widely for what constitutes a smallholder or small-scale farm, including factors such as size, food production technique or technology ...
, generally lacked legal title to their land, and were largely outside the reach of the colonial administration, as particularly problematic. Many of the Chinese people had been forced to live in isolated communities to avoid being slaughtered by the occupying Japanese.
Several Malaysian communities formed the backbone of the
Malayan Communist Party
The Malayan Communist Party (MCP), officially the Communist Party of Malaya (CPM), was a Marxist–Leninist and anti-imperialist communist party which was active in British Malaya and later, the modern states of Malaysia and Singapore from ...
(MCP); its armed wing, the
Malayan National Liberation Army
The Malayan National Liberation Army (MNLA), often mistranslated as the Malayan Races Liberation Army, was a communist guerrilla army that fought for Malayan independence from the British Empire during the Malayan Emergency (1948–1960) and l ...
(MNLA); and its civilian supplies and intelligence network, the
Min Yuen.
Many rural workers were sympathetic to
communism
Communism (from Latin la, communis, lit=common, universal, label=none) is a far-left sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology and current within the socialist movement whose goal is the establishment of a communist society, a ...
for the role of the MCP in leading the
anti-Japanese resistance
Resistance movements during World War II occurred in every occupied country by a variety of means, ranging from non-cooperation to propaganda, hiding crashed pilots and even to outright warfare and the recapturing of towns. In many countries, r ...
movement during World War II. Other factors which led to support for the communists included the desire for Malayan independence from Britain, the communist victory in China, the communist role in leading the Malayan trade union movement and postwar economic inequality and poverty.
![Briggs' Plan civilians - IWM GOV 3821](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/59/Briggs%27_Plan_civilians_-_IWM_GOV_3821.png)
By isolating the population into the "
new villages", the British stemmed the critical flow of food, information and recruits from the peasants to the guerillas. The new settlements were guarded around the clock by police, and many were partially fortified with barbed wire and sentry towers. That prevented those who were so inclined from sneaking out and voluntarily aiding the guerrillas, and it also prevented the guerrillas from sneaking in and extracting help by persuasion or intimidation. The process created 450 new settlements, and an estimated 470,509 people, 400,000 of them ethnically Chinese, were involved in the program. The
Malaysian Chinese Association
The Malaysian Chinese Association (MCA; zh, 马来西亚华人公会; ; ta, மலேசிய சீனர் சங்கம், initially known as the Malayan Chinese Association) is a uni-racial political party in Malaysia that seeks to ...
, then known as the Malayan Chinese Association, played a crucial role in implementing the programme.
The British also tried to win the support of some of the settled civilians by providing them with education and health services. Some New Villages were equipped with amenities, such as electricity and piped water, and had a perimeter surrounded with fencing and armed guards to keep the civilians from escaping, many of whom had been in the MCP or had been forced to provide assistance. It was hoped that by providing the communities, which were mainly ethnic Chinese, with such facilities, they would be converted from "reservoirs of resentment into bastions of loyal Malayan citizenry". However, critics argue that the homogenous nature of New Villages, with the few multiracial ones eventually failing or turning into
ghettoes
A ghetto, often called ''the'' ghetto, is a part of a city in which members of a minority group live, especially as a result of political, social, legal, environmental or economic pressure. Ghettos are often known for being more impoverished t ...
, worked against that goal, but accentuated communalist fervour and causing
ethnic polarisation, especially in politics, as electoral constituencies would now be delineated more along racial lines.
Previously, the Chinese rural workers and peasants had been spread out geographically, but the Briggs Plan would now bring together rural Chinese from all over the country and concentrate them in the New Villages. There was significant resentment towards the programme both among the Chinese and Malays. The Malaysian Chinese were sometimes targeted for
collective punishment
Collective punishment is a punishment or sanction imposed on a group for acts allegedly perpetrated by a member of that group, which could be an ethnic or political group, or just the family, friends and neighbors of the perpetrator. Because ind ...
,
preventive detention
Preventive detention is an imprisonment that is putatively justified for non- punitive purposes, most often to prevent (further) criminal acts.
Types of preventive detention
There is no universally agreed definition of preventive detention, and m ...
and
summary deportation
In law, a summary judgment (also judgment as a matter of law or summary disposition) is a judgment entered by a court for one party and against another party summarily, i.e., without a full trial. Summary judgments may be issued on the merits of an ...
, which were aimed at weeding out communist supporters, and the Malays were incensed at the infrastructure provided for the New Villages since their own settlements had remained undeveloped. One example collective punishment came from
Tanjung Malim
Tanjung Malim, or Tanjong Malim, is a town in Muallim District, Perak, Malaysia. It is approximately north of Kuala Lumpur and 120 km south of Ipoh via the North–South Expressway. It lies on the Perak-Selangor state border, with Sungai ...
, where the British put the civilian population on rice rations to stop them from supporting the communist guerrillas. When that did not work,
Gerald Templer
Field Marshal Sir Gerald Walter Robert Templer, (11 September 1898 – 25 October 1979) was a senior British Army officer. He fought in both the world wars and took part in the crushing of the Arab Revolt in Palestine. As Chief of the Imperi ...
halved the rice rations for civilians within the area and imposed a 22-hour curfew.
Similar examples
A similar “Four Cuts” strategy was used against villages and insurgents of the
Burmese Communist Party in the
Pegu Range
The Pegu Range ( my, ပဲခူးရိုးမ; Pegu Yoma or Bago Yoma) is a range of low mountains or hillsSeekins, Donald M. (2006) ''Historical dictionary of Burma (Myanmar)'' Scarecrow Press, Lanham, Marylandpage 357 and uplands between ...
.
Generals Go Marching Down Memory Lane By AUNG ZAW in Irrawaddy Magazine
/ref>
References
*
{{Communism in Malaysia
Forced migration
Internments
Malayan Emergency
Anti-communism