More Misleading Claims from Thum Ping Tjin

Thum Ping Tjin has recently made a startling assertion that after his works were published, the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) “no longer say that they have evidence that the detainees of Operation Coldstore were involved in a communist conspiracy”. He claims this is a “major shift in position” and proves that MHA “also accept my sources are accurate and legitimate”.




The Government has quite understandably ignored Thum’s erroneous claims probably because it believes the public is discerning enough not to be misled by his singular desire to spin his own version of history. Still, it is important to set the record straight in case such unsubstantiated claims gain acceptance by default because no one rebutted them.




A quick recount of some of the evidence and facts would be in order to debunk Thum’s absurd claims. The Government has stated, as recently as 14 Dec 2014, that “[a] full reading of the declassified documents from the British National Archives shows clearly that Operation Coldstore was a security operation meant to counter the serious security threat posed by the outlawed Communist Party of Malaya (CPM) and their supporters in Singapore, working through the Barisan and associated communist united front (CUF) organisations”. The Government stated that revisionists like Thum “conveniently omit mention of the incriminating information in these documents” by quoting documents “selectively”. British officials as well as CPM leaders have acknowledged that the Barisan was “the prime CUF body in Singapore in the 1960s, influenced, directed and led by CPM cadres”.




In this and another reply dated 20 Jan this year, the Government revealed among other things, the CPM strategy to capture political power in Singapore and use Singapore as a base to establish communist rule in the whole of Malaya, the formation of Barisan on the explicit instructions of the CPM, the CPM control of trade unions and other mass organisations, the communist antecedents of Barisan leaders, the discussions about armed struggle by Barisan cadres, Barisan’s support for the Brunei revolt in Dec 1962, and CPM’s decision in Beijing to prevent the formation of Malaysia and instructions to its proxies in Singapore.




In addition to the Government’s replies, I would add a Cold War dimension to the CPM’s strategy and highlight the Communists’ grand design in Southeast Asia. Chin Peng, the CPM’s Secretary-General, wrote in his memoirs that in July 1961, he and two other CPM leaders met Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Deng Xiaoping who informed them that Southeast Asia “was about to undergo monumental changes”. Deng said that “Strategically, the whole region … would become ripe for the sort of struggle we had been pursuing in Malaya for so long. The CPM must not…switch policies at this point. We must take advantage of the opportunities that would soon be presenting themselves throughout South East Asia”. Basically, Deng persuaded Chin Peng to persist with their armed struggle as this was going to happen in a big way in the region. Chin Peng further revealed that the CCP provided the CPM with financial support, training, a headquarters in Beijing and other amenities.




Clearly, the overall communist plan in the early 1960s was to turn Southeast Asia red, starting with Indochina in the north and Sukarno’s Indonesia in the south. As communist forces mounted attacks in Indochina, Sukarno, launched ‘konfrontasi’ against Malaysia on 20 Jan 1963 (two weeks before Operation Coldstore), starting with harassment of fishing boats and escalating to armed incursions and bombings by mid-1963. A month before ‘konfrontasi’ was launched, Brunei rebels staged a revolt. The Indonesian communist party (PKI) called for full support for the rebellion and urged the Government to make it a success. Sukarno and the Indonesian Parliament declared its support and so too did the Barisan and Partai Rakyat (PR) in Singapore. The Barisan and PR held rallies and discuss plans to whip up support for the rebellion and recruit volunteers from Singapore to fight alongside the Brunei rebels. The communists and their proxies in Singapore hoped that these external forces would prevent the formation of Malaysia. Before they could do more trouble, Operation Coldstore was launched and they were arrested and the threat averted. Chin Peng admitted that Operation Coldstore “shattered our underground network throughout the island”.





This geopolitical backdrop showing communist violence and plans during the period in the region augment earlier government replies about the CPM conspiracy and Operation Coldstore. Thum’s disregard of the overwhelming evidence that justified Operation Coldstore confirm that he is not interested in historical truths but politics. He has declared that “it is the responsibility of academics to critique power, those in power, and how power is used”. In attempting to do so, Thum has put forth a version of history that is seriously flawed and statements that are erroneous.

The unfathomable Lysa Hong

This is yet another unfathomable response from a known 'revisionist' historian. It is quite an unusual response from an academic who is supposed to be objective, detached and impartial. The name calling and emotional outbursts aside, she has at least conceded that Lim Chin Siong did work with the Communists after refusing to admit even this for a long time. 

She is also quite mistaken in a number of areas.She claimed that all the communists cadres (over 50) had been withdrawn before Op Coldstor. She is plainly wrong. 

First, any historian who has read Lee Ting Hui and Chin Peng's memoirs would know that there were more than 50 communist cadres in Singapore. Second, while some were withdrawn, many were left in place as affirmed by Chin Peng. Some were not even arrested during Op Coldstore eg Chan Sun Wing and Wong Soon Fong who were Barisan Assemblymen during Op Coldstore; both later absconded and appeared at the CPM jungle camp at the Thai-Malaysia border. It is quite puzzling how Hong allowed herself to be blinded by her prejudices.

Hong parroted Moore's statement that there was no instruction from CPM, Beijing or Moscow to Lim Chin Siong, and that Lim acted independently. But she contradicts hereself later when she concedes that it can be assumed that Lim was working "surreptitiously" with the communists. The CPM historiography is full of examples of instructions from Beijing and even Moscow to its operatives in Singapore and Malaya, starting from its formation in 1930. 

This is evident from CPM's various policy statements, directives and actions. Chin Peng had even revealed frankly that nothing could move without China's consent! Chin Peng, Eu Chooi Yip and the Plen all conspired to oppose merger and this was communicated down the line. The formation of Barisan itself was also at the CPM's behest! 

Picture from Chin Peng: My side of history

Furthermore, Singapore's former president and erstwhile communist, Devan Nair, said in his oral interview that he was introduced to Lim through Samad Ismail, a known CPM member since 1949, as someone who was "getting his guidance from South Johor". "Nair, who used to spend his evenings and nights at Lim's Middle Road union headquarters, remembered occasions when "somebody from the underground who is not know to the police" arriving to pass Lim a note. "And Chin Siong would read it and straight away burn it.""

Love him or hate him, when Lee Kuan Yew challenged Lim Chin Siong to take him to court for libel and forgery in 1962, after Lee accused Lim of being a Malayan communist, Lim choose not to. Why not? No one knows for sure. But it made his case weaker in the ensuing months when Lim was arrested under Op Coldstore for being a communist threat.  

Hong appears to have thrown caution to the winds, and along with it her academic independence and objectivity. She continues to ignore, dismiss or suppress hard evidence so as to be able to insist that Op Coldstore had no security basis whatsoever. Why she continues to do so is unfathomable.   

PJ Thum repeats old claims as historical truth remains elusive

Thum Pingtjin responded to Burhan Gafoor's letter with a FB posting that he is “happy that the government is engaging with my work”; he claims that his article on Coldstore “which was peer-reviewed and has extensive citations, does address the issues and evidence that Burhan raises”.

Thum's article does nothing of the sort. It fails to include several important revelations by Chin Peng, Fong Chong Pik aka The Plan, Eu Chooi Yip and other CPM/ABL leaders and activists that demolishes his arguments. Eu's revelations that the Barisan was formed on the instruction of The Plen completely undermines his whole thesis that the Barisan was just an ordinary left-wing political party instead of being the principal communist united front organisation (CUF) in Singapore that it was. His allegation that the CUF was an “invention” by the authorities has now been proven to be false.

Click here to read earlier article on what Chin Peng and The Plen say in their own memoirs. 

In another article which also touched on Coldstore and merger, Thum declares that his work quoted extensively the Chinese press – did he know that The Plen has written in his book that many of the articles in the Chinese press originated from him?

Many of these revelations have been in the public domain for the last 15 years. His entire unsubstantiated case against the government over Coldstore collapses now that it has been proven that the Barisan was indeed a political front of the CPM and that the communists were actively driving Barisan's disruptive activities and that the communists conspiracy was real and not imagined as alleged. Will Thum now revise his article?

Thum's response to Burhan was a repetition of his old line that his article was “peer reviewed” as though that in itself authenticates his work as a truthful account and addresses all concerns about inaccuracies and misrepresentations. Since he relies heavily on peer reviews, and give the many misleading arguments in his article, readers are entitled to know who are these peers who reviewed his work and how were they chosen? What are their areas of specialisation and research interests? How familiar are they with Communism in Southeast Asia, in particular Malaya and Singapore? How familiar are they with Singapore history? Have they conducted research on Singapore history and politics?

Further, would Thum address all the evidence and arguments highlighted in Burhan's reply in his forthcoming works on Coldstore or is it going to be an expanded version of his flawed articles? In particular, would he include all the revelations by Chin Peng, The Plen, Eu Chooi Yip and former CPM/ABL members that contradict his thesis? Would he also include the revelations and exhaustive research conducted by authors like C C Chin, Cheah Boon Kheng, Lee Ting Hui, Drysdale and Bloodworth and other British colonial records that argue against his own arguments?

Like Thum, I too hope that the state would declassify more documents. But when academics do not use materials that are publicly available and shoddily analyse those that they have access to, then I wonder when that day will come.  

History for history's sake?

Revisionists and their supporters are clearly distressed by the wide publicity on the communist threat in the early 1960s, as a result of the re-launching of the Battle for Merger. They do not seem to want the public to be reminded about the global Cold War or communist subversion in Singapore and insurrections in Southeast Asia.

To counter the publicity and mainstream narrative about the communist threat, Hong Lysa cites the dated work of Tim Harper and echoes the claim that there "is no evidence" of instructions from communist China or the Communist Party of Malaya (CPM) to the communists in Singapore. She cites British Deputy Commissioner Philip Moore as saying in a dispatch that "while we accept that Lim Chin Siong is a communist, there is no evidence he is receiving orders from the CPM, Peking or Moscow."

But Moore's claim has been established to be inaccurate. It is roundly contradicted by revelations from the Secretary General of the CPM himself, Chin Peng. In his book published in 2003, Chin Peng revealed that in a meeting in July 1961 in Beijing, Deng Xiao Ping told him that he wanted the CPM to continue its armed struggle; Chin Peng agreed and accepted Deng's offer of financial support. (If anyone is interested, Chin Peng actually made a dangerous overland route from south Thailand to communist-controlled Hanoi, before boarding a plane to Peking.) Further, at the meeting in Beijing in 1961, Chin Peng instructed Eu Chooi Yip, the chief CPM strategist running operations in Singapore from Jakarta, to "sabotage" merger and Malaysia.

Picture from Chin Peng: My side of history

Picture from Chin Peng: My side of history

Fong Chong Pik aka the Plen has confirmed the instruction Chin Peng gave to Eu Chooi Yip. The Plen disclosed in his book published in 2008 and also to historian CC Chin that in a meeting in Beijing in 1957, the CPM had directed Eu to set up a working committee in Jakarta to strengthen and consolidate communist united front activities in Singapore. He was assigned this task, with further instructions to rebuild the united front with the PAP. One of his priorities was to meet Lee Kuan Yew in order to coordinate the policies and activities between PAP and the left-wing movement. On the merger issue, the Plen even revealed that he had used the local Chinese press to disseminate CPM's lines to influence the Chinese-speaking community.

There above should suffice to debunk Hong Lysa's and Moore's claims that there "is no evidence" of instructions from communist China or the CPM in Beijing to the communists in charge of running operations in Singapore. (As for Harper's dated article which Hong Lysa lauded, it was published in 2001 well before Chin Peng's and Fong's memoirs.)

The question arises as to why the revisionists have chosen to ignore the remarkable admissions of the communist leaders. Why do they instead grasp at a dated official document (Moore's) with an assessment that has been proven to be patently wrong at the time it was written? Moore himself later effectively conceded in another dispatch to the Colonial Office dated 7 December 1962 that he was mistaken! He wrote that the "communists (in Barisan Sosialis) seem to be sufficiently entrenched to control policy and action." The revisionists failed to mention this reversal of opinion and re-assessment of the communist threat in Singapore.

The explanation for the revisionists' selective use of documents and sources boils down to the fact that they are less keen in establishing historical truths and more interested in being the vanguard of fashionable counter-theories. Together with like-minded persons, they sought to show that there was no justification for Operation Coldstore, and to use this as a pretext to join the bandwagon of opposition politics. This is not history but politics.

From London with Love

Two perhaps questionable moves by Tan Jee Say in his early efforts to gather public support for his next run for office -- one is to rely on the widely circulated but maybe questionable research findings of a relatively new professor (Thum Ping Tjin). The other is to parrot what this fresh researcher wrote and said without due diligence of his own, like cross-checking with other historians and sources.


Having recently retired and now splitting my free time between Singapore and London, researching into the social history of Singapore, let me cite just 4 reasons why both Tan and Thum might not get a reply the government:


Firstly, unknown to many non-historians and members of the public, Thum has given a simplistic account of the communist threat and Operation Coldstore in his talks and articles. Thum has ignored several colonial dispatches and Internal Security Council (ISC) minutes that clearly showed the existence of a serious communist threat. Lord Selkirk, the UK Commissioner in Singapore and his deputy, Philip Moore, were concerned about the communist threat and had advocated firm action as early as 1960. See for example these extracts from the British archives:



In a May 1960 ISC meeting, Lord Selkirk:

“…expressed his appreciation of the skilful way in which the Singapore Government were trying to deal with the problem of subversion in the trade unions, but said that it was obviously necessary to keep a careful watch on any pressure building up to subvert the TUC [Trade Union Congress].” ISC (60) Revised Minutes of 9th Meeting, 19 May 1960 (para 4)










Later, during another ISC meeting in October 1960, Selkirk commented that the Singapore Government:

“…was faced here by a challenge against the democratic system over the whole of Malaya. To a large extent this challenge was now being made through the trade unions in Singapore. The Government could not allow itself to be knocked about by the Communists acting through the trade unions. The strength of the Government's case was that these people were pressing the Communist cause by subversive methods. By sticking to its line, the Government would emerge stronger in the end. It should not, therefore, be deterred by fears of any temporary unpopularity.” ISC (60) Revised Minutes of 14th Meeting, 7 Oct 1960 (para 8)








Second, whatever reservations Selkirk or his deputy Philip Moore might have had about arresting the communists, they later became fully convinced of the need for security action when more evidence emerged about communist control of the political party Barisan Sosialis Singapura (BSS), the discussion BSS leaders had about the question of armed struggle, and when the BSS came out in support of the armed rebellion in Brunei. On 7 December 1962, a day before the outbreak of the Brunei rebellion, Moore wrote:


“I enclose copies of reports which came to us last month from a reliable and well placed source on two meetings held at the headquarters of the Barisan Sosialis last September. These reports are of considerable importance, not only for what they reveal of the future intentions of Barisan Sosialis, but they provide more conclusive evidence than we have had hitherto for the belief that Barisan Sosialis are Communist controlled…It has never been disputed that the Communists in Singapore are following United Front tactics and that Barisan Sosialis is their principal instrument on the political front…The report on the first of the two meetings shows that those engaging in the discussion were Communists examining quite frankly how best to achieve their ends. Furthermore, we can see that the Communist influence within Barisan Sosialis is not confined to the Central Executive Committee but extends to Branch Committee level…”. CO 1030/1160, Moore to Wallace, 7 Dec 1962 (paras 1 and 2)








A week later, on 14 December 1962, after the Brunei rebellion, Lord Selkirk sent a dispatch to Duncan Sandys, the Secretary of State for the Colonies:

“I said I had recognised all along that a threat was presented by the communists in Singapore. I had not however previously been convinced that a large number of arrests was necessary to counter this threat. Recently, however, new evidence had been produced about the extent of the communist control of the Barisan Sosialis and also there had been indications that the communists might resort to violence if the opportunity occurred. Recent statements by the Barisan Sosialis and Party Rakyat supporting the revolt in Brunei confirmed this. Accordingly H.M.G. [Her Majesty’s Government] were prepared to see [arrest] action taken in Singapore…”. CO 1030/1160, Selkirk to SSC, Tel. 582, 14 Dec 1962 (para 5)







Third, the above British declassified documents show that it is a big folly to read the MI5 report in isolation. Thum Ping Tjin and then Tan Jee Say have brandished the MI5 report without realizing that it should be read in the context of active and robust discussions about the extent of the communist threat. Thum is seized by the MI5 report without considering its context and taking into consideration the totality of evidence. I do hope that Tan Jee Say will reconsider his position, because as a opposition politician and he shouldn't bet so many eggs in this basket.


Fourth, what Thum (and Tan) fail to realize is that the MI5 report by the British SLO Maurice Williams was not the norm, and it is a gross error of judgment for a historian, even if new, to rely heavily on such a report to make momentous conclusions. Revelations from many sources, including CPM sources, confirmed without a shadow of a doubt, the existence of a communist conspiracy and the communist united front. CPM chief Chin Peng and the Plen had revealed in their books about sabotaging PAP’s plans for merger and Malaysia. The Plen had revealed how he had used the Chinese press to disseminate his opposing views. He also revealed how he had had secret meetings in Jakarta to lead the united front in Singapore and target the PAP for subversion, how he had ordered a top CPM cadre in the Workers Party to resign, and how he had ordered all support for Partai Rakyat to be withdrawn during the 1959 General Election. Chin Peng in turn had disclosed how Deng Xiaoping had ‘advised’ him in July 1961 in Beijing to continue with the armed struggle and how he accepted the ‘advice’ and Deng’s offer of financial help. These are just some facts that clearly contradict the claims by Thum, Tan and others that there was “no evidence” of a communist conspiracy.


Bottomline for all interested readers is this -- we should read new interpretations of history with a curious mind and not take everything at face value. As a Singaporean who has been a long time working resident of London, I will say that the British public is also somewhat skeptical of the British archives because one might never know if ALL documents were declassified or if officials writing the reports have other motivations. Nevertheless, Singaporeans should never forget our own history because if we do, then Singapore would really become just a place for people to make money!