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He gained notoriety for being the leader of the CPM armed insurgency, which led to a large number of Civilian Casualties . Some have claimed this was in contrast to the stance adopted by Mao Zedong and his policy of the Eight Points Of Attention to avoid civilian casualties. He withdrew to southern Thailand with the remnants of his forces during the latter part of the Emergency as a result of security force pressure and at tne end of 1960 moved to Beijing, which became his base for many years. He was thus effectively exiled from Malaya and remains so until this day. He was a firm Anti-colonialist who opposed the British rule of Malaya , but wished to create a Communist dictatorship under the Communist Party of Malaya. For that reason he continued the struggle even after Malaysia achieved independence. At the beginning of 2000, he applied to be permitted back into Malaysia , and a complex legal issue has arisen out of this. Hearings on whether to permit his return to Malaysia were scheduled for May 25 , 2005 but the High Court postponed the hearing to July 25 , when his application to be allowed to return to Malaysia was rejected. His return is opposed by victims of attacks committed by the Commnist Party of Malaya, those who served in the armed forces during the Emergency, and members of the public. There have been a resurgence of accounts of the alleged atrocities the Communist Party of Malaya committed in newspapers by those who against his return to Malaysia (such as the ''Ex-Servicemen's Association of Malaysia''). Chin Peng has lived in exile in southern Thailand and has also given lectures in the National University Of Singapore . The current Malaysian Prime Minister, Abdullah Badawi, suggested the Government might reconsider its position in the future. He said he would wait for the outcome of the Court case before making a decision. THE EMERGENCY There exists a certain amount of Controversy whether he was responsible for the deaths of civilians and colonialists, marked when members of the Communist Party of Malaya killed three pro-British civilians in 1948 in Sungei Siput . Many Singapore an historians and Anticommunist s allege that Chin Peng knew about and ordered the killings, although there is a degree of dissent over this. Some argue that Chin Peng was forty kilometres south and was at a fellow party member's Bungalow , and was ignorant of the incident. In his book, written many years later and after the defeat of the CPM, Chin Peng states clearly that he did not order the attacks. In any event Chin Peng was the leader of the Party and the killers operated under his orders and through his inspiration. The MPAJA had spent most of the war killing ethnic Chinese who collaborated with the Japanese rather than actual Japanese soldiers, so it is clear that this was similar to their past behaviour. Inevitably, the killings forced the Malayan colonial administration to declare a State Of Emergency . This also provoked an immediate crackdown on the Communist Party of Malaya, when British troops Raid ed his house. Chin Peng managed to escape, but did lost various key documents, including his Passport in the process. Unsure of the status of the rest of the party, he eventually learned that his Comrade Ah Hai was hiding in Ipoh , and devised a scheme with his sister, disguised as a couple on a reunion, such that he managed to re-establish a secret base there. From then on, the Communist Party of Malaya led an Underground insurgency resisting British suppression of the movement. This initial resistance by the Communist Party of Malaya eventually erupted into full hostility, and developed into a form of a Civil War , which became the Malayan Emergency that lasted for twelve years until 1960 . In 1960 Chin Peng wished to give up the armed struggle, but, after travelling to China, was told by Deng Xiaoping that South-East Asia was ripe for Revolution. The CPM maintained a theoretical armed struggle for decades after. The death toll eventually climbed into the thousands. Those sympathetic to Chin Peng tend to portray the violence perpetrated by the CPM as defensive and reactionary, while Right-wing opponents tend to portray it as aggressive and Unethical . During the Cultural Revolution the CPM was split into three factions and Chin Peng ordered purges resulting in mass trials and many summary executions. CHRONOLOGY
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