Analysis of information sources in references of the Wikipedia article "Malayan Emergency" in English language version.
A bloody ten-year civil war, the Malayan Emergency was finally won by British forces using scorched earth tactics, including the invention of forcible relocation of villages into areas controlled by British forces.
It was the British who were actually the first to use herbicides in the Malayan 'Emergency'...To circumvent surprise attacks on their troops the British Military Authorities used 2,4,5-T to increase visibility in the mixed vegetation
British efforts to educate soldiers about the Geneva Conventions either did not ever reach units deployed in Malaya or left no impression on them...All of these regiments went through the introductory jungle warfare course and received the same instruction about 'snap shooting' and differentiating between targets. Differences in training do not seem to explain why some units killed civilians while others did not.
Despite their innocuous nomenclature, New Villages were in fact, as Tan demonstrates, concentration camps designed less to keep the communists out but to place the rural Chinese population under strict government surveillance and control.
The outstanding development of the Emergency in Malaya was the implementation of the Briggs Plan, as a result of which about 1,000,000 rural people were corralled into more than 600 'new' settlements, principally New Villages.
Thousands of Orang Asli were escorted out of the jungle by the police and the army, to find themselves being herded into hastily prepared camps surrounded by barbed wire to prevent their escape. The mental and physiological adaption called for was too much for many of the people of the hills and jungle and hundreds did not survive the experience.
One of these strategies was the 'Scorched Earth Policy' which saw the first use of Agent Orange – a herbicide designed to kill anything that it came in contact with.
It was the British who were actually the first to use herbicides in the Malayan 'Emergency'...To circumvent surprise attacks on their troops the British Military Authorities used 2,4,5-T to increase visibility in the mixed vegetation
Despite their innocuous nomenclature, New Villages were in fact, as Tan demonstrates, concentration camps designed less to keep the communists out but to place the rural Chinese population under strict government surveillance and control.
It was the British who were actually the first to use herbicides in the Malayan 'Emergency'...To circumvent surprise attacks on their troops the British Military Authorities used 2,4,5-T to increase visibility in the mixed vegetation
British efforts to educate soldiers about the Geneva Conventions either did not ever reach units deployed in Malaya or left no impression on them...All of these regiments went through the introductory jungle warfare course and received the same instruction about 'snap shooting' and differentiating between targets. Differences in training do not seem to explain why some units killed civilians while others did not.
One of these strategies was the 'Scorched Earth Policy' which saw the first use of Agent Orange – a herbicide designed to kill anything that it came in contact with.
