Ronnie Liu backs call to recognise New Villages as national historical sites

Ronnie Liu recounted insisting on keeping the land premiums for New Villages in Selangor unchanged when he was a state executive council member from 2008 to 2013.

PETALING JAYA: Former Selangor assemblyman Ronnie Liu has backed a proposal for the Emergency-era New Villages set up by the British to be recognised as national historical sites.

The former DAP veteran said this was based on his personal experience having been a member of a family who was forced to relocate to a new village.

In a Facebook post, he said that his parents and other family members had to abandon their farm house in the outskirts for a much smaller plot of land in Cheroh, Raub, in Pahang where a New Village was built by British colonial forces. He added that the entire area was cordoned off with barbed wire.

“We lost our farm house and our farm land with no compensation from the then colonial master,” Liu said, adding that his family had to build their new home using materials that had been dismantled from their old house.

“That’s the historical fact I quoted when I insisted on keeping the land premiums for New Villages in Selangor unchanged when I was a state executive council member from 2008 to 2013.

“The state exco heeded my call and premiums for all New Villages in Selangor remain low and unchanged till today.”

According to Liu, the British set up New Villages for the Chinese community in order to cut off local support to the communists, and it proved to be an effective strategy.

“The activities of the communist movement were badly hit since the implementation of the Briggs Plan and eventually the Communist Party of Malaya was forced to give up its armed struggle and to ink the Hat Yai Peace Accord,” he said.

“The unique history of New Villages means that it deserves to be commemorated as national historical sites. The tough lives our forefathers went through and the sacrifices they made collectively were huge by any standards.

“We must be bold enough to face and accept these historical facts by giving due recognition to new villages as it is part of the history of nation-building in this country.”

Liu was responding to a letter published by FMT, which proposed that New Villages be recognised as national historical sites on the grounds that their creation was part of a chain of events that directly contributed to Malaysia’s independence.

Housing and local government minister Nga Kor Ming had recently proposed designating the New Villages in Selangor as a Unesco world heritage site in recognition of their cultural and historical significance since their establishment in 1948, at the start of the Emergency period in the then Malaya.

His proposal drew brickbats from Umno, who claimed that it would indirectly impact the Malay community’s status as Bumiputeras, which acknowledges them as the native inhabitants of Malaysia.

Another former DAP veteran Kua Kia Soong also criticised Nga’s proposal, describing it as an insult to Malaysians who fought against the British colonial power during the Emergency.

The former Petaling Jaya MP said the New Villages were nothing short of concentration camps, designed and enforced by the British colonial power.