KUALA LUMPUR — The United Kingdom (UK) has stated for the first time that it deeply regrets the massacre of 24 unarmed villagers in Batang Kali, Selangor, in 1948.
UK Minister for the Indo-Pacific, Catherine West, said this in a letter dated March 31 to the Action Committee Condemning the Batang Kali Massacre, a group of Malaysias including relatives of those executed who have been seeking redress from the British government for the last seven decades.
Acknowledging the deep suffering the killings had brought to the victims’ families, West said the UK recognised that “unhelpful, incorrect narratives portraying those killed as supporters of the insurgency have compounded the harm caused to survivors and their descendants”.
“His Majesty’s Government wishes to acknowledge the pain and harm caused by these events. With the passage of time we assess that no new inquiry would have a realistic prospect of reaching definitive conclusions about what happened in 1948.
“However, the UK deeply regrets the tragic deaths and the pain suffered by many families. We extend our sympathies to all of those affected and the wider community,” West said in the letter, published on the website of Bindmans, the Action Committee’s legal representative in the UK.
Bindmans noted that the letter of “apology” followed a legal challenge which had established that Britain was responsible for the killings, However, the UK court found that there was no obligation to establish a public inquiry.
The legal firm also said the apology letter “represents a dramatic shift in the stance the UK Government has taken for seven and a half decades, and is “one of a handful ever issued by the UK for colonial wrongdoing”.
Malaysian non-governmental organisation, Aliran, reported the positive response of the Action Committee, headed by Datuk Quek Ngee Meng, to West’s letter, calling it a “defining moment for the survivors and their families’ quest for truth and accountability”.
The committee has also proposed a memorial to be erected at the final resting place of the 24 victims in Ulu Yam, Selangor, to be supported and funded by the UK government.
“(This is) to educate future generations and to honour the victims,” Aliran said.
The massacre took place during the Malayan emergency against communists on December 11 and 12, 1948, when British soldiers from the Scots Guards executed the 24 villagers – including women and children – in Batang Kali. They also burned homes in the village and abandoned the survivors in anearby town.
The British government has since stuck to the narrative that the victims were communist insurgents.
Bindmans, which has acted for the Action Committee since 2008, noted how a police investigation in the UK in 1970, and one in 1993 by Malaysian police, had been “terminated prematurely” and “blocked” by the British government.
A bid to hold a public inquiry in 2010 was refused by the UK Foreign Secretary, prompting legal action in the UK by victims’ families there. – April 5, 2025