John Halford, a solicitor at the law firm Bindmans puts it best.
The bullets that killed half the inhabitants of Batang Kali can never return to their barrels and the time has long since passed when any soldiers who fired them might be prosecuted.
The least that the British government could do, is to at least acknowledge the war crimes a rogue squad did under their flag.
- Voluntary Lawyers of Action Committee Condemning Batang Kali Massacre
MM Online - European court rejects call for Batang Kali massacre probe:
 |
From left) Loh Ah Choi, Chang Koon Ying and Lim Ah Yin, relatives of unarmed Malaysian rubber plantation workers killed in Batang Kali in 1948, in London on May 7, 2012. — AFP pic |
STRASBOURG, Oct 4 — Europe’s top rights court today rejected a call to probe the shooting deaths of 24 Malaysian rubber plantation workers by British troops in 1948, saying it came too late.
Relatives of the workers have waged a decades-long fight for an enquiry into the “Batang Kali massacre”, which occurred on December 12, 1948 during what is known as the Malayan Emergency, when Commonwealth forces fought a communist-inspired revolt in what was then a British colony.
But the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, eastern France, which hears complaints about alleged violations of the European Convention on Human Rights, rejected the petition as “inadmissible”.
“The Court found it had no competence to examine the applicants’ complaint because it did not come within its temporal jurisdiction,” a panel of seven judges ruled.
The court explained that it had no jurisdiction in the matter because the deaths occurred more than 10 years before Britain allowed individuals to bring cases directly to the European court.
The judges also noted that complainants had far exceeded the six-month limit on bringing a case in the wake of significant new evidence, given that soldiers had admitted to being ordered to fire on the workers as far back as 1970.
The court’s decision is final.
In November 2015, Britain’s Supreme Court also rejected an appeal by relatives for a public enquiry into the killings.
The ethnic Chinese labourers were killed after British soldiers entered the Batang Kali rubber plantation about 30km north of Kuala Lumpur, where they rounded up villagers for interrogation.
Communist rebels in what was then called Malaya were predominantly ethnic Chinese who had begun arriving in Malaya in the early 20th century to work as labourers.
The British government said at the time that the villagers were suspected insurgents and were shot when they tried to escape, but other villagers said the men were summarily executed.
The killings have been referred to as “Britain’s My Lai” after a Vietnam War massacre by US troops, and Britain’s Ministry of Defence has called it a “deeply regrettable incident”.
The massacre was largely forgotten until 1970, when a British newspaper ran an explosive account of the killings, publishing sworn affidavits by soldiers from the Scots Guards regiment who acknowledged they had killed in cold blood.
The insurgency left thousands dead and only ended with the signing of a 1989 peace treaty with the Malayan Communist Party.
Relatives of the workers have waged a decades-long fight for an enquiry into the “Batang Kali massacre”, which occurred on December 12, 1948 during what is known as the Malayan Emergency, when Commonwealth forces fought a communist-inspired revolt in what was then a British colony.
But the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, eastern France, which hears complaints about alleged violations of the European Convention on Human Rights, rejected the petition as “inadmissible”.
“The Court found it had no competence to examine the applicants’ complaint because it did not come within its temporal jurisdiction,” a panel of seven judges ruled.
The court explained that it had no jurisdiction in the matter because the deaths occurred more than 10 years before Britain allowed individuals to bring cases directly to the European court.
The judges also noted that complainants had far exceeded the six-month limit on bringing a case in the wake of significant new evidence, given that soldiers had admitted to being ordered to fire on the workers as far back as 1970.
The court’s decision is final.
In November 2015, Britain’s Supreme Court also rejected an appeal by relatives for a public enquiry into the killings.
The ethnic Chinese labourers were killed after British soldiers entered the Batang Kali rubber plantation about 30km north of Kuala Lumpur, where they rounded up villagers for interrogation.
Communist rebels in what was then called Malaya were predominantly ethnic Chinese who had begun arriving in Malaya in the early 20th century to work as labourers.
The British government said at the time that the villagers were suspected insurgents and were shot when they tried to escape, but other villagers said the men were summarily executed.
The killings have been referred to as “Britain’s My Lai” after a Vietnam War massacre by US troops, and Britain’s Ministry of Defence has called it a “deeply regrettable incident”.
The massacre was largely forgotten until 1970, when a British newspaper ran an explosive account of the killings, publishing sworn affidavits by soldiers from the Scots Guards regiment who acknowledged they had killed in cold blood.
The insurgency left thousands dead and only ended with the signing of a 1989 peace treaty with the Malayan Communist Party.
[kaytee note: I just wonder how much effort the Malaysian government had rendered to the surviving relatives of the massacre victims]
For more on the proof-evidence of the Batang Kali massacre-war crime, read 5 Facts About The ‘Batang Kali Massacre’.
For more on the proof-evidence of the Batang Kali massacre-war crime, read 5 Facts About The ‘Batang Kali Massacre’.
Unfortunately the court's hands are tied.
ReplyDeleteJust as extra-territoriality is a legal overreach, retrospective legal proceedings are usually legally inadmissible. It is a form of extra-territoriality, in this case in time.
Either the act was not a crime at the time ( like in Nik Naina's case) or the Court has no legal jurisdiction at the time ( in the Batang Kali case).
we're NOT talking about Malaysian courts only but also British courts
DeleteIn 1948, Britain was not yet part of the EU or its predecessor the EEC. EU Courts have no jurisdiction on a 1948 incident.
DeleteWakakakaka……
DeleteCan u honestly thinking that a pommie court would uphold her self-proclaimed 'democratic' impartiality in this case?
The highest court of that f*cked land has summarily rejected the case. While the European Court of Human Rights has AGAIN rejected it based on legal technicality of time lapsed!
While ALL these while the BN govt set tight & quiet w/o a miai sound since the victims r supposedly 'Chinese' M'sians with Communist links! (Yr capitalised highlit again shows yr twisted sense of blaming the CURRENT PH govt for doing nothing).
Proved to u that western democratic practices r just in name to suit the govt of the day.
Bleeding hearts take note!
when did I blame the Pakatan govt?
DeleteI do have to agree with the European Court that past historical massacres seeking redemption after decades or centuries ago is difficult and irreversible after so many years.
ReplyDeleteThe victims are all just historical collateral damage just as incidents like Sabra and Shatilla, Rape of Nanking, India/Pakistan partition wars, Armenian massacre, Pol Pot Killing Fields, Rwanda civil war, War on Terror in Afgahanistan and Iraq and ISIS, Atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki etc etc.
Sabra and Shatilla, Rape of Nanking, Batang Kali were NOT collateral damage to civilians BUT direct cold blooded massacres or murders - war crimes so to speak
DeleteDouble standard of the western values!!
DeleteHow to correlate the Batang Kali incident vis-a-vis the Nazis war crime against the Jews in the face of the western democratic SOP?
Or maybe kt SHOULD shout out Zionist Jews have more right to sympathy & timeless retrospective inhumanity claims against them than ALL the other earthlings.
the west is being pragmatic, like ccp n pap.
DeleteSo what's yr take about political pragmatism of the west, vis-a-vis CCP & PAP?
DeleteTaiwanese model of Yanky superficial demoncracy (note the n)!
Wakakakakaka…… real 小民的智慧。
I believe my uncle was one of the soldiers. How would one find out who was in the Battalion?
ReplyDelete