Word: templer
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Britain there was uneasiness about High Commissioner Templer's highhanded methods. Said Laborite Lord Listowel, onetime Colonial Minister: "Collective punishment will turn many people . . . hitherto unconcerned about politics, into Communist sympathizers." In the House of Commons 124 Labor M.P.s introduced a motion protesting collective punishment in Malaya. But Templer had more in mind than mere reprisal...
...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...
Immediately, 70 miles to the south, Templer clamped a new curfew and a reduced rice ration on the 4,000 inhabitants of Sungei Pelek. Here Templer hoped his new curfew-and-questionnaire technique would smoke out the whereabouts of 30-year-old Liew Kon Kim, a shrewd Communist leader known as "the bearded wonder." Templer imposed another curfew on 80 square miles of Communist-terrorized rubber estates and tin mines between Kuala Lumpur and Pahang state...