Batang Kali Massacre (1948)

Sun Dec 12, 1948

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Image: British troops were conducting operations against communist insurgents during the Malayan Emergency when the plantation workers were killed. Photograph: Haywood Magee/Getty Images

The Batang Kali Massacre, described by BBC producer Christopher Hale as “Britain’s My Lai”, was the killing of 24 unarmed Malaysian villagers by British troops on this day in 1948. No charges were ever brought against the perpetrators.

The massacre took place during the Malayan Emergency and was part of counter-insurgency operations against Malay and Chinese communists in Malaya, then a colony of the British Crown.

A state of emergency was declared by colonial authorities in Malaya in June 1948 because of escalating violence and the assassinations of several prominent British landowners by insurgent forces. The massacre itself occurred that December when British Troops surrounded a rubber plantation at Sungai Rimoh near Batang Kali in Selangor and gunned down 24 unarmed adult men. The only adult male survivor was a man named Chong Hong, who fainted and was presumed dead.

Despite several investigations by the British government since the 1950s, and a re-examination of the evidence by the Royal Malaysia Police between 1993 and 1997, no charges were brought against any of the alleged perpetrators. As recently as 2018, the European Court of Human Rights declared one appeal for justice as inadmissible on the grounds that it took place too long ago.