Malaysia REPRESSION AND by PAUL PETITJEAN is indicated in Table 1(2) The results of an inquiry conducted at the end of 1974 in the state of Kedah by Denzil Peiris of the Hong Kong weekly Far Eastern Economic Review testify to this. (3) At the time, the smallholders sold latex for 25 cents a pound, which provided an average daily income of 1,20 Malaysian dollars (MS). According to Peiris, a minimum of comfort required a daily income of M$3; the subsisfence level was MS1.50, Such was the poverty of the smallholding families - a total of about 3 million people - a poverty that was especially serious since the rate of inflation was high (25 percent price increases in 1973-74 and 17 percent in 1974-75). Rice became too expensive, and the peasants had to feed themselves with wild tubers, malnutrition was spreading among children, and cases of death from food poisoning were reported. It was in this context that significant movements of struggle broke out and a junction between the student movement and the peasant movement took place. The first incident occurred in Tasek Utara, near Johore Bahru in the far south of the Malayan peninsula. Just before the elections of August 1974 some landless peasant families occupied some unused land in order to build houses on it. In September, after the victory. of the "National Front" of Tun Abdel Razak, there was a test of strength with the "antiriot" police. The students of the University of Malaya in Kuala Lumpur, the National University, and the University of Sciences in Penang supported the land occupation. In September there were demonstrations in the capital, Kuala Lumpur, while other students traveled to Tasek Utara to participate in the peasant mobilizations. The police arrested a number of peasants and student leaders, among them Hishamuddin Rais, secretary general of the University of Malaya Student Union (UMSU), a representative of the Socialist Club(4), and Syed Hamid Ali, secretary general of the Partai Socialis Rakyat Malaya (PSRM(5). The UMSU was then suspended by the minister of education.
In spite of this first wave of university and political repression, the struggle picked up again during November and December, in Baling. On November 19 and 20 some 1,000 peasants organized a "hunger march." On November 21 about 12,000 people demonstrated. It was the first time in twenty-eight years - since the anti-British demonstrations of 1946 — that such a large mobilization occurred in that area. The government responded with tear gas. Once again, however, the students lined up on the side of the peasants. Some 10,000 students demonstrated in Kuala Lumpur on December 2; 2,000 marched in Penang and 10, 000 in Ipoh. The government arrested 1, 164 students. Despite the arrests, the struggle continued throughout the week; the campuses of the universities of Malaya, Kebangsan, and Holy Malaysia were occupied until the police invaded and conducted a systematic search of rooms on December 8 and 9. (6) This junction of the student and peasant struggles was triply dangerous for the government. First, it permitted the isolation of local struggles to be broken down and turned the "hunger march" into a national political issue. Second, if thereby exposed the social demagogy and "liberal" facade of the regime. Third, it marked the beginning of an overcoming of the ethnic divisions that weaken the combat capacity of the workers of Malaya. The ruling classes play on the communal opposition among Malayans (who constitute the essential part of the peasant population), Chinese (who constitute the bulk of the urban workers and control the great majority of Malaysian economic interests), and Indians. In 1969 these communal antagonisms went so far as to take on the ospect of anti-Chinese pogroms. But the university population that mobilized in support of the Malayan peasants was markedly multinational. The composition of the December 2 demonstrations in Kuala Lumpur was approximately 70 percent Malayan and 30 percent Chinese and Indian. This means that about half the Chinese and Indian students of the university had taken to the streets. Additionally, the university student unions, like the UMSU, led by Malayans, lent active support to the strikes launched by Chinese and Indian workers in the Kuala Lumpur region. The Socialist Club, in fact, was one of the first genuinely multiethnic political formations of Malaysia. And the Malayan Communist party, originally based almost exclusively among the Chinese community, seems to have effectively begun to recruit cadres of Malayan and Muslim origin. Obviously, this overcoming of racial and religious antagonisms was only partial and gradual. Nevertheless, it corresponded to a deeper evolution, as was noted by the journalist Philippe Devillers: " •.. a 'new class" of bureaucrats, aristocrats, and economic cadres has emerged; it is attracted to the consumer society of the American type and, in spite of Islam, is eager to share the benefits and advantages of this society with the Chinese. Social inequality is growing rather than declining, and the contrasts are just as vivid among the Chinese as among the Malayans and Indians. The image of a society divided among poor Malayans and rich Chinese, the latter exploiting the former, no longer actually corresponds to reality. Malaysian society, multiracial, is in the process of dividing into social classes that cut across ethnic origins. ... "(7) Repression in the universities In order to break the student mobilization, the Tun Abdel Razak regime began by utilizing the traditional repressive apparatus: police intervention and arrests under the Internal Security Act. This law, decreed in 1960 three years after independence, was a followup to the Emergency Security Act of 1948 and provides for the imprisonment of any oppositionist for a renewable term of two years without any trial at all, Among those interned were o number of professors, faculty assistants, and student leaders, including Dr. Syed Hussein Ali (brother of the secretary general of the PSRM and a professor at the University of Malaya) and Juliet Chin, general secretary of the University of Singapore Student Union (USSU). Symbolic of the broadening of the movement of struggle, also among those arrested were Lim Mah Hui, a faculty assistant who is a member of the executive committee of the World Federation of Christian Students, and Anwar Ibrahim, president of the Malaysian Youth Council and a leader of the Anghatan Belia Islam Malaysia (ABIM - Islam Youth Forces, Malaysia), a Muslim movement. Buf the government was not content simply to suspend the UMSU and utilize the Internal Security Act. In April 1975 the regime decided to amend the already very repressive Universities and Colleges Act, which was passed in 1971. According to the amendments, the Ministry of Education will henceforth have direct or indirect control of nominations to the university administrations. Students and student organizations are forbidden to affiliate in any form to any off-campus club, political party, trade union, or other organization, even legal ones. The students and their organizations are likewise forbidden to say anything that could be interpreted (1) as a demonstration of support or opposition to any trade union, party, or illegal organization. The student unions are denied the right to organize financial collections. Any student who could be reasonably suspected (!) of having violated any of these rules may be arrested without warning. Any student brought to trial is automatically suspended from the university. All previously existing student organizations were officially dissolved and required to request new legalization. The sole representative of the entire student body is the Student Representative Council. While the Razak government did not succeed in winning any student support by decreeing this law, it did manage to temporarily break the ongoing mobilization. In an interview with New Asia News, Hamid Ali, secretary general of the PSRM, recognized that "these measures have been outwardly effective so far. " But the fact that
MALAYSIA
22.73
BIRMANIE
THAILANDE
Mar
BANGKOK
CAMBODGE
Marchole
NETNAM
SUD
Siam
Isthme de Kra
Surat Thani
DETROIT
05
MALAYSIAN
Осеан
SINGAPOUR
MATRA
BORNEO
ND ONE SIES
Indien
Matassar
JAKARTA
DE TROIT DE LA SONDE
--_ Projet de Canal
DETROIT DE LOMBOY km
1000 no student group had requested new legalization showed, he explained, that "the repression can produce temporory silence, but no support. "(B)
What direction for the struggle
In an effort to justify Its repression, the Razak government denounced the grip the Malayan Communist party was supposed to have had on the student struggles through the vehicle of the Chinese Language Society of the University of Malaya. In fact, however, the real leadership of this mass movement was shared among the formations of the radical left (such as the Socialist Club) and much more froditionalist, if not right wing, Islamic currents. Kebangsan University (the national university), for example, played an important role in December.
It is composed of Malayan students (generally more right wing than the Chinese students), a majority of whom are of Muslim peasant origin and little awakened to class struggle but sensitive to the egalitarion traditions and political purism of Islam.
The point of convergence of these diverse currents was the affirmation of active solidarity with the poor peasants of Baling. But only the most advanced wing of the movement combined this elementary support with clearly anti-imperialist (and even anticapitalist) objectives and demanded the nationalization of foreign capital, which controis about 60 percent of the economy, as indicated in Tables 2 and 3(9)
12
PHILIPPINES
The state of Malaysia, or the Malaysian Federation, is composed of a continental portion (western Malaysia) and an island portion (eastern Malaysia). Singapore, which seceded from the Malayan peninsula, then called Malaya, formed an independent state in 1965. The population of continental MalayMACASSAN
Asia includes 9,770, 000 inhabitants; the area is 58,735 square miles. In the Malaysian Federation, 47% of the population is of Malayan origin, 34% CELEBES is of Chinese origin, and 19% is of other origin (mostly Indian, but also the inhabitants of the island of Borneo and others). Malaysia is the world's leading producer of rubber, tin, palm FLORES oil, and tropical wood, and one of the leading producers of pepper and pinapple preserves. In any case, the Communist movement proper, which is clandestine, seems to be going through a twofold process of growth and break up. Up to now, the activity of the Malayan CP has been limited to guerrilla actions in the jungles in the Malaysian-Thai border regions. (This has been the case since the CP suffered defeat in the war with British imperialsim.) Tun Abdel Razak's trip to Peking in May 1974 did not prevent the Maoist guerrillas from stepping up their actions. Since the beginning of 1975, at least forty members of the police and security forces have been killed in ambushes. But splits in the Malayan CP have produced two additional organizations, both of which continue to claim allegiance to Maoism and armed action. Peking seems to continue to recognize the Malayan CP, which has been led by Chin Peng for the past seventeen years. On April 29, 1975, the Chinese Communist party sent greetings to the CP Central Committee on the occasion of the party's forty-fifth anniversary. The message reaffirmed the Chinese Communist party's confidence in the coming triumph of the "revolutionary armed struggle of the Malayan people"(10) which created some embarrassment in Tun Abdel Razak's entourage in Kuala Lumpur. The first split took place in 1970, the departing group taking the name Malayan Communist party (revolutionary faction); the second, in October 1974, gave rise to the CPM (Marxist-Leninist). According to Malaysian government sources, the immediate cause of these splits
was the order for summary executions issued by the Central Committee out of fear of police infiltration.(11) But they were also said to have been based on disagreements over what strategy to follow in order to break out of the single jungle guerrilla center. The radio station of the Chin Peng Communist party has on several occasions denounced the "handful of traitors" who challenged the policy of the "march to the South, " that is, the gradual encirclement of the cities from the countryside through the use of guerrilla bases located along the Malaysian-Thai border.(12) While the terms of the differences and the exact character of the splits and orientation of the orthodox" CP are difficult to grasp, the framework of the debate is clearer. A reexamination of a "Maoist" strategy adopted during the 1950s and 1960s was required because of the emergence of new generations of revolutionary militants, the partial modification of the social structure of the country with the concurrent strengthening of urban proletarian layers, the formation of a neocolonialism replacing the traditional British domination, and the modification of the regional relationship of forces - even within the Asian Communist movement - brought on by the victory of the Indochinese revolution. From this standpoint, it is probably significant that the differences seem to be especially strong in the state of Selangor, where Kuala Lumpur is located. It remains true, however, that the guerrilla actions have partially shifted toward the capital this year. At the beginning of the year an airbase near Kuala Lumpur was attacked by mortar. A leaflet signed by the People's Army for the Liberation of Malaya (PALM) and distributed in July 1975 in the city of Ipoh declared: "Be prepared for our urban civil strife, which is the result of the government's action over the years. ... The urban guerrilla is inevitable. "(13) This liberation army is said to be linked to the former Twelfth Regiment of the Communist party's National Army of Liberation (founded in 1949) and to the new CP(M-L). Chinese policemen are beginning to become targets for attacks. On August 26, 1975, the "national monument" constructed in Kuala Lumpur in honor of the "victory" over the Communist insurrection was bombed. Finally, on September 3 grenades were launched in the capital against a barracks housing paramilitary forces assigned to carry out the antiguerrilla struggle; there were several dead and several dozen wounded. A regime of terror Incapable of drying up the social sources of the ongoing development of struggle in Malaysia, the Razak government is seeking to establish a real regime of terror. The "tenant regulation" of 1951 has been rounded out by the Essential Community Self-Reliance Regulation of 1975. "Antiterrorist" courts have been established in which, contrary to the trodition of English law in effect in Malaya since colonial times, the accused must prove his innocence. Informing has been institutionalized: testimony can be taken secretly or conveyed by anonymous letter. Discussions about the information take place behind closed doors. Collective responsibility is generalized: Every member of a family is held responsible for the acts of all the other family members. The same goes for the members of a community as defined in the Rukun Tetangga Scheme ("pillars of the community" scheme). On July 24 Razak called for the formation of a vigilante corps. But Tun Abdel Razak's policy cannot be reduced to pure and simple repression. There is also a diplomatic policy. (He was one of the first to preach the creation of a "zone of peace and security" in Southeast Asia and was the first in the region to recognize the People's Republic of China.) There is also an economic policy: Razak is seeking to boost the participation of the state sector in large-scale enterprises, especially the ones that exploit the country's oil. But this profitization of the neocolonial economy implies a growing proletarianization of the Malayan population and a social test of strength. To succeed in his plans, Razak is trying to utilize the success of his Barisan Nasional(14) in the manipulated elections of August 1974. The Barisan Nasional got 58 percent of the vote - and 135 of the 154 seats in the federal parliament. It is not difficult to see through this parliamentary pretension of the regime. Even the Far Eastern Economic Review was compelled to admit, "The latest elections brought Malaysia, through the ballot box, almost to the edge of a one-party state." "Both the state-owned newspapers and other media and the publications in the private sector operate under controls and directives from the government. "(15) The test of strength now shaping up in Malaysia is important. In the North the Malayan revolution is organically linked to the development of struggles in southern Thailand. In the South, the profound unity of the battles waged on the peninsula and on the island of Singapore has been constantly reaffirmed. During the Tasek Utaro demonstrations, for example, the student unions of the University of Singapore and of the Polytechnic Institute put out many communiqués and made gestures of solidarity. For Malayan revolutionaries, the partition of the country is only temporary. In the East the movements of North Kalimantan (Borneo) are a component of the struggles in the Indonesian archipelago. More fundamentally, in Malaysia, as in the other countries of Southeast Asia, the third wave of the Asian revolution is now taking shape, the wave that was started by the final victory of the peoples of Indochina. Because of the wounds left by interethnic divisions, the lack of class-struggle traditions among the Malayan peasantry, the continued grip of the traditional religious chiefs, the violence of the repression being carried out by the regime, and the obvious inadequacy of the strategy previously elaborated by the Communist movement in Malaysia, the struggle is proving to be difficult at the outsef. Because of its importance and its difficulties, this struggle needs and deserves international solidarity.
*Source: Federation of Malaysia, Mid-term Review of the Second Malaysia
Source: "Berita Massal, " No. 1, December 30, 1974. (See footnote 1.)
MALAYSIA
Taking account of all smallholders who grow various crops:
48% have less than 3-5 acres to cultivate
20% have 3-5 acres each
20% have 5-10 acres each
12% have 10-99 acres each
Source: Treasury's Economic Report, 1974-75.
Sector
1. Agriculture, Forestry, Fisheries
2. Mining and Quarrying
3. Commerce
4. Manufacturing
5. Banking and Insurance
6. Construction
7. Transport and Communication
8. Others
Plan, 1971-75, Tables 4-7, p.83.
Total Acreage
Types of Estates
1,561,000
Rubber
529,000
Oil Palm
54,000
Coconut
7,000
Tea
TOTAL
2,151,000
14
TABLE 1
Pattern of Land Ownership
Among Malaysian Smallholders
Note: Official sources admit that a smallholder needs at least 6 acres of land in order to produce enough crops to maintain adequate subsistence. The same sources admit that 25% of smallholders do not own their own land: They either pay a fixed rent or share their crop with the landlord. (See footnote 2.)
TABLE 2
Foreign ownership of capital of incorporated companies,
West Malaysia, 1970
% of Sector
MS in thousands
75.3
1,079,714
72.4
393,910
63.5
384,549
59.6
804, 282
52.2
332,790
24.1
19,937
12.0
9,845
31.4
182,862
AVERAGE
TOTAL
60.7
3,207,889
TABLE 3
Foreign ownership of plantation estates
% Foreign Owned
Foreign Owned
55.5
867,000
53.0
283,000
66.7
36,000
57.1
4,000
AVERAGE
TOTAL
60.0
1,294,000
GENERAL STRIKE OF WOMEN
FOOTNOTES: 1. Sunday Mail, March 2,1975, quoted by Philippe Devillers, Le Monde Diplomatique, August 1975. 2. Tables 1,2, and 3 have been reproduced from the document of the Annual Conference of the FUEMSSO of March 1975. (See address below .) 3. See Far Eastern Economic Review, January 10, 1975. 4. Hishamuddin Rais has now gone underground. The Socialist Club (Socialis Kelab) was a radical student formation leading the UMSU. An interview with a student who is a member of this organization was published in INPRECOR, No.9, October 3, 1974. 5. The Partai Socialis Rakyat Malaya (Socialist People's party of Malaya) is the only real legal leftist opposition political party. 6. On this subject, see the call for international solidarity published in INPRECOR, No. 19, February 13, 1975. Its author, Selamat Ahmed Kamal, former president of the Student Union of the Holy University of Malaysia, had then gone underground. He has since agreed to return to his university under conditions posed by the government (cessation of all activities). 7. Le Monde Diplomatique, August 1975. 8. New Asia Review, July 18, 1975. 9. The article published in INPRECOR, No.9, described the efforts made by the Socialist Club to make the students and the population conscious of the foreign grip on Malaysia. It also showed that the leaders of the Socialist Club knew that the majority they had obtained in the student movement of the University of Malaysia did not mean that their ideas had been completely understood and assimilated. Practically everything in Iceland ground to a halt on October 24, the day of the first general strike by women in the history of the European labor movement. More than two-thirds of the women of Iceland stopped work on that day, women employed in industry and services and housewives. There were meetings and demonstrations in nearly all towns and villages. More than 20,000 people demonstrated in Reykjavik, that is, 10 percent of the population of the entire country! The strike had been called by all the country's women's organizations. The general slogans of the demonstration were not very concrete: Greater equality between men and women; Equality now; More child-care centers. But the enor-
10. See the declaration in Pékin Information, May 5, 1975. 11. See The Asia Magazine, May 4, 1975. 12. See J. Decornoy in Le Monde, February 20, 1975. 13. Far Eastern Economic Review, September 12, 1975, article by K. Das. 14. The Barisan Nasional (National Front) is dominated by Razak's party (the United Malay National Organization) in alliance with the bourgeois Chinese and Indian parties (Malay Chinese Association and Malaysian Indian Congress) and five other parties. 15. Far Eastern Economic Review, January 10, 1975. Some addresses useful for following the struggles in Malaysia and Singapore:
Malaya News Service 97 Drummond St., Carlton, 3053 Melbourne, Australia FUEMSSO News Service Federation of United Kingdom and Eire Malaysian and Singaporean Students Organization c/o National Student Organisation 3 Endsleigh St., London WC 1, England and also:
Center for Information on Asian Political Prisoners (CLAP) Suzuki Bild, 3F-B, 5-3 Sarugahu 1 - chome, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo, 101, Japan ICELAND mously broad participation is a result of a very concrete reality. Average wages for women in Iceland are 25 percent lower than average wages for men, with the women employed in the lowest paid jobs. Inflation ran at about 50 percent last year, and the contracts signed by the trade unions provide for wage levels that are below subsistence for the lowest-paid categories, which means for women. Women constitute 43 percent of the membership of the trade unions, but there is not one woman among the fifteen national wage negotiators. For the revolutionary Marxist activists in the women's movement, the October 24 strike laid the basis for widespread work among women in the struggle against women's position under capitalism and agairst the capitalist system itself.