Word: tanjong
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Collective Punishment. But he also had a police job to do. He had been in Malaya only two months when Communist guerrillas ambushed and killed a British patrol of twelve men near the small town of Tanjong Malim. Templer arrived in his armored car, glared at the town elders over his spectacles, and said: "It doesn't amuse me to punish innocent people, but many among you are not innocent. You have information which you are too cowardly to give. Have some guts and shoulder the responsibility of citizenship...
Britain's new High Commissioner for Malaya, General Sir Gerald Templer, intended that the people of Tanjong Malim should suffer. It was his way of punishing them for having failed to supply information about the Communist terrorists who had murdered twelve men of a pipeline repair gang near by (TIME, April...
...ninth curfew day his soldiers began pounding Tanjong Malim doors. They handed each householder an envelope containing a letter from Templer and a questionnaire form. Wrote George Templer (in Malay, Chinese and Tamil): "If you are a Communist, I do not expect you to reply. If you are not, I want you to give as much information as possible ... It is quite safe . . . none will know which form comes from which house. Do not sign your name unless you want...
...On.Templer's questionnaire asked to identify local Communists, their recruiting, agents, propagandists, and those shops supplying them with food and materials. British soldiers collected the forms in locked boxes. In the government residence at Kuala Lumpur, Templer opened the boxes in the presence of six representatives from Tanjong Malim, sent them home with a large photograph of the opening ceremony...
Templer refused to say what he found in the questionnaires, or how many were blanks, but within four days his men had arrested 28 suspected Communist collaborators, among them several prosperous shopkeepers. Last week in the central playing field at Tanjong Malim, the populace was assembled before a platform decorated with loudspeakers and British and Malayan flags. The people were told that the 22-hour curfew was lifted. Men with 13 days' lost work to make up, and mothers anxious for their pale, sickly children heaved audible sighs of relief...