Word: templer
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Wake for the Dead. Conservative civil servants learned to fear Templer's thin-lipped, tigerish sneer. Asians loved it when he looked a prevaricating Asian politician in the eye and said: "You're a stinker." Everywhere he went he was appalled by the indolent attitude of the Europeans. He told a Rotarian audience: "You see today how the Communists work . . . They seldom go to the races. They seldom go to dinner parties or cocktail parties. And they do not play golf." Even as he spoke, the Perak Derby was being run on the track at Ipoh, tin-mining...
...were without citizenship. Believing this to be a basic cause of the unrest, the British Colonial Office pressed for Chinese citizenship, against the opposition of the Malays and some local British. The "emergency" had brought top-level Malays and Chinese together, but had left their communities coldly self-segregated. Templer threw his whole weight into the drive for common citizenship...
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...
There was no response. Templer slapped a 2 2-hour curfew on Tanjong Malim and cut the rice ration. Work stopped. Villagers had only two hours a day in which to buy food. British soldiers went from house to house, handing out a questionnaire. In Chinese, Malay and Tamil, Templer wrote: "If you are a Communist I don't expect you to reply. If you aren't, I want you to give ... as much information as you can to help my forces catch the Communist terrorists in your area ..." He itemized the questions, then added...
...soldiers collected the questionnaires in sealed boxes, which Templer himself opened. Some of the letters contained only insults. But a few days later 28 people in Tanjong Malim and in a village near by were arrested. After 13 days the curfew was lifted, the rice ration restored, and the people of Tanjong Malim went back to work...