Chin Peng, centre, at the Baling peace talks in Malaya, 1956, which came to nothing. Photograph: Bettmann/Corbis
The ethnically Chinese, Malayan political activist and guerrilla leader Chin Peng, who has died aged 89, fought both with the British and against them. For his exploits during the second world war he was appointed OBE, and after it he led the abortive communist campaign to take over Malaya.
Chin was the last of the major guerrilla commanders who fought colonialism in Asia after 1945, a group including Sukarno in the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia), Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam, Norodom Sihanouk in Cambodia and Aung San in Burma.
When Malaya gained independence from Britain in 1957, and six years later merged into today's Malaysia, Chin continued his struggle for communist control of the new state from exile until a peace agreement was signed in 1989. At this point the Malaysian government flatly refused to allow him to return, a ban which has been extended to his remains.
Chin Peng (his nom de guerre) is said to have been born in 1924 in the Malayan state of Perak. His birth name was Ong Boon Hua and his father was an immigrant from China who set up a bicycle business. He took to politics at the age of 13, joining a new ethnic-Chinese society set up to send aid to China in its fight against Japanese aggression. His first role was to lead anti-Japanese activity at his school. At 16 he became a communist.
In 1939 he transferred from his Chinese-language school to an British Methodist one, but left after six months to escape British domination and become a full-time revolutionary. To evade local British authorities he moved to Kuala Lumpur, the Malayan capital, in July 1940. When he attained full membership of the Communist party a year later, he was already serving on a number of party committees in Perak as well as party labour organisations.
The Japanese invaded Malaya in December 1941, when he was the junior member of the triumvirate running the Perak state committee. His two senior colleagues were arrested by the Japanese early in 1943, leaving Chin in charge. He went back to Kuala Lumpur in a bid to contact the CP central committee, which appointed a new state secretary for Perak in his place – but the new man was arrested as well, leaving Chin in charge at the age of 19.
It was down to him to make contact with a British commando unit operating in Perak in September 1943. Japan was now the enemy and Chin adopted the view that my enemy's enemy is my friend; but the easy defeat of the British in Malaya, culminating in their worst-ever surrender in Singapore in February 1942, had convinced him that they could be driven out in their turn.
For his dangerous work for British forces he was not only appointed OBE (later rescinded), but received two mentions in dispatches. When Lai Tek, secretary general of the Malayan CP, was unmasked as a double agent for the Japanese and the British, Chin was elected to replace him: he was the senior survivor of the party leadership after Lai had betrayed it to the Japanese. He was now 20.
After the Japanese defeat in August 1945, the British colonial administration returned and Chin began plotting against it. A state of emergency was declared in June 1948 after the murders of three European planters, allegedly by Malayan CP members. Chin denied foreknowledge but the party was banned, and thousands of British servicemen fought his guerrillas in the jungle. Uniquely, the harsh British counter-insurgency campaign prevailed and by 1960 Chin withdrew, first to Thailand and at the end of the year to Beijing. The subsequent "confrontation" by Indonesia against the new state and local British forces also failed and was abandoned in 1966.
Urged on by the communist Chinese under Mao Zedong, Chin kept up the campaign against independent Malaya and then Malaysia, in which many thousands died. In 1970 and after, the guerrilla bases in Thailand succumbed to murderous factionalism and paranoia, with a succession of spy trials and executions over which the distant Chin in Beijing could not achieve control.
The 1989 a peace agreement included a provision for Chin and his comrades to return to his native country, which was never honoured. He went into exile in southern Thailand, travelling to Singapore to lecture at the university. His application in 2000 to return was rejected by the Malaysian high court after five years; his appeal failed in 2008, on the grounds that he was unable to prove his citizenship through documents long lost.
Chin died in a Bangkok hospital on the 50th anniversary of the creation of Malaysia. His wife Khoon Wah predeceased him; they had two sons.
• Chin Peng (Ong Boon Hua), political activist and guerrilla leader, born 21 October 1924; died 16 September 2013
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