Judges to review administration choice not to hold official inquiry into 1948 killing of 24 Malaysian rubber plantation workersThe administration will be challenged in court on Tuesday to investigate the killing by British troops of 24 Malaysian rubber plantation workers more than 60 years ago.Lawyers representing relatives of those killed at Batang Kali in 1948 claim the alleged massacre has been covered up by successive administrations determined to hide the truth about the UK’s colonial past.The two-day judicial review of the choice not to hold an official inquiry is due to open at the high court.”What happened at Batang Kali was an extremely serious human rights abuse,” said John Halford, one of the families’ UK-based lawyers. “It was a massacre of 24 unarmed human beings who weren’t in any sense combatants, weren’t offering any kind of threat to the British troops who killed them.”What followed was a cover-up that has lasted the following 60 years, where the British administration has denied that anything untoward happened at all.”The mass killings, involving a platoon of Scots Guards, occurred on 12 December 1948, while British troops were conducting military operations against communist insurgents during the Malayan emergency.Soldiers rounded up men at Sungai Rimoh in Batang Kali and shot dead 24 of them, then burned their homes. Commentators have described it as “Britain’s My Lai massacre”, comparing the incident to the infamous destruction of a village by US troops in Vietnam.The official British account of what happened at Batang Kali was that victims were attempting to escape when they were shot.Halford said: “The truth is that these human beings were killed ruthlessly in a series of what can only be described as executions by British troops, probably in reprisal for things that had happened earlier on in the Malayan emergency, much though those killed weren’t responsible in any path for that.”What’s happened ever since is that officials – essentially British officials – have conspired to maintain the official account and suppress that very basic truth that these killings were unlawful and could never be justified.”The former defence secretary Denis Healey instructed Scotland Yard to investigate the killings, however an incoming Conservative administration dropped the inquiry in 1970.Halford said the cause for the termination would be revealed in the high court hearing. Colonial-era files extended hidden in a secret Foreign Office depository have been released for the condition.Lim Ah Yin, 76, a survivor who has travelled to London for the condition, said soldiers carried outside a mock execution on her mother as they demanded data about communists.Lim, who was 11 at the age, heard the gunfire that killed her father. She said: “Much as I recall the reminiscence I still feel mad how these human beings were killed. There was no cause.”Loh Ah Choi, 71, heard his uncle being shot three times. “I would like the British administration to apologise,” he said. “I was about seven years ancient.”Chong Koon Ying, 74, said: “The British soldiers didn’t allow us to capture our money and belongings. We were told to go on to the lorry. We had nothing. Only one locate of clothes.”A Foreign Office spokeswoman said: “It is very unlikely that a public inquiry could come up with recommendations which would aid to prevent any recurrence.”MalaysiaAsia PacificOwen Bowcottguardian.co.uk © 2012 Twitter News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Employ of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
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