The Special Branch
Part One of a three-part series
The Special Branch, the Brunei Rebellion and the role of Sarawak
The Special Branch (SB) in Sarawak was formed in June 1949 to collect intelligence on secret societies and subversive activities. At that time, there was a vocal anti-cession movement within the Malay community, seeking to overturn the cession of Sarawak to Britain by Rajah Charles Vyner Brooke on 1 July 1946. But this movement quickly faded into irrelevancy after 3 December 1949, when a secret group within the anti-cession movement assassinated Duncan Stewart, Sarawak’s second British Governor. Also, at that time, communist ideology was being propagated openly and the impact of communism principally among the Chinese community was to occupy much of the resources of the Special Branch for the next fifty years.
Attempting to curb the spread of communist propaganda, in January 1951 the Special Branch raided the office of the Chung Hua Kung Pao, a Chinese newspaper that promoted communism, leading to its closure. On 5 August 1952, a raid from Indonesian Kalimantan by a group purporting to be the Sarawak People’s Army raised concerns of communist militancy. By the end of 1961, a proposed anti-communist federation of the states of Malaya, with Singapore, Sarawak and British North Borneo as states with special rights, was moving forward rapidly against growing opposition from all left-wing forces in those countries, supported vociferously by Indonesia.
Tim Hardy, leader of the Special Branch, was appointed in early 1962, found a consensus that the Constabulary’s 1,465 personnel were adequate for peace-keeping. The Constabulary included a 271-personnel paramilitary Field Force to deal with civil disturbances and any internal militancy. However, Hardy quickly learned that BMP (Barisan Pemuda Sarawak — Sarawak Youth Front) and the SCO (Sarawak Communist Organisation) had a common cause: resistance to Sarawak joining the proposed Federation of Malaysia. With the situation further complicated by Indonesian President Bung Sukarno’s threats to crush Malaysia.
The information about the Sarawak Communist Party came from documents either recovered from imperfect hiding places, purchased for cash from informers, confiscated during police raids or intercepted on their way through the SCO network. There were clandestine news sheets, samizdats, … rolled slips (sealed with wax to ease their transportation within one of the courier’s body orifices), study notes … journals, diaries, self-criticism statements, ‘work plans,’ letters, periodicals and even love letters, all of it handwritten.
With the United States, London, Kuala Lumpur, and Singapore all asking what anti-communist measures were being taken, the Special Branch came under increasing pressure. They viewed the SCO as a movement that was breaking the law and had to be dealt with accordingly. By then the Special Branch had uncovered the identities of many of the SCO’s politburo, including leading figures Wen Min Chyuan, his wife Wong Fuk Ing, and Bong Kee Chok.
The British-Malayan Cobbold Commission toured Sarawak in July 1962, subsequently reporting that the majority of Sarawakians supported the concept of a Federation of Malaysia. Jakarta, Beijing and Moscow sneered at Cobbold … there was to be a ‘Maphilindo’ (a federation of Malaya, the Philippines and Indonesia), a ‘Beijing — Jakarta Axis’, and then Pakistan joined in by voicing Islamic misgivings over Malaysia while Moscow condemned neocolonialism. The Special Branch continued to pit ninety per cent of the special branch against the SCO, leaving only half a dozen Malay ‘detectives’ to look out for signs of unease among the non-Chinese population.
The Brunei Uprising: 8 December 1962
A Brunei Malay/Arab, A. M. Azahari, dreamt of restoring the Sultanate to its former glory of an Islamic empire covering the whole of North Borneo and was by then “receiving assurances of Indonesian assistance to restore Malay Muslim — not Malaysian — domination over what was called ‘British’ Borneo [Sarawak and British North Borneo – now Sabah].”
Rumours spread that there were uniformed men on the border between Sarawak and Brunei. The Brunei officials said there weren’t, and they needed no help from Sarawak. The armed uniformed men in the Temburong jungle turned out to be Azahari’s recruits training to take over Brunei, Sarawak, and British North Borneo.
Two or three hundred ‘soldiers’ of the self-styled ‘Tentera Nasional Kalimantan Utara’ (National Army of North Borneo) overran police posts and oil installations throughout Brunei. During the uprising, Azahari’s army and followers took over Limbang and Bekenu in Sarawak and Weston in British North Borneo. Four local policemen and five British Marines lost their lives in the occupation and reoccupation of Limbang and were virtually on the point of seizing Bandar Sri Bagawan [Brunei town] itself when they stopped to await further instructions from their commander-in-chief, A. M. Azahari.
The commander, however, had taken off for Manila, there to await the call to return in triumph as Brunei’s viceroy. The rebels, who could easily have gone on to raise their flag above the capital’s clock tower, instead sat down to wait for orders that never came. A battalion of British soldiers shipped hastily from Singapore found the Tentera [army] sitting in wayside coffee shops, sleeping in the grounds of the grand mosque and bathing in the river. They were sitting ducks. Hardly a shot was fired. The rebellion was at an end almost as soon as it had begun.
Complacency suddenly gave way to uproar. Emergency Regulations were introduced immediately. There was a rapid build-up of military forces and for the first time since the end of the Japanese occupation, armed soldiers were seen on the streets of Kuching, Sibu and Miri.
The Special Branch had identified only one notable Sarawakian, Ahmad Zaidi, who may have been connected to the uprising. Therefore, the Special Branch concluded the Tentera Nasional did not present any real threat to Sarawak. And as far as the Special Branch knew, the SCO had not been involved in the uprising nor “had they any guns.” Nevertheless, there was a chance that the SCO “would be armed by Sukarno … we had to do something about it.” Martial law was rejected and Sarawak was to remain under civilian control.
As noted earlier, the Special Branch had identified only one prominent person, Ahmad Zaidi bin Muhamad Noor M.A. (Edinburgh), the Education Officer to the Second Division, as having close links with Azahari, the C-in-C of the Tentera Nasional Kalimantan Utara. Special Branch intelligence suggested, “Zaidi would have preferred Indonesian domination of Sarawak because he considered the 1960s Malaya to be neocolonialist whereas Sukarno’s Indonesia, unruly as it was, was at least a truly independent, proud Asian state.”
It was mutually agreed that Zaidi return with us to Kuching where he lived with Hamdan under mild house arrest. A subsequent secret agreement was reached with the government, under which he would be allowed to ‘escape’ across the border into Indonesia, where he’d lie low until the end of Konfrontasi … in return for government financial aid to his family. Both sides honoured the agreement and Zaidi later became a convert to the Malaysian concept, returning to Sarawak in 1968, whereby in 1974 he was State Minister for Housing and Development and in 1985 he moved into the Brookes’ old Astana as Governor of Sarawak.
Indonesian forces along Sarawak’s 1,600-kilometer border with Indonesian Kalimantan, which was countered by a build-up of British forces. In early 1963, Chinese youths began to cross the border into Indonesian Kalimantan clandestinely to take to arms, with Indonesia exaggeratedly claiming in July that 1,000 had been given military training.
Part Two: Tomorrow 12 June 2023
From: TIM HARDY: SPECIAL BRANCH, SARAWAK, DECEMBER 1961–MARCH 1968 by Vernon L. Porritt Borneo Research Bulletin vol. 37 condensed with permission.
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