Malayan Races Liberation Army

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Malayan Races Liberation Army
Participant in the Malayan Emergency
Portrait of an MRLA soldier (circa 1960)
Active	1948-1960
Leaders	Chin Peng
Headquarters	Various parts of the Malayan jungle
Area of operations	Various areas of the Malayan jungle
Strength	8,000 soldiers
Originated as	Malayan People's Anti-Japanese Army
Opponents	United Kingdom Australia New Zealand Federation of Malaysia Rhodesia Fiji
Battles/wars	Malayan Emergency

The Malayan Races Liberation Army (MRLA) was the name given by British security forces to a combatant in the Malayan Emergency, an insurrection and guerrilla war against the British and Malayan administration from 1948-1960 in what is now Malaysia.

MRLA is actually a mistranslation from Chinese, which the organization's leader Chin Peng has corrected to Malayan National Liberation Army (MNLA). It was a guerrilla force created by the Malayan Communist Party and, to some extent, led and dominated by overseas Chinese communists.

The MNLA was a successor of the Malayan People's Anti-Japanese Army, another guerrilla force which the British had secretly trained and equipped with arms during World War II in the fight against the Japanese Occupation. The Communist Party, which had been banned in the pre-war years, was thereafter granted legal recognition by the British after the war as a reward for its wartime effort, but had secretly kept some of the MPAJA's weapons for future use.

The MCP used violence to support its union organisation, and the British used restrictions, including banishing key communist leaders not born locally, to restrict the MCP. This mutual antagonism climaxed with MCP plans for revolt in 1948, which the British pre-empted by declaring a state of emergency in June 1948.

Defeated in the first Malayan emergency (1948-1960) in the Malayan jungles, and outwitted in Singapore politics by nationalist politician Lee Kuan Yew, by the mid-1960s it was fragmented. a small group of insurgents continued to operate from the Malaysian-Thailand border, until they signed a peace agreement with the Thai and Malaysian Governments in December 1989.

This allowed some of the remaining MCP members to settle in 'Peace Villages' in southern Thailand, others to return to Malaysia. No agreement was signed with Singapore, and Secretary-General Chin Peng (in office 1947 to present) has subsequently been denied the right to return to Malaysia.

[edit] Further reading

• C.C. Chin and Karl Hack (2004), Dialogues with Chin Peng.
• Chin Peng, Ian Ward and Miraflor Ward (2004), Alias Chin Peng: My Side of the Story.